blake512-hash

Pure Rust implementation of the BLAKE-512 cryptographic hash function.

BLAKE was one of the five finalists in the NIST SHA-3 competition. This is the original BLAKE algorithm -- not BLAKE2 or BLAKE3. BLAKE-512 is used in the Quark hash chain found in Divi, PIVX, and other cryptocurrencies.

Features

• Pure Rust -- no C dependencies, no FFI, no unsafe code
• no_std compatible -- works in embedded and WASM environments
• RustCrypto ecosystem -- implements the digest::Digest trait (v0.10)
• Verified -- 13 test vectors validated against the sphlib C reference implementation

Usage

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
blake512-hash = "0.1"

One-shot hashing

use blake512_hash::{Blake512, Digest};

let hash = Blake512::digest(b"Hello, World!");
println!("{:x}", hash);

Incremental hashing

use blake512_hash::{Blake512, Digest};

let mut hasher = Blake512::new();
hasher.update(b"Hello, ");
hasher.update(b"World!");
let hash = hasher.finalize();

In a Quark hash chain

use blake512_hash::Blake512;
use bmw_hash::Bmw512;
use groestl::Groestl512;
use jh::Jh512;
use sha3::Keccak512;
use skein::Skein512;
use digest::{Digest, consts::U64};

fn quark_step(data: &[u8]) -> Vec<u8> {
    let h = Blake512::digest(data);
    let h = Bmw512::digest(&h);
    let h = Groestl512::digest(&h);
    // ... (full Quark chain has 9 rounds with conditional branching)
    h.to_vec()
}

Algorithm

BLAKE-512 operates on 128-byte message blocks using 16 rounds of the G mixing function over a 16-word working vector. It uses the Merkle-Damgard construction with a HAIFA counter for length padding.

Key parameters:

• Output size: 512 bits (64 bytes)
• Block size: 128 bytes
• Rounds: 16
• Word size: 64 bits

This implementation is a direct port of the blake64 functions from sphlib (MIT license, Thomas Pornin / Projet RNRT SAPHIR).

Test Vectors

All test vectors are validated against the sphlib C reference implementation:

Input	BLAKE-512 (first 32 hex chars)
"" (empty)	a8cfbbd73726062df0c6864dda65defe...
"\x00"	97961587f6d970faba6d2478045de6d1...
"abc"	14266c7c704a3b58fb421ee69fd005fc...
80 zero bytes	13cee4afd536f7ed6aa3f7fc90e00050...
128 x 0x41	ab691f6ae2543e81bf3276c7ea463212...
129 x 0x42	f643396476f2436066dec3e9c505eb74...

Reference

• BLAKE specification (original submission site)
• sphlib C implementation by Thomas Pornin
• NIST SHA-3 competition

License

MIT