A research on the consensus mechanisms

Abstract

A distributed and decentralized ledger widely used in the computer science and financial fields called blockchain has provided safe and fast transactions for multiple parties. Also, check the transaction by each node on the blockchain. The consensus mechanism is the core of the blockchain. It lets all the nodes reach an agreement for those transactions, which ensures security and accuracy and make Bitcoin valuable and popular. Two of the most mainstream Consensus mechanisms are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), and Proof of Authority (PoA) is the new one that will apply in the future. Many discourses talk about consensus mechanisms, most of which are review papers. Those papers mainly show a specific aspect of a consensus mechanism or introduce the primary notion, but they rarely explain the corresponding relationship between theories and cryptocurrency. So, the purpose is to give a clear structure, connect the consensus mechanism to its application and simplify the reader's understanding. This paper aims to provide an overview of the consensus mechanism, including its general definition, concepts of different mechanism variants, and advantages and disadvantages. For the structure below, the essay introduces the notion of consensus mechanism and how PoW, PoS, and PoA work. Then summarize the papers based on these three consensus mechanisms, describing the theories of many consensus mechanisms and comparing the advantages and disadvantages. The essay also creates a comparison table about these three consensus mechanisms to embody the content above the stem better.