Cryptography in Blockchain: Top Types and Algorithms You Must Know!
By Mayank Sahu
Updated on Aug 13, 2025 | 11 min read | 45.21K+ views
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By Mayank Sahu
Updated on Aug 13, 2025 | 11 min read | 45.21K+ views
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Did You Know? The FATF's June 2025 report reveals that only 40 out of 138 jurisdictions comply with crypto asset regulations, highlighting the growing risks posed by illicit crypto activities. This highlights the urgent need for stronger cryptography in blockchain to protect assets and ensure secure, compliant digital transactions globally. |
Cryptography in blockchain plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of transactions within the network. It involves techniques like encryption, hashing, and digital signatures to protect data from tampering and unauthorized access.
Various cryptographic algorithms, including public-key cryptography and hashing functions, are used to secure blockchain systems and promote trustless transactions.
In this blog, we’ll explore the types of cryptography used in blockchain and the key algorithms that keep networks secure and decentralized.
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Cryptography has shaped the course of human history. The earliest known use of cryptography dates back to 1900 BCE, during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, where non-standard hieroglyphs protected secret messages.
The term itself stems from the Greek words kryptós, meaning "hidden" or "secret," and graphein, meaning "to write." Even then, it was vital for safeguarding sensitive information.
Today, cryptography serves as the cornerstone of digital security. It powers encryption for emails, secures financial transactions, and forms the backbone of cryptographic systems. By leveraging cryptography algorithms, modern security protocols shield society from cyber security threats while ensuring trust in a world dominated by data.
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Cryptography algorithms offer multiple robust features that protect data and foster trust in digital ecosystems like blockchain. Below are key features explained with practical relevance.
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Cryptography secures communication by protecting data through various encryption methods. In blockchain, three main types of cryptography play crucial roles:
1. Symmetric Key Cryptography
Symmetric cryptography uses a single key for both encryption and decryption. It's fast and efficient for handling large data volumes but requires secure key sharing.
Key Features:
Example: The Indian Railways encrypts passenger data using AES, ensuring real-time access while maintaining security across distributed ticketing systems. A shared key encrypts the database; compromised key access could expose entire records, making secure key exchange protocols essential.
2. Asymmetric Key Cryptography
This method uses two keys: a public key to encrypt and a private key to decrypt. It’s widely used in blockchain to enable secure, verifiable communication.
Key Features:
Example: RBI-backed platforms use asymmetric cryptography for secure digital signatures in interbank communications via public-private key infrastructure. A sender encrypts data with the bank's public key; only the recipient's private key can decrypt and verify the message.
3. Hash Functions
Hash functions convert any input into a fixed-length string and are essential for data integrity in blockchain. They are one-way, meaning the original data can't be retrieved from the hash.
Key Features:
Example: NPCI uses SHA-256 to hash UPI transaction data, ensuring tamper-proof logs across financial systems. Even a minor data change alters the hash entirely, preserving transaction integrity in real-time payment validation.
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Having understood cryptography, let's see how it works in blockchain to secure data and transactions.
Cryptography is essential to blockchain technology, ensuring data security, trust, and transparency. At the core of blockchain are cryptographic hash functions, which convert any input into a fixed-length output. This makes it nearly impossible to reverse-engineer the original data, ensuring the integrity of transactions.
Each block in the blockchain is linked through unique digital fingerprints generated by these cryptographic hash functions, maintaining the system's trustworthiness and consistency. When data is recorded in a blockchain, these cryptographic methods ensure that it remains tamper-proof.
Key properties of cryptographic hash functions include:
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Now that we understand how cryptography is used in blockchain, let's take a closer look at cryptographic algorithms that power these systems.
Cryptography algorithms are the invisible threads holding the digital world together. These mathematical methods encrypt and decrypt data, ensuring that sensitive information stays safe from prying eyes.
