Sign message usage

Question

I saw a lot of videos about smart contract and Dapps and also i developed some simple Dapps but still i don't know how and when i should use sign message which contains my message (what i need to put in sign message), and what is exactly usage of sign message this way. Unfortunately example of most of videos about signing data is sign simple string text and i can't figure out what is usage of sign an message like string, in smart contract?? Can anyone explain it to me with an example (for example doing something useful or in better way using sign message).

Answer 1

The basic use of message signing is to verify that you have the private key to a certain address. This, then, enables one to sign a message which gives certain permissions for someone else, on behalf of your address.

Once a message is signed (encrypted) by your private key it can be decrypted with your public key. So you can hand out the public key for anyone (that's why it's called public) and they can read the messages you signed - but they can't modify them.

A website may ask you to sign an arbitrary message to verify that you have the private key for an address - so you own the address. Or, to use with smart contracts, you may sign a message which gives ERC20 token allowance to a certain other address. This is called a permit. The other entity (for whom you gave the allowance with the permit) can then redeem the signed message (signature) in a transaction to a certain smart contract to get the allowance you. The benefit of this kind of system is that the signer doesn't need to issue a transaction and pay for its gas cost: they only need to sign a message.

You can read more about permit for example here.