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Discussion on: I am full-time blockchain developer for 6+ months, AMA!

 
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Ben Halpern

Can you explain proof of authority?

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Lukas Lukac • Edited

Sure, long story short, you setup a bunch of trusted Validator Nodes (authorities) with the sole purpose of receive incoming transactions from computers of the network and put them to a block. Which is different from PoW, because not everybody can become a Validator.

Example, Ripple UNL. There are validator nodes from community, from banks, from company itself, from exchanges etc. And they actually do not have any incentive ("block reward") to be a validator. They do it just to contribute to the P2P world. Which I find very pure and how it should be. You could also make PoA Validator nodes to receive rewards to cover their energy costs, also fine IMO as powerful servers are expensive.

Ethereum is also developing several PoA test networks. Such as Rinkeby which one I explain in my course and teach students how can they connect to this test network.