Proof-of-Work

The only thing in the world that’s constant, is change. Organisms evolve and change, environment never remain the same, seasons change, humans change, our age changes and rules change. Everything changes with the passing of time. But we hear a lot about Bitcoin that its immutable. What might be the reason of its immutability? Lets have a quick read about it. The Bitcoin is immutable because of its proof-of-work property. This is one of the most important charactersitics of Bitcoin that will be talked about for decades if not centuries. Same as how we read and talk about the great Pyramid of Giza. That is the evidence of proof-of-work carried out by the Egyptian civilization.

Blockchain

The word “blockchain” is being used heavily recently as a marketing catch word. Blockchain is a chain of block where every block depends on its previous block, creating the chain which is unbreakable. If somebody changes something in between, it would be noticed by everybody. Its not actually blockchain that gives bitcoin its immutability. It just makes sure that noone changes something without any other participant noticing it. If someone changes the history anyhow, it will be evident for everyone on the blockchain. It cannot be tampered without being noticed. Thus, its propery tamper-proof comes into play.

The proof-of-work consensus algorithm is what makes Bitcoin immutable. Any Blockchain only assures that its tamper-evident as anyone can check if its tampered or not but it actually does not make immutability possible. A complete immutability means noone and nothing can change it no matter what. This is the reason Bitcoin and its immutability is seriously important more today than ever. Bitcoin is continually working the way it works for almost 15 years having this property. If it works for 100 years and beyond, it will be the only thing in the universe which is constant, meaning it wont change forever. Like the pyramid, the coming generations will see the truth and proof-of-work done from the start of Bitcoin. Like every human today who see Pyramid, can see and is the proof of work done by the Egyptian civilization. That is what they built with their hands and is proof that they actually did to create an unshakable history and monument of their civilization. Egyptian civilization built the pyramid with 20,000 working humans continuously for decades and centuries doing nothing but only working for pyramid. This is the proof that it cannot be built cheaply. Its not possible to build similar monument even with all the technology we have today. That is a testament of proof-of-work for the Egyptian civilization.

Similarly, Bitcoin will be the most important planetary scale monument of proof-of-work. It will serve as the digital record history for our modern civilization which cannot be changed or modified by anyone, not even the most powerful military of our time. This is the record of truth that cannot lie. The Bitcoin transaction is embedded in the blockchain and secured by proof-of-work and is incredibly hard to change. Till the start of Bitcoin, every digital document of record was mutable as it could be modified by its central controller. Nothing is as immutable as bitcoin. Every miner expend the enormous amount of electricity and energy to mine a block competing with each other. Only one will be the winner of the block and the block subsidy is awarded to that one winner. And it is accepted by every other miners if the winner is an honest miner and that is the proof-of-work for every blocks in the blockchain.

You can check Bitcoin Halving & Block Subsidy if you want to know details about Block Subsidy.

Thank you for reading. See you on next one.