ABSTRACT
Blockchain was first introduced to facilitate the virtual currency Bitcoin. The blockchain is like an accounting ledger that sits over a distributed network and keeps records of all previous transactions. The blockchain apparently looks no different than a website hosted over the internet, apps running on a smartphone or computers connected to a local area network. Each block in a blockchain holds batches of valid transactions that are hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree or a more appropriate data structure. Block mining is a vital requirement for the survival of the blockchain. It would be misleading to think that there is an analogy between gold mining and cryptocurrency mining, such as Bitcoin. The decentralised nature of public blockchains means that participating nodes must agree on the shared state of the ledger. Blockchain being a distributed system requires its nodes to reach a consensus while running the system and keeping its data secure.
