How Does a Private Blockchain’s Consensus Mechanism Differ from a Public One like Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work?
Public blockchains like Bitcoin use permissionless consensus mechanisms, such as Proof-of-Work (PoW), which rely on computational competition to validate transactions and secure the network. Private blockchains use permissioned mechanisms, often Proof-of-Authority (PoA) or variations of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT).
In a private chain, only pre-approved, known entities (validators) participate in consensus, which allows for much faster transaction finality and higher throughput.