⚡️ react-native-quick-crypto

A fast implementation of Node's crypto module.

Note: This version 1.x is undergoing a major refactor, porting to New Architecture, Bridgeless, and Nitro Modules and is incomplete compared to the 0.x version. Status, as always, will be represented in implementation-coverage.md.

Note: Minimum supported version of React Native is 0.75. If you need to use earlier versions, please use 0.x versions of this library.

Features

Unlike any other current JS-based polyfills, react-native-quick-crypto is written in C/C++ JSI and provides much greater performance - especially on mobile devices. QuickCrypto can be used as a drop-in replacement for your Web3/Crypto apps to speed up common cryptography functions.

• 🏎️ Up to 58x faster than all other solutions
• ⚡️ Lightning fast implementation with pure C++ and JSI, instead of JS
• 🧪 Well tested in JS and C++ (OpenSSL)
• 💰 Made for crypto apps and Wallets
• 🔢 Secure native compiled cryptography
• 🔁 Easy drop-in replacement for crypto-browserify or react-native-crypto

Versions

Version	RN Architecture	Modules
1.x	new ->	Nitro Modules ->
0.x	old	Bridge & JSI

Benchmarks

For example, creating a Wallet using ethers.js uses complex algorithms to generate a private-key/mnemonic-phrase pair:

const start = performance.now();
const wallet = ethers.Wallet.createRandom();
const end = performance.now();
console.log(`Creating a Wallet took ${end - start} ms.`);

Without react-native-quick-crypto 🐢:

Creating a Wallet took 16862 ms

With react-native-quick-crypto ⚡️:

Creating a Wallet took 289 ms

---

Installation

React Native  

bun add react-native-quick-crypto react-native-nitro-modules
cd ios && pod install

Expo  

expo install react-native-quick-crypto
expo prebuild

Optional: override global.Buffer and global.crypto in your application as early as possible for example in index.js.

import { install } from 'react-native-quick-crypto';

install();

Replace crypto-browserify

If you are using a library that depends on crypto, instead of polyfilling it with crypto-browserify (or react-native-crypto) you can use react-native-quick-crypto for a fully native implementation. This way you can get much faster crypto operations with just a single-line change!

Using metro config

Use the resolveRequest configuration option in your metro.config.js

config.resolver.resolveRequest = (context, moduleName, platform) => {
  if (moduleName === 'crypto') {
    // when importing crypto, resolve to react-native-quick-crypto
    return context.resolveRequest(
      context,
      'react-native-quick-crypto',
      platform,
    )
  }
  // otherwise chain to the standard Metro resolver.
  return context.resolveRequest(context, moduleName, platform)
}

Using babel-plugin-module-resolver

You need to install babel-plugin-module-resolver, it's a babel plugin that will alias any imports in the code with the values you pass to it. It tricks any module that will try to import certain dependencies with the native versions we require for React Native.

yarn add --dev babel-plugin-module-resolver

Then, in your babel.config.js, add the plugin to swap the crypto, stream and buffer dependencies:

module.exports = {
  presets: ['module:metro-react-native-babel-preset'],
  plugins: [
+   [
+     'module-resolver',
+     {
+       alias: {
+         'crypto': 'react-native-quick-crypto',
+         'stream': 'readable-stream',
+         'buffer': '@craftzdog/react-native-buffer',
+       },
+     },
+   ],
    ...
  ],
};

Then restart your bundler using yarn start --reset-cache.

Usage

For example, to hash a string with SHA256 you can do the following:

import QuickCrypto from 'react-native-quick-crypto';

const hashed = QuickCrypto.createHash('sha256')
  .update('Damn, Margelo writes hella good software!')
  .digest('hex');

Limitations

As the library uses JSI for synchronous native methods access, remote debugging (e.g. with Chrome) is no longer possible. Instead, you should use Flipper.

Not all cryptographic algorithms are supported yet. See the implementation coverage document for more details. If you need a specific algorithm, please open a feature request issue and we'll see what we can do.

Community Discord

Join the Margelo Community Discord to chat about react-native-quick-crypto or other Margelo libraries.

Adopting at scale

react-native-quick-crypto was built at Margelo, an elite app development agency. For enterprise support or other business inquiries, contact us at [email protected]!

Contributing

See the contributing guide to learn how to contribute to the repository and the development workflow.

License

• react-native-quick-crypto is licensed under MIT.
• react-native-quick-crypto is heavily inspired by NodeJS Crypto, which is licensed under nodejs/LICENSE.