When your wallet pops up a “Please sign” window, what exactly are you signing?
First, the basics: Bitcoin and Ethereum both use ECDSA signatures on the secp256k1 elliptic curve. Since the Taproot upgrade, Bitcoin also supports Schnorr signatures.
Why does this work? Signatures are reliable because of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem: deriving a public key from a private key is fast, but reversing the process to recover the private key from the public key is practically impossible.
When transferring $BTC , your wallet uses your private key to sign the transaction, and nodes across the network use the public key to verify the signature.
Understanding the principles can help you avoid pitfalls, but it’s no substitute for risk management.
First, the basics: Bitcoin and Ethereum both use ECDSA signatures on the secp256k1 elliptic curve. Since the Taproot upgrade, Bitcoin also supports Schnorr signatures.
Why does this work? Signatures are reliable because of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem: deriving a public key from a private key is fast, but reversing the process to recover the private key from the public key is practically impossible.
When transferring $BTC , your wallet uses your private key to sign the transaction, and nodes across the network use the public key to verify the signature.
Understanding the principles can help you avoid pitfalls, but it’s no substitute for risk management.