The BLAKE2 and BLAKE3 hash families are cryptographic hash functions that are successors of the original BLAKE, and based on the ChaCha steam cipher. BLAKE2, developed by Jean-Philippe Aumasson, Samuel Neves, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, and Christian Winnerlein, is an improved version of BLAKE, offering faster speeds and enhanced security. BLAKE3, on the other hand, is the latest iteration of the BLAKE family and was developed by Jack O'Connor and Jean-Philippe Aumasson. BLAKE3 is designed to be faster and more versatile, providing high-performance hashing capabilities while also supporting tree hashing for data structures like Merkle trees.
The original BLAKE hash family is omitted here, but it was a competitor in the NIST SHA-3 competition, reaching the final round before losing to Keccak.
Details about the specification for BLAKE2 can be found at https://www.blake2.net/.
Details about the specification for BLAKE3 can be found at https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3.