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.

• Why crypto is ngmi: Text version of David Rosenthal’s talk to Stanford’s EE380 course
• Moxie’s impressions on web3; namely it’s centralization
• Nicolas Weaver describing the power of Ethereum’s computer to be less than an RPi at the cost of 60 of them per transaction

---

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) ↩︎