New consensus mechanisms have been proposed as a means of securing cryptocurrencies whilst reducing energy cost, such as various forms of Proof of Stake and Proof of Space-Time. While many of these alternative mechanisms offer compelling guarantees, they generally require new security assumptions, which have not been stress-tested by live deployments at any adequate scale. Consequently, we still have relatively little empirical understanding of their safety. Completely changing the Bitcoin paradigm is likely to introduce new unforeseen problems. We believe that the major issues discussed above can be resolved by improving rather than eliminating Bitcoin’s fundamental security layer—Proof of Work. Instead of devising a new consensus architecture to fix these issues, it is sufficient to shift the economics of PoW. The financial cost imposed on miners need not be primarily composed of electricity. The situation can be significantly improved by reducing the operating expense (OPEX)—energy—as a major mining component. Then, by shifting the cost towards capital expense (CAPEX)—mining hardware—the dynamics of the mining ecosystem becomes much less dependent on electricity prices, and much less electricity is consumed as a whole.
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