Good Day Fellows,
1- Do you think it is feasible to design a hashcash proof of work for permissionless Blockchain constructions with less energy wastage, useful computation cycles and an increased transaction throughput ?
2-Is such a research direction relevant given today's plethora of proof of work alternatives? Thanks.
It seems the community is moving from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Ethereum already started its transition. Given that and what you said about "plethora of PoW alternatives", maybe it is better to explore something related to PoS improvements.
PoW hasn't said its last word yet and PoS is far from being perfect, especially in keeping the fundamental feature of decentralization in blockchains. PoW will remain but will definitely undergo several changes to overcome its main drawback: endless computational races for something, when found, is useless.
Hashcash may not be the way to go, in my own opinion. It does not address the main drawback of PoW and as per your assumption, consuming less energy means simplifying the mining problem, which in turn directly affects the overall security of the blockchain.
I think the main problem lies with the leaderless properties of performing the Hashcasch PoW computations, where either the longest or the heaviest chain rule directs the main chain to follow. Some research have attempted to find a solution with regards to such.
As of now, it seems the level of security offered by PoW especially regarding reverting transactions is unique (does require computation costs instead of simple vote of the majority), compared to other consensus protocols.
I do agree with the stacking centralization problem of PoS. Well, hopefully we get more interesting works published.
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