> it all seems like different math/bit/word operations get randomly mashed up and repeated for several rounds Honestly think you have it down. /s Need to add

> it all seems like different math/bit/word operations get randomly mashed up and repeated for several rounds Honestly think you have it down. /s Need to add some S-Boxes, P-Boxes and SP-Boxes though. The post-quantum stuff people are proposing now gets a bit hairy mathematically but lattices and their hardness properties are fairly easy to understand. Gimli is a cool place to start for anyone wanting to dip their toes in the water. It's a permutation in 30 lines or so. Building a cryptographic hash out of it is another 30 sloc. https://gimli.cr.yp.to/spec.html https://gimli.cr.yp.to/spec.html