This is really good. I’m not sure the padlock analogy worked for me as an explanation of public key cryptography. Here’s my mental model, which is probably imprecise: Alice uses a copy of Bob’s blender (the public key) to grind up ingredients into a smoothie. Alice sends the smoothie to Bob. The smoothie blending can’t undone be anyone except Bob. Bob has a secret knowledge (private key) of his personal blender that lets Bob run the process in reverse, unblend the smoothie, and see what got shoved into his blender.

🍶

    Jonathan Eyler-Werve

    Written by

    Staff Designer at Pivotal Labs