A Study of Current Cryptocurrency Systems

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have transpired as one of the trending financial software systems. They depend on a secure and consigned ledger data structure; mining being an indispensable part of such systems. Mining reconsiliates records of past transactions to the distributed register known as the Blockchain, that allows users to reach secure, robust and concord for each transaction. Mining also introduces wealth in the form of new units of currency named as “bitcoins”. Cryptocurrencies lack a central delegate or authority to mediate transactions because they were designed as peer to-peer end sub-systems. They rely on miners to validate and scrutinize their transactions. Hence Cryptocurrencies require a strong, secure mining algorithms. In this article we survey, compare and contrast the current mining techniques as used by major Cryptocurrencies. We scrutinize the strengths, weaknesses, and possible threats to mining strategy. Overall, a perspective on how Cryptocurrencies mine the datasets, where they have comparable performance and assurance, and where they have unique threats and strengths are outlined.