Woah, woah! Wait a freaking second! Is someone about to scroll past this post and not read it? Do you already know it? No? So, you're choosing to not learn about something that is integral to some blockchain protocols? Wow!🤯 I've never heard of something more ridiculous. To choose ignorance?! WOW! (If you said yes, you enjoy your whole day, you genius!)
Thankfully YOU decided to learn something today with all that big brain 🧠energy! Proof of Work is a consensus mechanism. This means how it sounds; the protocol uses the nodes on the the network to come to an agreement. Like, for example, I believe that we could come to a consensus that people who choose to understand things that they don't know are in fact smarter than those that don't. 😉
What is Proof of Work?
Proof of Work (PoW) is most popularly linked to Bitcoin (BTC). BTC was first, so they deserve that win. With this consensus mechanism, the protocol requires the miner attempting to add a block to the ledger to prove that they completed enough 'work'. The work they are referencing is the amount of effort contributed to finding the solution for a new block.Â
As you (should) know, blockchain is decentralized, so anyone can join the chain's community, including naughty little sneaks. With blockchain, the network defaults to the longest ledger available on it's nodes, but this can create a security issue. To ensure that a fraudster can't add fraudulent blocks to create the longest chain, PoW requires each new block to take about 10 minutes to create. As a result, the chances of one node adding multiple blocks on their own is unlikely; scratch that, actually borderline impossible!
As technology improves, though, computer processing capabilities increase, causing valid blocks being added more efficiently. To maintain an average time of 10 minutes, the protocol uses a fluctuating difficulty level that is adjusted every 2016 blocks. The difficultly reflects the computational power necessary to find a solution within certain parameters for the hashing algorithm. This difficulty level will prevent malicious users from purchasing the fastest computers available to manipulate the ledger. The difficultly level also takes into consideration that the amount of miners can fluctuate from day to day, or even second to second. The more active miners, the higher the difficulty level. Conversely, the less miners, the lower the difficulty level, as it will take the network longer to find a solution.Â
One drawback to mining through PoW, though, is the amount of electricity used to filter through the possible solutions for a new block. The high electricity cost causes a lot of concern for those skeptical of blockchain and Crypto currencies. We are all aware of how important it is to be more green for our planet, however, technology improves constantly. There are new consensus mechanisms already in play, such as Proof of Stake (future post, alright? Come back for that!) that is more environmentally friendly. Though, if were being honest, have you considered how much electricity current financial systems use? It's not great!
Now What?
I hope you learned something new reading my post. It's important for you to know that I do in fact LOVE validation from strangers, so if you could please hit that thumbs up button, it'll make my whole day 😅! My next post I'm going to write about Proof of Stake, so you should probably follow me while you're at it so you don't miss that riveting read! 🙃
Come join me on Torum and follow me on Twitter!Â