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Consensus: the word as a noun in everyday language means a general agreement.
But in the world of blockchain technology? It means a whole lot more. 

Consensus is the procedure in which peers - or nodes - on a blockchain network reach agreement about the present state of the data in the network. It’s crucial that everyone in that network agrees - whether it’s the balance of an account, the outcome of a vote, or the execution result of a smart contract. 

Consensus mechanisms are the methodologies used to achieve this agreement. It’s these sets of rules that help to establish reliability, trust, and protect networks from malicious behaviour and hacking attacks. So you can think of it as how a blockchain network remains secure. 

There are many different types of consensus mechanisms, depending on the blockchain and its application. While they differ in their energy usage, security, and scalability, they all share one purpose: to ensure that everyone has a single source of truth about what happens on the chain.
Each consensus mechanism comes with its own set of advantages and trade-offs and in future videos, we’ll dive into what those exactly are! Stay tuned :)