Crypto / Decentralisation

On this page...
• Definition
• Deeper Dive
• The Blockchain

Definition

Cryptography - the art of writing or solving codes.

Cryptography is not a new concept or idea. It dates back to at least ancient Greece with the use of scytales (a cylinder with a strip of parchment wound around it on which is written a message) and there are numerous examples between now and then (think enigma machines etc). These all fit the above definition but when it comes to Cryptography for web3 we are talking more specifically about mathematical techniques used in computing for encoding and decoding information sent over the Internet.

Deeper Dive

This is a very brief 'deeper dive'. Im just giving an idea of the concept used for web3. This is all you really need to know to use web3. Programming for web3 is beyond the scope of this website.

When you create a new wallet a public and a private key are created. The public key can encode plain text into cipher text. Cipher text is the encrypted content and is unusable without being decoded. Only the private key can decode this cipher text. This private key is kept safe in your wallet (you dont interact with it generally, but you can view it if you wish but it is not advisable for security reasons). Using the 12/24 word phrase combination gives access to this private key, and hence you wallet.

The public key can be used to generate public address's (your wallet accounts) which you can share with people to send you assets on the blockchain or to interact with the blockchain. So adding an account to a wallet is still using the same public and private keys you just generate a new address from the public key.

The Blockchain

Firstly I'll mention that all blockchain information is publicly available. Anyone can view it anytime through a web browser. There are specific 'scan' sites for each blockchain. This simple idea is important. The fact it is publicly available and is confirmed by 'nodes' is kind of the whole process of 'proving' something has happened.

Think of it as a giant list of ever growing transactions, each confirmed the last entry. Each entry is known as a block and as more blocks are added and confirmed by different (distributed or decentralised) nodes on the blockchain the more legitimate the transaction becomes. This is why it takes time for a transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain.