What Is Blake-256?
Blake-256 is a cryptographic hash function that was designed by Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Luca Henzen, Willi Meier and Raphael C.-W. Phan in 2015. It is based on the ChaCha stream cipher and uses an optimized version of the round function from BLAKE2. Blake-256 produces 256 bit (32 byte) hashes which are generally represented as 64 hexadecimal characters. The algorithm has been designed to be secure against brute force attacks and other forms of cryptanalysis such as differential or linear cryptanalysis.
The main purpose of Blake-256 is to provide a fast hashing algorithm for applications where security is not paramount but speed is important, such as password authentication systems or digital signatures. It can also be used for data integrity checksums since it provides good protection against accidental corruption or malicious tampering with data files due to its strong collision resistance properties. Additionally, Blake-256 can be used in conjunction with other algorithms like SHA3 for added security when needed.