What is Public Key?

– by Tanish Mittal

Whenever someone has to send you some money, they require your Bank’s Account Number and other necessary details. Public Key is kind of the same concept but in blockchain/crypto. Users can receive cryptocurrency into their accounts using a public key, which is just a cryptographic code.

How does a Public Key work?

When a user conducts their first bitcoin or altcoin transaction, they generate a pair of public and private keys that are unique to them. Each key consists of a long string of alphanumeric characters that work together to safeguard a user’s digital assets.

The private key, which is only known by the user, is used to create the user’s digital ID. The private key of a user enables them to spend, withdraw, transfer, and make any other transaction from their account. A complex algorithm is applied to the private key to generate the public key, and both keys are held in a digital wallet.

(Read more: What is a Private Key?)

More Details

When a user sends crypto, such as bitcoins, to someone, the transaction must be broadcast to the network, where decentralized nodes verify the transaction’s legitimacy before validating and recording it on the blockchain.

Before being broadcast, the transaction is digitally signed using the private key. Although the signature verifies that the private key is in your possession, it does not divulge the private key’s information to anybody. The user’s public key is used to establish that the digital signature was created using his private key since a public key is formed from a private key. When the transaction has been validated as authentic, the funds are sent to the recipient’s public address.

The hashed version of the public key is the public address. The public key is compressed and reduced to produce the public address since it is made up of an excessively large string of digits. The private key, in fact, creates the public key, which generates the public address.

When two persons agree to give each other tokens or currencies, they must expose their public addresses to one another. The public address is similar to the account number on a bank statement. The sender need the number in order to transmit funds to the receiver, who will subsequently be able to use his private key to spend or withdraw the cash.

Special Notes

• As the private key cannot be generated from the public key or address, if a user loses his private key, any bitcoin or altcoin stored at his public address will be unreachable for the rest of his life. A user who loses his public key, on the other hand, can have it rebuilt using his private key.
• Although the private key is used to generate the public key and address, the opposite is practically impossible.
• The cryptocurrency network is kept safe by employing complex mathematical processes to ensure that a private key cannot be deduced from the public key, which is particularly important given that the public key and its hash version are visible to everyone on the network.

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