Chapter 7. Proof of work
This chapter covers
- Making transactions censorship-resistant by allowing multiple “Lisas”
- Competing to produce the next block, or mining
- Understanding miner incentives
The previous chapter made it hard for Lisa to remove transactions by introducing a blockchain in which Lisa signs all blocks. This chapter will take this a step further and make the system censorship resistant so Lisa can’t censor transactions.
To make the system censorship resistant, we’ll replace the digital signatures in the block headers with proof of work (figure 7.1) to allow for any number of Lisas, or miners. These miners will compete to create the next block by trying to produce a valid proof of work. Miners can produce this proof by calculating ...
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