Author: Douglas Roark 2016-01-21 02:57:23
Published on: 2016-01-21T02:57:23+00:00
In a post to the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Ethan Heilman asked whether libsecp256k1 is used for all cryptographic functions in Bitcoin. Douglas Roark replied that while libsecp256k1 does perform elliptic curve operations required by Bitcoin, OpenSSL is still used for other crypto functions. Roark mentioned that libsecp256k1 currently relies on an implementation of RFC 6979 rather than a PRNG, possibly for portability reasons. However, he added that there are still some crypto functions not covered by libsecp256k1 at the API level, and that for consensus-critical functionality, OpenSSL will be replaced with libsecp256k1 in the upcoming version 0.12 of Bitcoin.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T03:10:40.176862+00:00