Steemit Crypto Academy S2Week5// Concensus Alogaritm: Proof of Capacity//Submitted @alphafx

Nice lecture presentation @alphafx.

Introduction
As an introduction, since blockchain operates on a distributed ledger, the Concensus alogaritm is need by the systems to obtain to achieve an agreement on a single data, for this reason Concencus alogaritm places a crucial rule in the blockchain system. There are series of concencuse alogarithm but I will be focusing on the Proof of Capacity(POC).

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Proof of Capacity
The Proof of Work (POW) has being one of the most acceptable and commonly used especially in Bitcoin mining but there arouse a need for an alternative due to the high equipment demand and energy consumption. One of those alternatives is the Proof of Capacity consensus alogaritm (POS).

The POC is that Concensus alogaritm which gives miners the leverage to plot their hard drive in other to take part in a mining transaction of solving problems and deriving answers before even the mining commences. The solution with swift responses are then considered for the mining Concencus. Miners are then rewarded as per block minned.

How does POC work
According to research, two components make up the POC Concencus alogaritm namely:

a) Plotting

b) Mining on the hard drive

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As stated the first stage is called plotting, which implies developing your unique plot profiles which uses a hashing function called Shabal and have also been discovered to be more difficult than the hash 256 used in Bitcoin mining. During Plotting, nonces are created and at the same time solved with each nonce contain about 8, 192 hashes.

The second component is mining, in POC users are allowed to leverage space of their hard drive to mine crypto which is similar to the token. The result of such mining is usually referred to as the Scoop number which is usually between 0-45. The scoop and the nonce are used to calculate and create a unit which is called the deadline,which represents the ranges imployed in creating a mining block.

Advantages of POC over POW and POS
Although POW and POS Concensus alogaritm have existing but a need for alternative arouse to solves problema discovered with the former, here are some reasons whey POC is advantageous:

a) Mining with hard drives are to a large extent more energy efficient and also reduces cost greatly, unlike the larges required by other counterparts.

b) Hard drive can always be used over and over again

3)Minera benefits more from the Proof of Capacity when compared with others

4)There is relatively no barrier to mining when considering the Proof of Capacity.

Disadvantages of POC

1. Since the hard drive is mainly used for mining, there is a tendency there could be wasted space in the drive.
2. Research has discovered that if mining becomes popular hackers might hijack the system.
3. Suffers from global adoption problems.

Project adopting POC
Although there are not many protect utilizing POC Concencus alogaritm, here are

@ few:
a) BXTB
b) BURSTCOIN
c) BTCHD

Closing thoughts
Although Proof of Capacity seems to be a better alternative to the POW and POS, it still faces the problems of global adoption.