Title: Proof-of-experience: empowering proof-of-work protocol with miner previous work
Authors: Samuel Masseport; Benoît Darties; Rodolphe Giroudeau; Jorick Lartigau
Addresses: Pikcio SAS, Montpellier, France; LIRMM, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France ' LIRMM, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France ' LIRMM, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France ' Pikcio SAS, Montpellier, France
Abstract: This paper proposes a substantial amendment to the existing Bitcoin consensus by using the wasted computation to adjust the difficulty of each miner that provided computation effort overtime. Therefore, any time a miner justifies its work toward the consensus and hence the network, without reaching the solution, then its difficulty will decrease accordingly for the next blocks. The impact of this adjustment is three-fold: 1) it allows to 'recycle' part of the energy previously spent in the computation of a previous block, which makes the system less energy consuming as a whole; 2) it also reduces the calculation time of a block and thus speeds up the validation of transactions; 3) it increases the loyalty of the actors by favouring the old miners who have been investing in the system for a long time, compared to a new entrant with a high computing power, who would monopolise all the rewards otherwise.
Keywords: Bitcoin; consensus; proof-of-experience; energy.
International Journal of Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, 2023 Vol.4 No.2, pp.123 - 143
Received: 17 Nov 2021
Accepted: 10 Jul 2022
Published online: 08 Aug 2023 *