What mining means here
You will be able to explain what a miner is competing for, why the work has to be wasteful, and what the advisory BFT layer adds on top of it.
The competition
Guessing until a hash comes out small enough.
A miner assembles a candidate block and hashes its header over and over, changing one field each time, until the result falls below a target. There is no shortcut: the only way to find it is to try. That is the point — the work is expensive to do and free to check, so a block carries proof that somebody spent real effort on it, and everyone else confirms it in microseconds.
Illustration to come
Real photograph, top-down: a scatter of dice on a table with one clearly distinct. It has to convey many attempts and one hit — no digital effects, no glowing numbers.
Difficulty
The target moves so the rhythm does not.
Every retarget window the network compares how long the last blocks actually took against the thirty seconds it aims for, and adjusts the target accordingly. Add hashpower and blocks do not come faster for long; remove it and they do not stay slow. It is a thermostat, and it is why the chain keeps a steady heartbeat whatever the world does.
Illustration to come
Real photograph of an old mechanical thermostat or pressure regulator. Analogue, slightly worn. The metaphor is self-correcting rhythm, not temperature.
The advisory layer
Proof of work decides; BFT advises.
VigiChain runs proof of work as its consensus and an advisory Byzantine-fault-tolerant layer alongside it, which lets validators signal agreement about the tip faster than the next block arrives. It does not overrule the work: the heaviest valid chain still wins. It exists so that a payment can be treated as settled sooner than pure proof of work would allow.
Illustration to come
Real photograph of two very different timepieces side by side — a small quick one and a heavy pendulum or industrial one. Conveys two rhythms serving one purpose.
The reward
A block pays its producer, and that is the whole issuance.
Producing a valid block creates the block reward and collects the gas of the transactions inside it. That coinbase output is the only way VIGI comes into existence — there is no other mechanism in the software. On testnet those coins carry no monetary value, which makes this the cheapest possible time to learn how it works.
Illustration to come
Real photograph of a plain wage envelope or receipt with a handwritten figure. Modest and old-fashioned — a payment for work done, not a jackpot.
In short
- Mining is repeated hashing until a header falls below a target: expensive to do, instant to verify.
- Difficulty retargets so blocks keep arriving about every thirty seconds regardless of hashpower.
- Proof of work decides the chain; the advisory BFT layer only speeds up agreement about the tip.
- The block reward plus the gas inside it is the entire issuance of VIGI.