The famous ed25519 curve used in cryptography (ssh, TLS, blockchain...)

There are many Elliptic Curves in the mathematical field.
Edwards Curve is one of them.
Its property is to use a special parameter that confers it a good balance between speed of operations like signature and verification in one hand and 128-bit security in the other hand.

The parameter is based on the prime number 2 ** 255 - 19,
hence the name ed25519

It was named after Harold Edwards
the mathematician that proposed this particular Elliptic Curve in 2007.

BONUS : to put it in perspective, the number of stars in our galaxy is roughly 10 000 trillions of trillions of stars (10 ** 24). 128-bit security is a trillion times that (10 ** 40)

CREDIT : https://x25519.xargs.org/ and chatgpt for the perspective.