[neospice]

How is "higher proof of work" defined in this context? Also, doesn't consensus of the majority of peers have any bearing on which is more authoritative? I.e. if all nodes except for your malicious node report a single chain, why would yours not be rejected?

[vec]

"Proof of work" means the total number of hashing functions, from the point of divergence forward, used in signing the blocks.

Consensus doesn't work like you're implying. If it did, I could spin up a peer on N+1 AWS servers, where N is the current number of peers on the network, and now my version has the majority of peers supporting it.

The whole idea behind proof of work is that it's impossible to fake. The version that took the most net computing power to generate is by definition authoritative. This means that the only way to make a malicious version of a chain is to actually, genuinely do more total work than the legitimate actors collectively did. The other side of this coin, though, is that it explicitly allows me to generate a malicious version of the chain by actually, genuinely doing more total work than the legitimate actors collectively did.