Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Learning & News => Further Education => For Beginners => Terminology => Topic started by: Mounty on July 01, 2018, 03:05:27 PM
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PoW is a crypto algorithm which requires to perform a certain amount of computational work in other to mine a block successfully on a Blockchain and get new coin as miner reward.
Proof of work was a concept originally designed to sieve spam emails and prevent DDoS attacks (See DDoS). A Proof of Work is essentially a datum that is very costly to produce in terms of time and resources, but can be very simply verified by another party.
The proof of work for Bitcoin is referred to as a “nonce,” or number used only once.
It is considered an energy intensive method, as computers have to be running, which also drives the market towards centralization of hashing power, which is what the Blockchain aims to defeat!