A blockchain is a shared record book no single party controls. Here's the journey of one transaction — and the two ways networks agree it's real.
Two systems decide who adds the next block and earns the reward. Both make honesty cheaper than cheating.
Computers race to crack a hard math puzzle. The winner adds the block and earns coins. Faking the record would cost more computing power than the entire rest of the network combined — so cheating doesn't pay.
Participants put up their own coins as a deposit. The network picks a winner at random (bigger stake, better odds). Validate honestly → earn rewards. Try to cheat → lose your deposit.
Simplified for clarity. A cryptocurrency is the digital token that lives on a blockchain; the reward paid to nodes is what keeps the network running. This is financial education, not personalized advice.