Digital Signature
Cryptographic proof, generated with a private key, that a transaction was authorized by the account owner and hasn't been altered.
- glossary
A digital signature is cryptographic proof that a message or transaction was authorized by the holder of a specific private key, without ever exposing that key. The signer runs the private key and the transaction data through a signing algorithm; anyone can then verify the result against the matching public key to confirm authenticity, and any change to the signed data invalidates the signature. Bitcoin and Ethereum use ECDSA over the secp256k1 curve for account signatures; other designs use EdDSA for deterministic signing or BLS signatures, which can be aggregated so a network can verify thousands of signatures — such as validator attestations — as one compact operation. A tokenized domain's transfers and DNS updates are authorized the same way: a valid digital signature from the wallet holding the domain's NFT is what proves the owner approved the change.
Related keywords
- digital signature
- ECDSA
- EdDSA
- BLS signature
- transaction signing
- signature verification
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.