From securing your personal emails to protecting financial transactions, cryptography algorithms play a critical role in modern communication. Below are the key purposes of cryptography algorithms, explained with real-world relevance:
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Explore the core types of cryptographic algorithms that form the backbone of blockchain security and data integrity.
Cryptographic algorithms form the backbone of secure communication in a world where data breaches and cyberattacks are increasingly common. These algorithms employ mathematical principles to protect sensitive information, ensuring privacy, integrity, and authentication.
Cryptography is essential for safeguarding decentralized systems and facilitating secure transactions.
Below are some of the most widely used cryptographic algorithms that drive digital security and blockchain innovation.
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is one of the most secure encryption methods in the world. Widely adopted by governments, corporations, and blockchain platforms, AES encrypts data using symmetric keys, ensuring confidentiality without compromising performance.
To understand AES better, here are its defining characteristics.
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The Data Encryption Standard (DES) was a revolutionary symmetric key algorithm in its time. Though gradually replaced by more advanced methods, DES still serves as a foundation for modern cryptography. Its simplicity makes it a popular choice for educational purposes and low-security applications.
To explore DES in depth, here are its notable characteristics.
The RSA algorithm revolutionized cryptography with its use of asymmetric keys. By pairing a public key cryptography with a private key, RSA ensures data security and enables digital signatures, making it indispensable for cryptography in blockchain and other secure platforms.
Below are the key characteristics that define RSA.
The Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) is vital for ensuring data integrity. It converts input data into a fixed-size hash value, making it ideal for blockchain applications. Cryptography algorithms like SHA verify data blocks and transactions, ensuring they remain unchanged.
Here are the defining characteristics of SHA.
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Now explore the advantages and drawbacks of cryptography in blockchain, impacting its security, performance, and overall functionality.
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Cryptography is the backbone of blockchain security. It enables safe transactions, protects user data, and ensures the integrity of records. But while it brings many strengths, it also comes with a few challenges.
Here’s a quick comparison of the key benefits and limitations of cryptography in blockchain:
Aspect |
Benefits |
Limitations |
Encryption | Protects sensitive data from unauthorized access (e.g., wallet private keys). | Makes data recovery difficult if keys are lost, risking permanent loss of access. |
Immutability | Ensures that recorded data cannot be altered, maintaining transaction integrity. | Doesn’t guard against errors or vulnerabilities in the underlying smart contracts. |
Security | Combines hashing and encryption to prevent cyberattacks and tampering. | Still susceptible to software bugs, human error, or malicious code in apps. |
Scalability | Processes large datasets efficiently while maintaining performance. | High energy and resource demands for continuous cryptographic operations (e.g., proof-of-work). |
Future-readiness | Supports strong privacy and trust across decentralized networks. | Emerging threats like quantum computing could break current cryptographic standards. |
Cost | Provides high-end protection for critical transactions and records. | Implementing and maintaining cryptographic security at scale can be expensive. |
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Cryptography in blockchain is essential for ensuring security, integrity, and trust within blockchain networks. Understanding types like symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, along with hash functions, helps you grasp how blockchain secures and manages data.
Yet, many struggle to implement these techniques effectively due to a lack of structured, hands-on learning. upGrad offers specialized courses in cryptography and blockchain, featuring hands-on modules and expert guidance, to bridge that gap.
You can also explore additional programs offered by upGrad that can help you on your blockchain journey.
Get personalized guidance by scheduling a counselling session with our experts at upGrad Counselling and get the help you need for learning cryptography. You can also visit one of our offline centres for a more interactive experience.
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Reference:
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/global-financial-crime-watchdog-calls-action-crypto-risks-2025-06-26/
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is used in blockchain for generating public-private key pairs. ECC provides the same level of security as RSA but with much smaller key sizes, improving efficiency and reducing computational overhead. It is commonly used in blockchain protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum to create digital signatures.
Hashing algorithms, like SHA-256, transform transaction data into a fixed-length hash, ensuring integrity. They make it computationally infeasible to reverse-engineer the original data, providing immutability to blockchain records. These hashes also play a crucial role in mining, validating new blocks, and securing the chain against tampering.
