Author: Cheng Wang 2019-12-09 09:47:49
Published on: 2019-12-09T09:47:49+00:00
Cheng Wang, the founder of Alephium, proposed a new type of algorithm called PoLW to reduce the energy consumption of Proof of Work (PoW) without sacrificing security. In PoLW, miners can give up part of the coinbase reward to get weight for the block hash they produce. The total cost of generating a new block would still be equal to maximal coinbase reward in equilibrium. Linear PoLW could reduce energy consumption by a factor close to 1/2 in equilibrium, while exponential PoLW could reduce energy consumption by an arbitrary factor in equilibrium. Cheng addressed two concerns raised by Runchao Han regarding double spending and transaction fees. To prevent miners from sacrificing too much coinbase reward, a dynamic upper bound would be set, related to the actual mining difficulty of the recent mining epoch. If the value of Bitcoin goes as comparable to gold, miners could be allowed to give up more rewards. To handle the issue with transaction fees, PoLW could remove the halving mechanism, as it is adaptive already. Cheng's work is based on solid math calculation and he is looking forward to feedback and discussions. His paper is available at https://github.com/alephium/research/raw/master/polw.pdf and it was inspired by a recent paper by Itay, Alexander, and Ittay.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T22:51:51.845280+00:00