Newbie Guide: The Major Consensus Mechanisms In Blockchain.

So since the famous Ethereum merge about two weeks ago, I realised many folks new to crypto and the blockchain saga don't really understand much of what happened and why it had to happen. I had to explain the major and currently existing consensus mechanisms in blockchain to a friend and so thought it would be nice to talk about it here for those who don't grasp the concept yet.

Consensus to simply put is just a general agreement and the blockchain regardless of the ecosystem is filled with loads of them. But for an agreement to take place with users from all around the world, there has to be a way or process to reach that agreement which is regarded as the mechanism. Hence the name "Consensus Mechanism". Pretty easy stuff right? Well, it's really not as easy as it sounds but first let's break down all the major consensus mechanisms currently existing.

Proof Of Work (PoW):
This consensus mechanism is famous for the being the oldest and first ever mechanism and is upon which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Monero and Ethereum Classic are built. It involves miners who do some computational works and get rewarded for solving/ doing the work. It's more complex than this but it is simply just people finding a hash and getting rewards for it. It's is energy intensive and is currently regarded to be flawed mechanism due to the energy it consumes, time taken to complete transactions on the blockchain and the high fees on the network. These are some of the reasons why Ethereum had to move to a different and more efficient consensus, Proof Of Stake (PoS).

Proof Of Stake (PoS):
This consensus mechanism involves holding certain amounts of the crypto before decisions/ agreements can be made on a network. It is by far more efficient than Proof of Work and doesn't consume much energy. It is currently used my networks like Ethereum and Cardano.

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS):
This is similar to PoS but different in a way that every single person on the network can single handedly vote with their own stake for trusted validators who would add blocks to the network. This is used on networks like Hive.

Proof of Burn (PoB):
As the name implies, this is simply when certain amounts of coins for a network are burnt / annihilated by sending to a account which does the burning.

Proof of Authority (PoA):
This is a consensus mechanism where a miners reputation on the network is used to give validations instead of the coins they own. Its kinda like an opposite of Hive, your rep is used here instead of your holdings but the similarity is that only well trusted on the network is allowed to validate the network.

There are other kinds that aren't so popular as these and the above named consensus mechanisms are probably the only kinds of consensus that would still be in vogue in the nearest future. I hope you now have a better understanding of consensus mechanism in blockchain.