When I first heard about Bitcoin, proof of work (PoW) sounded like the coolest and most mysterious concept tied to the protocol. But mainstream media articles trying to describe the PoW process always fell short of a proper explanation for me. They usually read something like: “miners race to solve complex mathematical problems in order to validate the next block of transactions and earn bitcoins as a reward”, which sounded cool and all but only added to the mystery and the confusion.

Build a Merkle tree in Python