Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism ensures that work needs to be done in order for transactions to confirm and secures bitcoin in the fairest manner.
This is an opinion editorial by Pierre Gildenhuys, the co-founder of a Hong Kong-based social environment tech startup.
Proof-of-work is the consensus mechanism that the Bitcoin protocol uses. On a fundamental level, this means that work has to be done to prove the transactions that have transpired on the network are valid.