August 2019
Intermediate to advanced
486 pages
13h 52m
English
This is a protocol that ensures that all nodes participating in the network ensure the safety of the network. All nodes use a consensus protocol (a specific algorithm) to reach a consensus and discard the blocks generated by the attacker/bad node, to avoid catastrophic system failure. For example, Bitcoin and the Ethereum blockchain, at the time of writing, work on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus protocol. Ethereum uses the Ethash PoW consensus algorithm, which is Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) resistance. In the future, Ethereum will switch its consensus algorithm from PoW to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).