Minimum and Maximum Values Returned by keccak256

Question

In the statement:

uint256 x = uint256(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(valuesToEncode)));

What’s the minimum and maximum possible values for x?

When I looped random valuesToEncode the smallest resulting value for x had 73 digits and the largest had 78 digits.

Maxareo · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-12 13:43:09Z

2

In theory, it's 0 and 2**256-1, respectively.

answered Jan 12, 2022 at 13:43

Maxareo

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Thanks, but those are the min and max values for uint256, but I don’t think keccak256 will return a value that casts to a uint256 of 0.
– rbinnun
Commented Jan 12, 2022 at 14:30
1

That's why I said in theory. I think no one actually knows what the practical limits are, but if you don't believe in the occurance of hash collision, by enumerating all 2**256-1 integers with some arbitrary prefix or postfix, there should be a value producing 0 or 2**256-1. Just guessing though.
– Maxareo
Commented Jan 12, 2022 at 15:55

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