# Lesson 1.3: Hashing & Digital Signatures

Welcome to Lesson 1.3! In this lesson, you'll learn about hashing and digital signatures, two fundamental cryptography concepts required to code with Plutus.

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After completing this lesson, you'll be able to:

* Illustrate how hashing works.
* Describe what a digital signature is.
* Explain digital signatures use private and public keys.
* Identify the benefits of using hashing and digital signatures in Cardano.
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{% tab title="Additional Resources" %}
To learn more about the topics covered in this lesson, we encourage you to review the following resources:

* [How Does the Blockchain Use Hashes?](https://cardano.stackexchange.com/questions/8657/how-does-the-blockchain-use-hashes)
* [Why Cardano: Signatures](https://why.cardano.org/en/introduction/signatures/)
* [Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)](https://www.essentialcardano.io/glossary/edwards-curve-digital-signature-algorithm-eddsa)
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## Collaborate with the Pioneers Community

Remember that you can interact with the participants of the PPP through the [IOG's technical community on Discord](https://discord.gg/inputoutput) by joining the channels under the Plutus Pioneers category.

If during the program you have questions about Plutus, we invite you to share them at [Cardano Stack Exchange (CSE)](https://cardano.stackexchange.com/) by adding the `plutus-pioneer-program` tag to your question. The IOG's Education Team members will monitor these questions to support your learning journey. Whenever you share a question at CSE, you're helping to build up the Cardano and Plutus development knowledge base.

***

This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

<figure><img src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License BY 4.0"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>


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