What is RSA Public-Key Cryptography?

The Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) encryption algorithm is a public-key cryptography (PKC) model that is used for numerous types of data transmission on computer networks and blockchains. Like all asymmetric cryptography models, RSA makes use of a public and private key pair system to encrypt and decrypt data. The RSA encryption framework makes use of the factorization of two prime numbers and an auxiliary value to obtain a desired result. RSA cryptography was first developed in 1977 and is named after its three main developers: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.