Definition of "PoW"

With PoW, as new, unverified transactions become available or broadcast to the entire blockchain network, each node that maintains a copy of the ledger (also known as a “miner”) verifies a set of those transactions to prevent so called “double spending”.

2019, Peng Zhang, Role of Blockchain Technology in IoT Applications, Academic Press, page 187

The communists demand the release of all prisoners detained by Saigon – not only the so-called PoWs. This distinction between “prisoners” and “prisoners of war” is significant since the great majority of the NLF members held by Saigon do not have PoW status. Until 1965 there was no such thing as a PoW; NLF prisoners were considered common criminals.

1972, Alexander Casella, “Saigon’s prisoners”, in Far Eastern Economic Review, volume 78, page 24, column 1

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in my opinion Saddam Hussein is very lucky that he has been classed as a PoW? Who decided that he was going to be a PoW and who decided that the people in Guantanamo Bay are not PoWs?

2004 June 16, Lord Berkeley, quotee, The Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), volume 662, columns 747–748

Until the late eighteenth century, it was normal to have ad hoc and often short-term holding of PoWs. But with the development of substantial armies and navies and so the ability to take large numbers from even a single conflict, the concept of PoW camps developed in order to manage the captives.

2013, Harold Mytum, Gilly Carr, “Prisoner of War Archaeology”, in Harold Mytum, Gilly Carr, editors, Prisoners of War: Archaeology, Memory, and Heritage of 19th- and 20th-Century Mass Internment (Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology), New York, N.Y.: Springer Science+Business Media, part I (Introduction), page 3