Cryptographic Hash Function

A mathematical algorithm used in cryptography that is nearly impossible to invert except through brute force or a rainbow table. Hashing is used to increase the difficulty level of mining to reduce the speed of block creation, impacting security, validity, and inflation. The hash function maps input data of any length to a fixed-length hash value. Popular hash functions include SHA-256, used by Bitcoin, and Keccak, used by Ethereum.