In the world of Bitcoins and Altcoins (cryptocurrencies based on the blockchain developed by the Bitcoin core team), the Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism is used for consensus. PoW was originally a protocol developed with the primary goal of preventing cyber attacks, such as a DDOS attack. The idea behind PoW was first published in 1993 by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor, and used in the Bitcoin white paper as it allows for trustless and distributed consensus. This protocol requires participating nodes to perform an intensive form of calculations (also called mining) in order to create a new group (or block) of trustless transactions on the blockchain. The mining of transactions is necessary for two reasons:
Sophisticated consensus mechanisms
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