What is consensus?
The process by which a decentralised network agrees on which transactions happened and in what order.
Every blockchain needs a rule for resolving disagreement about ordering, since there is no referee. Proof of work makes proposing blocks costly in electricity. Proof of stake makes it costly in capital that can be confiscated. Other designs use voting among a known validator set.
Why it matters: the consensus mechanism determines what it would cost to attack the network and who ends up with influence over it. Comparing chains on transactions per second while ignoring their consensus design compares the wrong thing.
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