Although people have different views and opinions as to what blockchain technology is all about and how it really works. This article seeks to give a detailed explanation on how blockchain technology really works.

Generally blockchain technology could be seen as the  structure that stores transactional records. 

This  structure that records this transaction could be called Blocks of the public, and it stores these records in a different database called chain; this network is connected through a peer to peer node. Thus we could refer to this as a digital ledger.

When we say something is a distributed ledger, it mostly means that everybody has the receipt for the transaction.

Moving forward, in this  article we seek to properly define the following concepts;

1. How does blockchain work?
2. Some terminologies in blockchain
3. cryptanalysis
4. cryptography 
5. What are the different types of encryption?

How does Blockchain really work?

Blockchain technology  mostly uses the following

1. Cryptographic keys: 

This basically  involves public and private keys and  Cryptography involves encryption and  decryption as every individual node has both of these keys and they are used to create a digital signature.

2. Digital signature

 This  is a unique  and a secured digital identity reference and the most important aspect of blockchain technology .

And it is important to note that each transaction is authorized by the digital signature of the owner.

A transaction is authorized by a mathematical verification in a peer to peer network. 

A peer to peer network is basically a large group of individuals who act as authorities to reach a consensus on transaction among other things.

Now these transactions are stored in a structure known as the digital ledger and the digital signature safeguards it from being tampered with as it could easily be seen but can hardly be corrupted.

Thus we could say that blockchain is seen as a structure that records activities or transactions through a network of connected peer to peer nodes.

This basically allows that each person once in the network would have their own signature.

Now transactions here can happen when individuals involved here have access to the ledger because it is their digital signature that validates the ownership. It becomes secured by the network and thus the network secures the transaction.

It is very  important to note here that the information and transactions recorded in this chain can be seen by all participants  but cannot be corrupted by any.

So we could summarily say that blockchain is a public record that records that stores information and transaction according to how it occured.

Cryptoanalysis 

This is basically the study of  ciphertext, ciphers and cryptosystems with the aim of understanding how they work and finding and improving techniques for defeating or weakening them.

So basically it is the study of the system of cryptography to  look for weakness or leaks of information.

Now  Cryptanalysis  is basically  the method of studying encryption and decryption of informations.

Encryption could be done using cipher text as it is an encrypted text transformed comprising of randomized texts and numbers and when this text runs through decryption algorithm iit becomes a plain text.

So to say, a ciphertext is not understandable until it has been decrypted and becomes a plaintext, so when we want to transform a text back to a ciphertext it then runs an encryption algorithm and it then goes back.

There are though different  ways of encoding information which majorly includes  substitution cipher , Transposition cipher, block cipher .

 Cryptography

This is basically seen as a secured form of  transmiting messages,information or transcation such that only the intended reciever of this message an dthe sender of this message can acccess it.

It mainly uses the process of   encrpting intended message to be sent by the sender  and then decrption of this messsage when it gets to its reciever.

Characteristics of cryptography

1.  Confidentiality: this is basically achieved through the encryption of information because once this information has been transferred or transformed to cipher text they can hardly be accessed.

2. Integrity:   by ensuring that the data received is actually a valid data from the sender and has not been tampered with  or even manipulated.

3. Authentication:  this mainly ensures that the data collected are  not tampered with and it is thus known as integrity authentication,  while the source authentication is basically used to verify the identity of who created the information.

It is important t0 note that integrity ensures that its activities by generating a digital signature that has a public key and obtain the message digest and then has a public key and obtain the message digest and then ‘hashes’ the message to see if it finds something to identify to its hashes.   If the message digest are identical the message is authentic and the signer’s identity is proven.

4. Non-Repudiation: This becomes a reality when a statement author cannot dispute ownership or it basically  means that the assurance that the sender of the information is provided with a sender proof of the sender identity so that none of the party can deny not getting the message.

5. Non-replay:  through encryption hashing and digital signature.

Types of encryption

We majorly have two types of encryption which includes symmetric/conventional encryption and Assymetric encryption.

1. Symmentric encryption basically uses a common key and the cryptographic algorithm to scrable and unscramble it’s message and it uses the  TRIPLE DES  (3des) which is an abbreviation of “Triple Data Encryption Standard” which is an example of a block cipher encryption algorithm. 

This is a symmetric key block cipher and it basically applies the des cipher algorithm three times to each data block ( One block of data is set to 64 bits. So the des encryption algorithm applied to each 64 bits block) 

2. Asymmetric encryption mostly uses two different methods which includes the public keys and the private key.

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