Author: Erik Aronesty 2021-04-16 21:47:44
Published on: 2021-04-16T21:47:44+00:00
A proposal was put forth on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list by Erik Aronesty to transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-burn (PoB) system. The proposal assumes that there exists a PoB that accurately models the investment and development of ASICs to maintain miner incentive, and that everyone unanimously loves this idea. The transition would begin with validating nodes requiring PoB in addition to PoW (soft fork), which would slowly drop the cost of PoW for miners. On a predefined schedule, PoB required would be increased to 100% of the "required work" to mine, effectively transitioning to a PoB system. A hard fork would not be necessary as the proposal offers an alternative required proof such as quantum PoW or PoB in a back-compatible way. However, Jeremy expressed concern that without hard deprecating PoW, all old miners would become "toxic waste." Additionally, one miner turning on an S9 and ramping up the difficulty for everyone else could pose a problem. It was suggested that a 99% reduction in PoW would be more than enough.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T20:15:50.874699+00:00