Infrastructure — Public Blockchains

Abstract

The Web3 revolution may have started long ago, but the epoch of blockchain history marked its beginning with the birth of Bitcoin in 2009. The public chain is arguably the most important infrastructure in the short history of blockchain. The evolution of public chains has undergone three significant iterations in the past 13 years — from Bitcoin’s Proof of Work (PoW) to Ethereum 1.0 with smart contract functionality and the various Layer 1 networks based on Proof of Stake (PoS). Today’s Web3 is a hybrid system where the three models coexist and thrive in the ecosystem.