Elliptic Curve Signatures - extended
Asymmetric cryptography is one of the most important computer science inventions of the previous century. Cryptography is used extensively within Ethereum, and one place that users have contact with it is via Ethereum accounts. As we discussed in the previous article , public key cryptography is based on mathematical functions that allow for unique public/private key pairs. Those pairs of keys have special properties, like ease of creation, but it’s extremely hard (nearly impossible) to create a private key from its public key. Having a private key makes it easy to create a public key, but just from knowing a public key, we cannot know which private key was used to create that public key. Proof of ownership of Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) is established through private keys and digital signatures. The private keys are used almost everywhere within Ethereum during user interactions, and the Ethereum address of an EOA is derived from the private key. In other words, the Ether...