Make no mistake, I'm of no delusion that there aren't hundreds of other wannabes with far more coding experience than I that are attempting to make their own blockchains. But bare with me and please help me out here on where I should begin my journey in study.
I want to create my own basic system where private/public keys can be used to verify a transaction. It doesn't need to be on a blockchain to begin with. I just want to learn how to generate keys and how to encrypt and decrypt them automatically through python for transaction verification on my own central database. I want this to be completely secure in terms of the only point of failure being the central database, and not the key pairs.
Here is exactly what I want to learn how to do:Let's say a SQL database has the following table format. It simply has two columns ("public_key" text, "coin_balance" int). So each public key is paired with a coin balance in the table, nothing else, to keep it simple. Let's forget blockchain/decentraliation entirely at this point, so I can focus on the key pairing aspect alone. Now, I want to know how I can verify that a user is the actual owner of a public key when they send a query to the database. Eg:
"UPDATE "coin_balance" WHERE public_key=
".." AND (conditional statements whereby user has proved ownership of public_key with their private key, without showing it to me or the database)". Ideally I will do all this in python.
So in essence, the user can only make transactions in the database if they have verified they own the public key with the associated coin balance. I don't want to know, and I don't want the database to ever know, what the users private key was (since if the database or I were hacked, this would be exposed). I only want it such that the user can send a string or key or something else that verifies ownership of the associated public key.
I have absolutely no experience with cryptography or key pairing, and so I'm not looking for an answer to the above problem, but rather if you could guide me on the specific resources I should study in the minimal amount of time that would allow me to do the above intuitively. I'm not looking to get a degree in cryptography, or to read an entire book explaining the fundamentals that still doesn't allow me to solve the above problem. I'm after specific direction on what I should read in order to implement the above as quickly as possible. I'll be hiring proper programmers later to work on my blockchain, but I just want to know that I can do everything myself first, without the code auditing/factoring and security that the proper programmers will provide.
Here's my current confusion: Current key pair generators such as for BTC and ETH.. are these exclusive to BTC or ETH, or could I use them on my own blockchain as well? For instance what about the Putty SSH key pair generator.. could I use that on a blockchain to verify identity? How do I actually generate these key pairs for a general purpose such as my own blockchain? My other confusion is how to avoid brute force attacks. Do I use a key/pair based on the same algorithm as BTC & ETH? Why do BTC & ETH have such different private key formats? Wouldn't they both use the same optimal and most secure one? How hard would it be to make the private/key pairing of my own blockchain secure? I'm willing to use APIs and already existing solutions, but the application will be for my own blockchain, not anywhere else.
As you can see, I know absolutely nothing about this subject, but wish to learn, however I don't want to get sidetracked in entire books of theory. I want to jump straight to practical understanding as soon as possible so that I can allow users of a database to verify ownership of their public key without exposing their private key to me, and I want to automate all this in python, and I want it to be as secure as Bitcoin or Ethereum in terms of the keypair being uncrackable (not as secure in terms of the blockchain, that is delusional, I'm just talking about the key pairing generation and verification here, not blockchain). So in essence, I don't want to build a blockchain to begin with, but rather just a centralized keypair verification system that could be used for basic transactions without exposing the users private key.
Where do I begin with my reading and study, and where do I end to arrive at my desired goal? If anyone is willing to go the extra mile and mentor me I'll give them some of the coins in my project for free. I'll be investing $10k of my own money into this project, so you can be assured that I'll be taking it seriously. I also have a lot of free time on my hands.
