Public Key
The shareable half of a blockchain key pair, derived from the private key; used to receive funds and verify signatures.
Published on June 22, 2026By Namefi Team
- glossary
A public key is the shareable half of a blockchain account's cryptographic key pair. It — or the address derived from it — is safe to publish openly: it is where others send tokens or call smart contracts on your behalf. The public key is derived from the private key through one-way elliptic-curve math, so sharing it never exposes the secret that authorizes transactions. Verifying a digital signature against the public key proves that a message was signed by the holder of the matching private key, which is how the network confirms a transaction is genuinely authorized.
Related keywords
- public key
- address
- verification key
- asymmetric cryptography
- blockchain account