Explore the evolution, types, and adoption of consensus mechanisms in blockchain technology.
Year | Mechanism | First Major Use Case | Description |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | Proof of Work (PoW) | Bitcoin | Miners solve computational puzzles to add blocks. Highly secure but energy-intensive. |
2012 | Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) | Hyperledger, Tendermint | Nodes reach consensus through rounds of voting. Used in some private/consortium chains. |
2014 | Proof of Stake (PoS) | Peercoin, later Ethereum 2.0 | Validators are chosen based on the amount of cryptocurrency they “stake.” More energy-efficient than PoW. |
2014 | Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) | BitShares, EOS | Stakeholders vote for delegates who validate transactions. Increases efficiency and scalability. |
2017 | Proof of Authority (PoA) | VeChain, POA Network | Validators are pre-approved authorities. Used in permissioned networks. |