The First Official CBC Blog Post! Headlines, Encryption, and More...

Welcome to the inaugural Claremont Blockchain Club blog post.

Fuelled by the mission of educating and mobilizing the greater community on the value of blockchain technology, the Claremont Blockchain Club hopes to use this blog as a resource for blockchain beginners and enthusiasts alike, to learn, explore, and engage with this revolutionary technology. Beyond the educational aspect of our blog, we will use this page as a digital record of our bi-weekly meeting updates, lectures, and discussions. Our blog will follow a fixed structure beginning with a breakdown of headlines in the blockchain space, followed by a beginner-level introduction to our weekly topic, and finished off with deep-dive into the applications of our topic. This week's topics… encryption! But before we begin, let’s look at some headlines making waves in the blockchain space.

This Week's Blockchain Headlines

California Pilots Blockchain Car Title Management System on Tezos Fork

The DMV in California is testing the use of blockchain technology using a private fork of Tezos with the intention of developing applications such as digital wallets and car title NFTs. The DMV-specific project itself is up and running with validator nodes, but is yet to cover services like cross-state title transfers. However, this is a huge step forward for the adoption of NFTs and blockchain technology by a state agency close to home.

New York Assembly Introduces Crypto Payments Bill for Fines, Taxes

The New York assembly introduced a bill clarifying that state agencies in NY can legally accept crypto payments for fines, civil penalties, taxes, fees. It is great to see a greater adoption for crypto enabled transactions, serving the original purpose of digital currencies like Bitcoin.

Montenegro’s Central Bank Teams Up with Ripple on Digital Currency Project

Montenegro’s Central bank recently teamed up with Ripple, a leading provider of crypto solutions for businesses, to work on a digital currency project. While the project is still in its early stages, it is great to see more and more countries attempting to figure out central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. Bhutan and Palau are specifically among several other pilots in progress.

US Air Force Pumps $30M Into Blockchain for Supply Chains

The United States Air Force (USAF) has experimented with blockchain solutions for a while, attempting to manage cash flows and streamline data management operations with the technology. However, the USAF recently pumped $30 million into blockchain supply chain solutions, collaborating with blockchain-as-a-service provider SIMBA Chain, to work on a blockchain-based system for supply chain quality and management.

Introduction to Encryption

Blockchain is so heavily dependent on encryption. Encryption serves as the backbone to any blockchain, preventing it from becoming a public message board. We began our dive into encryption with an educational presentation by Wills and Max, looking at a brief introduction of the topic, some notes on digital signatures, and how encryption is applied in blockchain technology.

Nowadays, encryption is needed to keep private information securely stored online. The way it does this is by generating a secret code that is used to protect, and access, sensitive information. There are a variety of encryption schemes, for example Caesar’s Cipher which switches up the letters in the alphabet. However, this simple scheme is vulnerable to brute force attacks. More advanced encryption schemes use prime numbers, like RSA.

Furthermore, there are two main forms of data encryption these days: symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Symmetric encryption uses a single, secret cryptographic key to encrypt and decrypt data. This key is used to encrypt plaintext and decrypt ciphertext, with the goal of securing sensitive or classified data. Advantages of this type of encryption include faster speed (shorter key lengths), strong security, and mass industry adoption. However, given that a single key is used, placing it in an insecure location would make it extremely vulnerable to attacks and interception. On the flip side, asymmetric encryption (known as public key encryption), uses two cryptographic keys as opposed to just one. The mathematically linked public and private key pairs are used to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data asymmetrically. RSA and the Diffie-Hellman exchange are two examples of asymmetric encryption, which we will discuss later. With asymmetric encryption, senders can use private keys to digitally sign and verify their messages and transactions, without their private key information ever exchanged or compromised.

In blockchain technology specifically, each block has a unique hash which generates unique information to each block, and links it to the previous one. Therefore, it is impossible to alter any of the blocks prior because all hashes are linked to the block it immediately precedes, upholding the immutable nature of the blockchain. Check out the presentation below for a more comprehensive introduction to encryption created by Wills and Max.

Encryption.pdf

Download PDF • 644KB

Deep Dive into Encryption

Taking a deeper dive into encryption, we now turn our attention to two major crypto encryption algorithms: RSA and ECC encryption. ECC encryption, also known as Elliptic Curve Cryptography, is based on mathematical algorithms governing the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. It has shorter key lengths than RSA, but provides equivalent levels of cryptographic strength. Given the shorter key lengths, ECC requires less processing power to encrypt and decrypt data, making it much more efficient than RSA. RSA, developed in 1977 by Rivest–Shamir–Adleman, was the first algorithm to take advantage of the public/private key paradigm. It relies on the notion that factorization of large prime numbers requires significant computing power. In the presentation attached, Georgia goes into the mathematical details behind both encryption methods, providing a deeper analysis and application of RSA and ECC.

RSA vs ECC encryption.pdf

Download PDF • 529KB

And that's a wrap to our first blog post. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more blockchain news, lessons, and presentations to come.