from the ECC Team

That is the Question!

Varieties of awesome features make blockchain technology and cryptocurrency the single most awesome technological creation in recent times, but the innovative technology that backs the success of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies is its consensus algorithm. The aim of consensus algorithms in a blockchain network is to create an environment where multiple nodes or agents can come to an agreement on the value of any data passed through that system. Let’s take Bitcoin (BTC) as an example.

For a transaction to be verified on the Bitcoin blockchain network the transaction must be presented on a single block, and before the transaction is validated an agreement must be reached by various nodes on the network by a consensus mechanism called Proof of Work.

The downside to Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm is the high amount of energy required to confirm just one transaction on the network. That is more reason why newer blockchain projects such as ECC have moved away from the Proof of Work consensus algorithm to newer consensus algorithms like Proof of Authority, Proof of Access, Proof of Weight, Proof of Burn, and even Proof of Capacity. But the alternative that has met any reasonable success is the Proof of Stake consensus algorithm, also commonly abbreviated and referred to as PoS.

Before we go into detail about how Proof of Stake works within ECC, let’s first talk a little about the basics of staking cryptocurrencies and the origin of this particular consensus algorithm.