Four Basic Rules of ECDSA Signatures …
In 1999, Don Johnson Alfred Menezes (1999) published a classic paper on “The Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)”:
Basically, it took the DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm) — created by David W. Kravitz — and converted it into an elliptic curve representation. And, so, as discrete logs were becoming larger, elliptic curve methods were so much more efficient.
Then, in 2007, Satoshi Nakamoto started writing code for his/her Bitcoin implementation, and selected ECDSA as the main signature method, and used the secp256k1 curve. For Ethereum, too, the natural approach to use was the ECDSA signature method. But, ECDSA signatures have been prone to attack if not implemented correctly, so let’s have a look at four basic rules.
The true magic of ECDSA was that we did not have to store the public key, but where the signature could be checked from a hashed version of the private key. In this way, blockchain did not need to store the public keys of those who used it, and it was one of the first times we created a truly decentralized information infrastructure.
