Consensus Protocols (optional)
Joseph Reagle
Work summary
- each participant has a public-key/address; they sign their transactions with private key
- miners create a block with:
- group of transactions
- a hash of the previous block
- their block reward
- a “nonce”
- and a hash of the block
- valid blocks must have a hash that begins with ~60 zeroes; millions of nonces and hashes must be tried (which is a
lot of work)
- the valid ledger/chain is the longest because it has the most work
- a cheater who generates a fraudulent transaction needs 51% of hashing capacity to keep building on their fraudulent
ledger/chain
- reward decreases over time, 21M coins total (a3Blue1Brown 2018)
Stake summary
- validators “stake” coins for a block
- one is chosen based on: size of stake, age of coins, randomness
- winner validates new block
- rewarded with transaction fee
- validators loose their stake if error/fraudulent and blacklisted
- validators can stop and receive its stake and fees after a period