SHA-256 is a cryptographic hash function developed by the NSA in 2001 that converts any input into a fixed 256-bit output, serving as the foundation of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

SHA-256 produces a fixed 256-bit output from an input of any size, and Bitcoin applies it twice to block data. Ethereum chose Keccak-256 over standard SHA-3 because Ethereum adopted the original ...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology published the final version of its "Secure Hash Algorithm-3" standard in August 2015 and has released it to the public, calling it a "next-generation ...