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2. Blockchain technology from beginning

Proof of Work

Hashes are an excellent mechanism to prevent tempering, but computers these days are high-speed and can calculate hundreds of thousands of hashes per second. In a matter of a few minutes, an attacker can tamper with a block, and then recalculate all the hashes of other blocks to make the blockchain valid again.

To avoid the issue, blockchains use the concept of Proof-of-Work. It is a mechanism which slows down the creation of the new blocks.

A proof-of-work is a computational problem that takes certain to effort to solve. But the time required to verify the results of the computational problem is very less compared to the effort it takes to solve the computational problem itself.

In the case of Bitcoin, it takes almost 10 minutes to calculate the required proof-of-work to add a new block to the chain. Considering our example, if a hacker would to change data in Block 2, he would need to perform proof of work (which would take 10 minutes) and only then make changes in Block 3 and all the succeeding blocks.

Block Architecture of Blockchain

This kind of mechanism makes it quite tough to tamper with the blocks so even if you tamper with even a single block, you will need to recalculate the proof-of-work for all the following blocks. Thus, hashing and proof-of-work mechanisms make a blockchain secure.

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