Chill out, don’t worry, because we’re here to break it down for you in a way that won’t put you to sleep.

To start: what is ECC? Well, let’s say you have two points on an elliptic curve (don’t worry if you don’t know what an elliptic curve is we’ll get there). These points are called P and Q. Now, imagine that you want to multiply these two points together. This operation is called point multiplication or scalar multiplication, and it’s the heart of ECC.

Here’s how it works: let’s say your secret key (which we’ll call k) is 1234567890. You want to encrypt a message using this key, but you don’t want anyone else to be able to read the message unless they have access to your private key. So, what do you do?

First, you choose an elliptic curve and generate two points on it: P and Q. Let’s say that P is (5, 3) and Q is (10, 8). Next, you calculate the product of k times Q using point multiplication:

k * Q = R

where R is a new point on the curve. This operation involves adding and subtracting points on the curve in a very specific way that we won’t go into here (because this article isn’t about math). But trust us, it works!

Now, let’s say you want to send your encrypted message to someone else. You share with them the public key, which is P and R:

Public Key = {P, k * Q}

When they receive this message, they can use their own private key (which we won’t go into here) to decrypt it using point multiplication again. The result will be the original message!

It may seem complicated at first, but trust us: once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty simple (and much more efficient than traditional cryptography methods). And who knows? Maybe someday we’ll all be using elliptic curves in our everyday lives!

Later !