Blockchain Developer's Guide

Signatures

It is notable that, although when encrypting data to send it to a given recipient, the private key is used for decryption, it is generally possible to do the reverse. For cryptographic signing, private keys are used to generate a signature that can be decrypted (verified) with the public key published for a given user. This inverted use of public-key cryptography allows for users to publish a message in the clear with a high degree of certainty that the signer is the one who wrote it. This again invokes the concept of integrity—if signed by the user’s private key, a message (or transaction) can be assumed to be authentic. Typically, where Blockchains are concerned, when a user wishes to transfer tokens, they sign the transaction ...