How does proof of work verify transactions?

Nothing is ever 100 percent certain in cryptocurrency, but it’s highly unlikely that Bitcoin will switch to proof of stake . Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to use proof of work, and it’s this mechanism, in particular, that is integral to the blockchain’s miners.

Ethereum, like Bitcoin , currently uses a consensus protocol called Proof-of-work (PoW). This allows the nodes of the Ethereum network to agree on the state of all information recorded on the Ethereum blockchain and prevents certain kinds of economic attacks.

Proof of work is a consensus mechanism used to confirm that network participants, called miners, calculate valid alphanumeric codes — called hashes — to verify Bitcoin transactions and add the next block to the blockchain.16 Ara 2021

Currently, Ethereum has both a proof-of-work and proof-of-stake chain running in parallel . While both chains have validators, only the proof-of-work chain currently processes users’ transactions.