Miner

In a blockchain network, a network participant who provides a service and resource: Computational power, and a decentralized node: A network-compliant validator who offers these resources in exchange for the chance to be rewarded in the underlying cryptocurrency for storing blocks and validating transactions on the network. Miners validate transactions to prove their validity in accordance with the network protocol and ensure that asset balances aren’t spent twice. They also compete with other miners to find a mathematical solution to a randomly generated Proof of Work puzzle, for which they are rewarded in the unit of the ledger they preserve (e.g. Bitcoin). Pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s brilliance and much of Bitcoin’s success as the first adopted decentralized peer-to-peer network lies in the protocol’s design. Miners are monetarily incentivized by the protocol to secure the protocol, and failure to do so forfeits any opportunity to potentially earn rewards.