Author: Devrandom 2021-04-17 11:19:46
Published on: 2021-04-17T11:19:46+00:00
A Bitcoin developer named Erik Aronesty proposed an idea on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list regarding the transition from proof-of-work (POW) to proof-of-burn (POB). The proposal assumes a POB model that accurately reflects the investment in and development of ASICs for maintaining miner incentives. It also assumes that the resulting timing problem of how much burn is needed to keep blocks 10 minutes apart can be solved. The transition would begin with validating nodes requiring POB in addition to POW, which would gradually decrease the need for POW. Eventually, POB required would increase to 100% of the required work to mine. The proposal raises the question of whether a hard fork would be necessary, as the transition to another required proof could potentially be done in a back-compat way so that existing nodes not aware of the rules would continue to validate. A similar scheme using geometric mean chain weight/difficulty was posted years ago for a smooth transition.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T20:16:47.762325+00:00