Understanding the consensus protocol mechanism

As stated before, for the miners to validate a block and, hence, the transactions, they have to solve a mathematical problem. To solve it, there is a need for a specific resource. In Bitcoin, the resource is computing power. The more computing power a miner has, the faster he/she can solve the mathematical problem, therefore the faster he/she completes a block and the more likely he/she will receive Bitcoins as a reward. This mining process is called proof-of-work and is inherent to Bitcoin. It is a protocol that all of the miners of the Bitcoin blockchain should follow to demonstrate that they have done an appropriate work for validating the transactions. This ensures a selection process in which every miner uses computational power to find the correct nonce that will return a hash starting with a predefined number of zeros....