blockchain 101
Cryptographic hash
(aka “Hash”) A one-way function that uniquely represents the input data. It can be thought of as a unique digital fingerprint. The output is a fixed size even though the input can be arbitrarily large. A hash is not encryption because it does not allow recovery of the original message. A popular hashing algorithm is the SHA-256, which returns 256 bits or 64 hexadecimal characters. The bitcoin blockchain uses the SHA-256. Ethereum uses the Keccak-256.
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