What is#Halvingand why does it exist?

To understand halving, we need to take a step back and

remember how the consensus mechanism used by the

network, Proof-of-Work (PoW).

In this model, the chain considered canonical (correct, valid, true) of $BTC is the one that has the most computational work embedded in its blocks. To mine a block, a miner first aggregates all the transactions to be included in it, fills in the block's metadata, consults the hash of the previous block and then starts trying, by brute force, to validate that block, that is, find a nonce (any number) that generates a hash considered valid for that block, which follows a certain arbitrary validation rule.

The Nonce value is precisely what is used by the miner to generate the proof of work. According to an arbitrary rule stipulated by Satoshi, a valid block on the Bitcoin blockchain must have a hash

that starts with a specific number.

depends on the mining difficulty of this block.

The work that the miner must perform, then, is to find a specific nonce, by brute force (since Bitcoin uses a cryptographic hash function, SHA256, it is not possible to find this hash by any method other than this) and, upon finding it, the block is considered valid and can be distributed to the entire network, resulting in remuneration for that miner.