Proof-of-Work (PoW) was first introduced by Bitcoin and is a consensus mechanism used to validate transactions, mine new tokens and secure the network.
The PoW consensus mechanism picks miners who will verify new transactions and data which are then added to the blockchain. Miners are rewarded the native token to the blockchain, for example, if you’re a Bitcoin miner, you will receive BTC.
Mining requires users to use their computing resources, which can be very costly due to the energy requirements needed to mine cryptocurrencies. This then caused a domino effect of problems stating Bitcoin and other PoW blockchains were not environmentally friendly.
