bitcoin-core/secp256k1

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2477 stars · 1165 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

libsecp256k1 is a high-performance, high-assurance C library for elliptic curve cryptography on the secp256k1 curve, including ECDSA and Schnorr signatures, key generation, and ECDH. It was developed primarily for Bitcoin Core but is usable in any application needing secp256k1 operations, with constant-time implementations and no runtime dependencies.

Use cases

• sign and verify bitcoin transactions with ecdsa
• generate secp256k1 key pairs in c
• implement bip-340 schnorr signatures
• perform ecdh key exchange on secp256k1
• recover public keys from signatures
• build a crypto wallet with fast signature verification
• constant-time signing to prevent side-channel attacks
• use secp256k1 on embedded systems without heap allocation

When to choose

• you need fast, audited secp256k1 ECDSA or Schnorr signing and verification
• you are building bitcoin or other cryptocurrency software
• you need constant-time, side-channel resistant cryptography in C
• you need a dependency-free library suitable for embedded or constrained environments
• you need BIP-340/324/327/352 features like MuSig2 or Silent Payments

When to avoid

• you need curves other than secp256k1 (use libsodium or OpenSSL)
• you want a high-level, hard-to-misuse crypto API for general TLS or encryption
• your use case differs significantly from Bitcoin's and you need a heavily verified interface for it
• you need a managed-language library without C bindings

Facets

library · maturity stable

cryptography serialization sdk blockchain security developer-tools cross-platform embedded windows cpp secp256k1 ecdsa schnorr-signatures elliptic-curve bitcoin constant-time digital-signatures ecdh musig2 c89 cryptocurrency linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="bitcoin-core/secp256k1")