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Cryptography, Encryption, and Blockchains

Rather than having a bunch of different “crypto(graphy)” pages this is a hodgepodge of information about both given that I assume someone looking for either one would end up on this page.

Encryption Notes Link to heading

  • Consensus seems to be that XChaCha20 is the preferred encryption1 algorithm because AES is vulnerable to timing attacks unless done in hardware + AES-GCM has a foot gun in it’s counter2
    • ChaCha20 is what is used for Wireguard3 instead of AES because it’s more efficient on mobile/low-power devices4

Blockchains Link to heading

I used to be very optimistic about Blockchains and Crypto, but as time has gone on my views have changed. In particular, the articles below convinced me that crypto is not the future and if it was that this future would be bleaker than alternatives we have available. In short: I am doubtful that a world based on Crypto would actually be better or solve the problems promised in a fair and equitable way.

  1. 2017 hn comments discussing trade-offs of ChaCha and AES ↩︎

  2. hn discussion on XChaChaPoly. Search for “GCM” on the page. ↩︎

  3. wireguard page on crypto used in the protocol ↩︎

  4. Cloudflare - Do the ChaCha: better mobile performance with cryptography (2015) ↩︎

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