Blockchain Hashing — blocktrain.info
Hashing is a function that takes arbitrary length of data as input & returns a value of fixed size, the output is called as hash.
- The size of the hash depends on the algorithm used. Some Common Hashing Algorithms MD5 (128 bit), SHA-1 (168 Bits) & SHA-2 Hashing Family has 224, 256, 384 or 512 bit size.
- Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm where SHA stands for secure Hashing Algorithm and 256 is the bit size of the hash. A SHA256 hash is a hexadecimal value containing 64 characters (0–9,A-R).
- Hashing is a one way function that means the original data cannot be retrieved from a hash unlike cryptography where it is possible to decrypt the key to get the original message. So one should not confuse hashing with cryptography
Transaction Hash
Each transaction in a blockchain is identified by a hash. This hash is like a fingerprint for the transaction. You can look into the details of a transaction, just by searching it’s hash on a blockchain explorer.
Block Hash
As we know the transactions are stored in blocks in a form of hash, the block is itself identified by a hash. And the block is valid when the hash is validated by a miner using Nonce.
Blockchain
When a block is created, it is linked to the blockchain using the hash of the preceding block, you can imagine it like a linked list. The first block in a blockchain is called the genesis block, the bitcoin genesis block was mined on Jan 3, 2009.
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