Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPOS)
By CoinGecko | Updated on Mar 03, 2020
A consensus mechanism where selected members of a network are voted as delegates to validate transactions and produce blocks on a blockchain.
Members of the network vote for delegates through their holdings. Usually the highest voted delegates have the most power and tend to produce the most blocks and therefore rewards. Some protocols have built in mechanisms to balance it out.
Overall, the delegated proof-of-stake system was built to counter the energy use and efficiency issues of the proof-of-work blockchain, at the cost of some degree of centralization.
Related Terms
Burned Tokens
Tokens which have been sent to addresses whose private key are not known, effectively becoming unusable.
Merkle Tree
A Merkle tree is also known as a hash tree in cryptography. It is a tree where every lead node is labelled with cryptographic hash of a data block, and every non-leaf node is labelled with the hash of the labels of its child nodes. It is used to verify of data stored within it and transferable in and between computers.
Bounty
Public tasks available for anyone for a reward
Stablecoin
Cryptocurrency with a price peg to fiat currencies or commodity.
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