why do you need proof of work 
current financial systems are built around a need for trust but when it comes to finances it has been the case time and again that some people cannot be trusted to do the right thing a proof removes the need to trust that others are acting honestly because it is code code is not tempted by money so if it is written with good intentions and cannot be altered it can replace our need to trust people we don t know the bottom lineproof of work is a consensus mechanism used by many cryptocurrencies to validate transactions on their blockchains and award tokens for participating in the network it is a competitive process that uses publicly available transaction information to attempt to generate a hexadecimal number less than the network target for that mining period the comments opinions and analyses expressed on investopedia are for informational purposes only read our warranty and liability disclaimer for more info as of the date this article was written the author owns btc 