Steemit Crypto Academy Contest/ S1W3 - Blockchain through the concepts by @jueco

Hello Crypto friends,
It is a grand privilege to be among the participants of the steemit crypto academy contest.

This week contest is focused on my favourite concept/term, related to a blockchain and the benefit it contributes to the blockchain.

Without wasting any more time, I invite all to join me on this wondrous adventure.

This week, we shall be discussing on a popular term "proof of stake".

A proof of stake can be explained to be a cryptocurrency consensus mechanism that is usually used to produce new blocks in a blockchain and also used for transaction processing.

For the sake of newbies, a consensus mechanism is a way in which entries are validated into a distributed database inorder to keep the database secured.
And the blockchain is acting as the database in this scenario. In a sense, the blockchain is secured by the proof of stake consensus mechanism.

Proof Of Stake [POS] helps in decreasing the amount of computational work required to validate blocks and transactions of a blockchain, thus making a blockchain more secured.

Proof of Stake uses the machine of coin owners to change the way blocks are verified.
These owners uses their coin as collateral to validate blocks, and the ones with staked coins will becomes a validator.
Validators are then chosen randomly to validate a block.

The proof of stake system unlike proof of work, randomly selects validators to verify a block, rather than operating on a competition based mechanism.

Inorder to be chosen as a validator, a particular amount of coin must be staked, for example the Ethereum blockchain requires a minimum of 30ETH before a user can be a validator.

And also more than one validator is required to verify a block, and whenever the validators verify the accuracy of the block, it becomes finalized.

As earlier said, proof of stake consensus mechanism adopts different methods in which blocks are validated.
For example, the Ethereum blockchain when transited to POS makes use of shards for the submission of transaction.

The transaction will be verified and added to the shardblock by the validators, and this requires a minimum of 128 validators.

Once the block is created, two-thirds of the 128validators must attest to the genuity of the transaction, and then the block will be closed.

Proof of stake operates in a way that it amends the environmental sustainability and scalability issue of the POW consensus protocol.[ Proof of work has a competitive approach to it's transaction verification process]

There are several reasons why I personally believe that the proof of stake consensus mechanism is important to the blockchain;

• EFFICIENCY:
  The proof of stake system happens to be more energy efficient when compared to the operation of proof of work.
  The hardware requirement demanded by most proof of stake system are equal to average laptop in our present market.

• CENSORSHIP RESISTANCE:
  The proof of stake validators can be operated on a small laptop, unlike proof of work, which needs significant physical presence and lots of energy.

This implies that the pos consensus mechanism can be operated anywhere, even in the corner of a coffee shop.

• SCALABILITY:
  The scalability of proof of stake is another uniqueness it adds to the blockchain.

It was due to the deficiency of proof of work in this regard that led to it's formation.

The proof of stake consensus mechanism posseses more scalability and at such, it is able to verify multiple transaction at a very quick rate.

• LOW TRANSACTION FEE:
  Another Importance of proof of stake consensus mechanism is that it requires very low transaction cost for it's operation.

When compared to other consensus mechanism, we can see how expensive it is to perform transaction on Ethereum blockchain.

Definitely, the blockchain will exist without the creation of proof of stake consensus mechanism.

I said this because, right before the proof of stake consensus mechanism was developed, the blockchain has been in existence, making use of proof of work consensus mechanism.

The proof of stake system was developed as an alternative to proof of work, due to some deficiency of pow.

Also without the use of proof of stake consensus mechanism, there are other consensus mechanism used to verify account, and some of them are:

• Proof of work
• Proof of authority
• Proof of Importance
• Proof of capacity
• Proof Of Brain
• Proof of service
• Proof of activity
• Proof of activity
• Proof of elapsed time
• Byzantine fault tolerance
• It takes to tangle[IOTA]
• Direct acyclic graphs
• Leased proof of stake
• Delegated proof of stake e.t.c

Yes, I feel it is possible to improve some terms in the proof of stake system.

• DECENTRALIZATION:

Many have argued that the proof of stake consensus mechanism will make cryptocurrencies more centralized when compared to proof of work.

This is said so because the system favours users with larger amount of cryptocurrency, this would thus make such users have greater influence on the blockchain and the little stake holders will be left out.

I feel that this can be corrected and thus improve the decentralized state of the network.

• SECURITY:

Another area I feel that can be improved on proof of stake consensus mechanism is it's security.
It is less secured when compared to it's contemporary [POW].

The proof of stake consensus mechanism makes it very easy for an individual to be part of the network and this reduces it's security level.

Let's look at proof of work for example, if a dubious individual seek to hurt the system, he would need to purchase enough hardware to represent more than 50% of the network, and then he will have to pay to run them all.

And this makes it almost impossible for the network to be attacked.

Unlike proof of stake which only task initial upfront cost for individuals to participate.

I also feel that the security level of proof of stake can be further developed, making it hard for dubious individual to attack the system.

Despite it's limitations, the proof of stake consensus mechanism remains a very good consensus mechanism.
I believe it is one of the best, if not the best.

It helps to improve scalability, it's transaction cost is very little and it is very efficient.

In a nutshell, I will love to bring out some little points.

• The proof of stake operates in a way that the cryptocurrency owners can only verify a block transaction based on the amount of coin staked by the validator.

• Proof of stake was developed to be an alternative to proof of work, the first and original consensus used for block verification and addition of new blocks.