Foundations of Blockchain

Cryptographic hashing

A cryptographic hash function is a type of function that maps arbitrary sized data to a fixed size string called a hash. Hash functions possess certain properties that make them ideal for use in cryptography.

Hash functions are widely used in hash table data structures. A hash table stores the data in a key-value pair. Hash tables are used when large keys need to be converted into smaller keys using a hash function, and then the values are mapped to these smaller keys. This makes the mapping of key to value quite easy, and this could be achieved in O(1) time complexity. This is due to the fact that hash functions have a constant time complexity.

We have repeatedly mentioned that hashing is the backbone of blockchain ...