Monero has its own proof-of-work blockchain, and it is very similar to Bitcoin's design. The main differences are the way transactions are recorded (private but larger data size), the time to produce each block (2 minutes), the block reward schedule (fixed at 0.6 XMR), and the proof-of-work algorithm (ASIC-resistant so CPUs are the best miners).

I think a lot of people are sleeping on mining Monero with their desktop computers. Swap it to BTC if you want, but why let your asset be unproductive? Computers are Monero space heaters. And there will be a lot of used PCs for sale this year because Microsoft is forcing companies to replace anything older then 8th-gen CPUs for Windows 11.