What is Proof of Work?
There is seemingly a million things to know about blockchain technology, and today I'll be covering one important concept: Proof of Work. This is what underlies many blockchains' security.
What's Proof of Work?
It's a method to validate the transactions on a blockchain, i.e. a "public online ledger which records all...transactions" that uses cryptography to validate the transactions.
What happens is that "blocks" are "mined." A block is a group of transactions, and these blocks are mined by people, i.e. miners, who run a program and complete cryptographic equations. What these equations do is prove that the funds haven't been double-spent and that the transaction was a valid one.
These miners solve these equations according to rules and then pretty much say, "Here's the answer; this transaction was in/valid." The answer is the "proof of work;" proving one used energy to solve the equation. The reward for figuring out the answer is a portion of newly minted cryptocoin and a portion of the transaction fees. This reward is proportional to the computational work done on decryption.
If one decides to provide a wrong answer, then they do not collect any reward and have wasted resources.
What are Some Blockchains Using PoW?
