<p>The ability of a blackhole to advertise itself as having the freshest and shortest path to the receiver node and consume data packets has been a curse to networks. The AODV (ad hoc on-demand vector) routing has no means to detect such false replies and falls prey to these fake attacks, which eventually collect the data packets and consequently drop them, increasing packet loss and lowering the packet delivery ratio (PDR). Lack of centralized security mechanisms in almost all the networks, networks are affected by vulnerable attacks, including warm holes, gray holes, and faulty nodes in the network. This paper presents a cryptography-based authentication approach to identify the trustworthy destination through RREQ (route request) and RREP (route reply) packets during the route discovery phase of AODV routing. This paper proposed a scalable, lightweight, and proactive solution to effectively counter blackhole attacks in AODV, without imposing significant overhead or relying on strong network assumptions. Proposed method employs a cryptographic mechanism to authenticate the destination, thereby preventing blackhole nodes from deceiving the source, reducing packet loss, and conserving energy. Simulation over four configurations with varying numbers of nodes shows better performance in terms of PDR, residual energy, and energy consumption.</p>