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bitcoin/README.md

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11 years ago
libsecp256k1
============
[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/bitcoin/secp256k1.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/bitcoin/secp256k1)
Optimized C library for EC operations on curve secp256k1.
11 years ago
This library is experimental, so use at your own risk.
Features:
* Low-level field and group operations on secp256k1.
* ECDSA signing/verification and key generation.
* Adding/multiplying private/public keys.
* Serialization/parsing of private keys, public keys, signatures.
* Very efficient implementation.
11 years ago
Implementation details
----------------------
* General
* Avoid dynamic memory usage almost everywhere.
* Field operations
* Optimized implementation of arithmetic modulo the curve's field size (2^256 - 0x1000003D1).
* Using 5 52-bit limbs (including hand-optimized assembly for x86_64, by Diederik Huys).
* Using 10 26-bit limbs.
* Using GMP.
* Field inverses and square roots using a sliding window over blocks of 1s (by Peter Dettman).
* Group operations
* Point addition formula specifically simplified for the curve equation (y^2 = x^3 + 7).
* Use addition between points in Jacobian and affine coordinates where possible.
* Point multiplication for verification (a*P + b*G).
* Use wNAF notation for point multiplicands.
* Use a much larger window for multiples of G, using precomputed multiples.
* Use Shamir's trick to do the multiplication with the public key and the generator simultaneously.
* Optionally use secp256k1's efficiently-computable endomorphism to split the multiplicands into 4 half-sized ones first.
* Point multiplication for signing
* Use a precomputed table of multiples of powers of 16 multiplied with the generator, so general multiplication becomes a series of additions.
* Slice the precomputed table in memory per byte, so memory access to the table becomes uniform.
* Not fully constant-time.
Build steps
-----------
libsecp256k1 is built using autotools:
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install # optional