Public-key cryptography allows users to securely exchange data on the blockchain without needing to share private keys. The public key encrypts data, while the private key decrypts it, ensuring that only the owner can access the original information. This model provides both confidentiality and authentication in blockchain transactions.
Digital signatures verify the authenticity of blockchain transactions by using asymmetric key cryptography. The sender signs the transaction data with their private key, and the recipient can verify it using the sender’s public key. This ensures data integrity and non-repudiation, preventing unauthorized alterations to the transaction.
SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit) is critical in blockchain because it produces a unique hash for each transaction. This cryptographic hash function ensures data integrity by creating a fixed-length output, even for variable-length inputs. It’s resistant to collisions, meaning it’s practically impossible to find two different inputs that produce the same hash.
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) allow one party to prove to another that a statement is true without revealing any additional information. In blockchain, ZKPs are used for confidential transactions, enabling privacy by proving the validity of transactions without exposing details like amounts or parties involved.
Merkle Trees are used in blockchain to efficiently verify large amounts of data. Each leaf node contains a hash of data, and parent nodes hash combinations of their children, ultimately creating a single root hash. This structure allows efficient verification of data integrity by only needing the root hash and a few nodes instead of the entire dataset.
Deterministic hashing generates the same output hash for the same input, ensuring consistency across all nodes in the blockchain. Non-deterministic hashing can produce different hashes for the same input, often used in situations requiring randomization. Deterministic hashing is preferred in blockchain to ensure consistency in transaction verification.
Multi-signature (multisig) cryptography requires multiple private keys to authorize a transaction, improving security by distributing control. In blockchain, multisig is used for wallets or contracts where multiple parties must sign off on a transaction, ensuring better protection against unauthorized access.
A nonce (number used once) in blockchain mining is a random value that miners vary during the mining process to find a valid block hash. The nonce, when combined with the block data, is hashed, and miners must find a nonce that results in a hash below a target threshold.
Quantum computing poses a potential threat to blockchain cryptography by being able to break traditional cryptographic algorithms like RSA and ECC. Quantum computers could theoretically solve the mathematical problems underlying public-key cryptography much faster, requiring quantum-resistant algorithms.
Cryptography in blockchain secures transactions, ensures data integrity, and protects user identities. It uses hashing, public-key cryptography, and digital signatures to prevent unauthorized access, tampering, or forgery of blockchain data.
Symmetric cryptography uses the same key for encryption and decryption, making it fast but requiring secure key sharing. Asymmetric cryptography in blockchain uses public and private keys, enabling secure, trustless transactions without sharing private keys.
Cryptography in blockchain links each block’s hash to the previous one. Any change in the data alters the hash, signaling tampering. Changing one block requires altering all following blocks, which is computationally impractical.
Cryptography in blockchain allows users to control their identities through cryptographic keys. Public keys act as identifiers, while private keys confirm ownership, enabling secure authentication without centralized identity providers.
Consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work or Proof of Stake rely on cryptography in blockchain to verify transactions and secure the network. Hash functions validate blocks, and digital signatures confirm transaction authenticity.
Cryptography in blockchain ensures each transaction is signed with a unique key pair. Once verified and added to the blockchain, it cannot be reused, preventing the same asset from being spent twice.
Cryptography in blockchain secures smart contracts by verifying that only authorized parties can trigger them. Digital signatures and hashes protect against tampering, while encryption can secure sensitive on-chain data.
Quantum-resistant algorithms are designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. In blockchain, these replace vulnerable algorithms like ECC and RSA to maintain long-term security.
Cryptography in blockchain allows different blockchains to exchange data securely using cryptographic proofs and digital signatures, ensuring authenticity and preventing tampering during interoperability.
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Mayank Sahu is the Program Marketing Manager, leading initiatives across all emerging technology verticals. A graduate of IIT Delhi, Mayank brings deep expertise from his prior experience in the analy...
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