See Also
Bitcoin: The mother of all cryptocurrencies
On January 12 2009, an individual, or group, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, announced that the first Bitcoin transaction had taken place. Ten Bitcoins had been magically transferred between Satoshi and cryptography legend Hal Finney. It was the beginning of a revolution which, to this day, promises to change how humankind deals with money, finance […]
Proof of Location (PoL) Summary [Cryptocurrency consensus mechanisms]
In a Proof of Location consensus algorithm, users’ geospatial coordinates are accounted for as proof of value. This kind of algorithm is usually employed in cryptocurrency geomining systems. In a geomining application, users earn rewards for being at a certain place at a certain time. If, for example, a company wished to gather participants for […]
Proof of Elapsed Time (POET) Summary [Cryptocurrency consensus mechanisms]
In this poetically named consensus mechanism, network participants prove that they have slept for a random amount of time before being able to mint a block. POET was released by Intel in 2016 and was originally aimed at trusted computing using Intel CPU’s. A special instruction set called Software Guard Extensions (SGX) allows programs to […]
ELI5 Proof of Stake (PoS) – How does PoS work?
In the cryptocurrency universe, Proof of Stake (PoS) is one of the most popular alternatives to the Proof of Work (PoW) family of consensus mechanisms. While PoW systems invest large amounts of energy to make sure transactions are legit, PoS does not require mining hardware. Proof of Stake “miners” (stakers) must lock a financial stake […]