One of the world's high cryptographers believes that Satoshi Nakamoto chosen Bitcoin's (BTC) elliptic curve both for its effectiveness or as a result of it could provide a secret backdoor.
Elliptic curve is price $ billions
A Bitcoin public secret's created by making use of elliptic curve cryptography to the non-public key. One can simply create a public key from the non-public key, still it's impossible to go inside the reverse path. Unless, in fact, Bitcoin's elliptic curve is compromised.
Many crypto consultants have discovered that Bitcoin's selection of secp256k1 elliptic curve was uncommon for its time because it was not but effectively researched. Cointelegraph requested one of many world's main cryptographers, Tatsuaki Okamoto, about this uncommon selection. Okamoto at the moment serves as director of the Cryptography & Information Security Lab at NTT Research.
Efficiency or vulnerability?
According to Okamoto, there are two various explanations for this selection, both Satoshi picked as a result of it affords big effectiveness or as a result of it could have supplied a secret backdoor. Of course, Okamoto underlines that these are simply two logical hypotheses, as he has no means of understanding what Satoshi was reflective on the time:
"(1) The Koblitz curve is specially designed for faster scalar multiplications. Hence the (signing, corroborative and key generation) operations on Secp256k1 are faster than those on Secp256r1. (2) Although the Secp256r1 curve was declared to be haphazardly chosen, there could still exist some suspicion that some backdoor might get on the QT set up in the curve parameters. In contrast, the Koblitz curve parameters are mathematically determined, and there is little possibility for setting such a backdoor."
Okamoto is affected with the best way the Bitcoin creator was in a position to mix a number of science strategies (hash chains, Merkle bushes and elliptic curves) to create the world's first localised forex:
"I think it is a revolutionary invention, the first localised currency, and its core technology blockchain, is giving a great impact on our society."
Bitcoin Core developer agrees
Bitcoin Core developer, Wladimir van der Laan, advised Cointelegraph that he doesn't know why Satoshi chosen this specific curve. He in addition notes that if he soul has found a vulnerability, they haven't stepped ahead to announce it:
"I have no idea why Satoshi chose this particular curve, they have provided no principle anyplace (it seems, in hindsight, to have been a fairly good choice though). Even if Secp256r1 has a vulnerability, no one has stepped forward yet to announce their discovery. On the other hand, keeping this discovery to themselves could yield a multi-billion dollar reward."
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