What remains of POW? Which cryptocurrencies still use the POW mechanism? Newbies might not yet know what POW and POS are. I think it's beneficial to learn about them. Bao Erye also said that POW is his "white moonlight." Pick a POW coin, buy some, and who knows, you might get rich! - POW is the Proof of Work mechanism, meaning coins are produced through mining using mining machines. Currently, there are very few tokens still using POW. POS is the Proof of Stake mechanism, where staking tokens is akin to mining. The more tokens you hold, the greater the rewards. Nowadays, 99.99% of coins use this model. Some argue that POW causes significant energy waste and is no longer suitable for the world. To improve environmental sustainability and efficiency, POS is seen as the inevitable trend. Others say that coins mined through GPUs, pure CPUs, or mining machines under POW better demonstrate community participation in ledger keeping and collective witnessing. Even if the founder disappears or exchanges stop trading, these coins will still hold some value because they are collectively witnessed by the community. To miners, these coins are priceless. - Personally, I believe the POW model is the traditional blockchain model advocated by Satoshi Nakamoto. It requires enormous costs, with thousands of miners and a large number of mining machines and energy needed to maintain a blockchain ledger. If a new token adopts this model, it would struggle to survive. Mining machines are expensive, project costs are high, and even retail investors would find it hard to reach consensus. From the perspective of project teams, POW requires massive costs, compelling narratives, and a large number of mining machines. On the other hand, POS only requires a few minutes to create a token, and the rest can succeed through hype alone. Thus, 99.99% of current projects use the POS model. That said, there are still 0.01% of projects using POW. Let's take a look at these projects: 1. BTC Bitcoin is the world's first cryptocurrency, with the highest single coin value exceeding $70,000. "One coin, one villa" might become a reality. It can only be mined using integrated mining machines, which are expensive and consume a lot of electricity. 2. DOGE Dogecoin is the most successful meme coin and uses the same POW model as Bitcoin. It can be mined using the same machines as Litecoin. Why do 90% of meme coins have "dog" in their name? Because Dogecoin is so famous. Even its founder abandoned it, but it was propelled by the richest man in the world, making Dogecoin the "Bitcoin of memes." 3. LTC "Bitcoin gold, Litecoin silver" is a well-known slogan in the crypto world. Litecoin once held the second spot in market capitalization for years but has since fallen from grace. Its price has plummeted, and its market cap has dropped from second place to over 20th. It is heavily controlled, and no major players have stepped in to boost its price. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin uses POW and the same mining machines as Dogecoin. As the "second brother," Dogecoin even mimicked it back in the day. 4. ETC In 2016, Ethereum was hacked and underwent a hard fork. The new chain became the famous ETH, while ETC remained the original chain. The project team emphasizes that ETC is the true Ethereum, though I suspect this is mostly for financial reasons. ETH has already transitioned to POS, while ETC insists on using POW, currently mined using GPUs, which incurs high electricity costs. The first fork created ETC due to the hack. The second transition to POS led to the creation of ETHW. Why are there so many forked coins? I think it's due to money and human desires. ETH's success means even a small association with it can be lucrative. 5. BCH Dubbed "Bitcoin Cash," this coin was spearheaded by Bitmain (a mining machine manufacturer) and is the most successful among Bitcoin's numerous forked coins. At its peak, its price seemed poised to replace Bitcoin as the top coin, giving the impression of a "prince's rebellion" about to succeed. However, the crypto community largely supports BTC, so BCH's rebellion failed, and its price plummeted from $4,000 to a few hundred dollars. BCH advocates for larger block sizes and is considered an improved version of Bitcoin. It uses the same mining machines as Bitcoin. 6. BSV This is a fork of BCH. Interesting, right? BTC forked into BCH, and then BCH's team had internal conflicts, leading to the creation of BSV. Its founder, Craig Wright (aka "Faketoshi"), claims to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto and insists that BSV is the true Bitcoin. However, it has yet to gain widespread recognition. 7. XMR Monero is currently the most well-known privacy coin and the leader in CPU mining. It's the "big brother" of CPU mining and a favorite among hackers. Any computer infected with malware can be used to mine Monero for free, as long as it has a CPU. The most outrageous aspect is that Monero's transaction records are completely private and untraceable, making it highly favored by hackers and a hard currency on the dark web. Due to its notoriety, some government agencies have banned its use, and it has been delisted from several major exchanges. A small story: Bitmain once released a specialized mining machine with high computational power for Monero. Previously, only CPUs could mine Monero. When this machine was introduced, CPU mining became obsolete. Monero's team was furious and hard-forked a new coin, rendering the Monero mining machines useless. To appease those who had purchased the mining machines, Bitmain hard-forked another coin, XMC (dubbed "Monero Classic," akin to ETC being called "Ethereum Classic"), allowing these machines to mine something. However, this effort eventually fizzled out. 8. DASH Dash is a relatively well-known old mining coin, similar to Monero but mined using specialized machines. Its price has dropped significantly in recent years. 9. ZEC Zcash is another privacy coin where only the private key holder can view transaction records. It is mined using specialized machines and has also seen a significant price drop. 10. KAS After ETH transitioned to POS, KAS quickly captured some of the computational power and began skyrocketing in value. It has already increased by hundreds of times and is mined using GPUs. Early miners made huge profits, and its market cap has now reached $4 billion. - Bitcoin (BTC) Market Cap: $1,250 billion Dogecoin (DOGE) Market Cap: $15.7 billion Litecoin (LTC) Market Cap: $5 billion Ethereum Classic (ETC) Market Cap: $2.8 billion Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Market Cap: $6.77 billion BSV Market Cap: $968 million Monero (XMR) Market Cap: $3.182 billion Dash (DASH) Market Cap: $300 million Zcash (ZEC) Market Cap: $450 million Kaspa (KAS) Market Cap: $4 billion - Author: A Storytelling NPC Please credit the source when sharing ^_^