Eco-Friendly Proof of Work Ideas

I'm thinking about a new crypto model that combines Proof of Work with forged blocks. Basically, you mine blocks with PoW, but then you also randomly pick forged blocks from public keys that already mined a block. This keeps the network secure without needing endless energy.

Sounds like increasing block rates to me... More blocks don’t mean more security. If a miner has a hashrate of X and finds 1 block plus 1 forged block, isn’t that kinda the same as just doubling the blocks found? More inflation for sure.

True, but if you consider the last block only, it’s similar to Bitcoin-NG’s model. My idea? Look at all public keys from mined blocks and pick multiple leaders. We could even weigh keys based on age to make it more interesting.

Why not just switch off the ASICs entirely? We’ve mined enough, right? We could just forge all the blocks from here on out. Isn’t that kinda like proof of stake? Like basing rewards on past mining?

Yeah, but then how do we ensure consensus when randomly selecting who forges? That sounds like a PoS issue, not PoW.

It’s kind of the same incentives. You still get rewards for blocks, whether it’s two blocks for one effort or just fewer blocks faster. From a security standpoint, this isn’t really changing much.

You can’t just 'turn ASICs off.' They’d just mine another coin. Plus, you can’t force miners to wait they’ll always find a way around rules.

I think you’re missing the economics of this. If you randomly select a forger, miners will still want to boost their capacity. The energy costs won't really drop.

This idea could shake up the mining game. ASICs could sit idle or shift to other coins. Pools would have to adapt their software too. Plus, what if a mined block's private key gets hacked?

Energy use is key to blockchain security. If you cut that cost to make it sustainable, it risks becoming like PoS, which could hurt decentralization.

Lopp wrote about Bitcoin confirmations and security risks. You need to consider energy costs to attack the network; they’re there to keep it safe.

Seriously? LTC and Doge are doing better long-term than BTC! Doge prints rewards non-stop and lowers inflation too. People just don’t see how good Doge is for P2P.

Bitcoin really was the breakthrough for digital banking. No one expected it to go this far a few years back. Back in the day, mining was super profitable.

Yes, the proposed algorithm could centralize things. If old keys can be bought or hacked, it changes the game. We need more clarity on how often old keys can be reused.

If forged blocks depend on public key value, it’s not really random. Miners could just hunt for 'lucky' keys beforehand. This doesn't really help sustainability.

How will forged blocks be selected? Who’s deciding that? You need to answer this for the whole idea to make sense.

It’s not rocket science, PoS has been tackling this for years. You could pull from the last mining rewards or some blockchain state to pick a forger easily.

PoW is about staking energy, which is valuable. It’s different from PoS where someone gets picked. Attacking requires real energy.

That’s kinda vague though. Who’s doing the selecting? Sounds suspiciously like PoS. If it depends on someone being chosen, it’s not PoW anymore.

Exactly! PoW’s strength is in its energy cost. Under the OP’s setup, forged blocks lose direct ties to hashrate, which undermines the whole system.