© Karan Singh Garewal 2020
K. S. GarewalPractical Blockchains and Cryptocurrencieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5893-4_13

13. Mining Cryptocurrency

Karan Singh Garewal1 
(1)
Toronto, ON, Canada
 
We now come to mining a cryptocurrency, which is one of the central pillars of any cryptocurrency implementation. Mining performs three essential tasks:
  1. 1.

    It validates transactions occurring on the cryptocurrency network

     
  2. 2.

    It adds blocks to the blockchain

     
  3. 3.

    It creates new currency units

     

All of these activities occur in a distributed manner outside the control of any particular node on the cryptocurrency network. Blocks are added to the blockchain through distributed consensus.

In this chapter, we will examine how mining is carried out in a Bitcoin-like currency ...

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