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Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism where nodes spend computing resources and earn rewards in return for spending these resources. This incentive system has caused power to be significantly biased towards a…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-09-04 Yujin Kwon , Jian Liu , Minjeong Kim , Dawn Song , Yongdae Kim

Bitcoin is the first of its kind, a truly decentralized and anonymous cryptocurrency. To realize it, it has developed blockchain technology using the concept of `Proof of Work' (PoW). The miners, nodes responsible for writing transaction…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Yash Chaurasia , Visvesh Subramanian , Sujit Gujar

An enormous amount of energy is wasted in Proofof-Work (PoW) mechanisms adopted by popular blockchain applications (e.g., PoW-based cryptocurrencies), because miners must conduct a large amount of computation. Owing to this, one serious…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-01-14 Changhao Chenli , Boyang Li , Yiyu Shi , Taeho Jung

The security and decentralization of Proof-of-Work (PoW) have been well-tested in existing blockchain systems. However, its tremendous energy waste has raised concerns about sustainability. Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW) aims to redirect the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Weihang Cao , Mustafa Doger , Sennur Ulukus

A blockchain is a decentralized ledger where all transactions are recorded. For having a reliable blockchain and double-spending prevention, we need a decentralized consensus and agreement on a blockchain. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work (PoW).…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-05-06 Siamak Solat

Bitcoin is the most secure blockchain in the world, supported by the immense hash power of its Proof-of-Work miners, but consumes huge amount of energy. Proof-of-Stake chains are energy-efficient, have fast finality and accountability, but…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-01-21 Ertem Nusret Tas , David Tse , Fisher Yu , Sreeram Kannan

Most concurrent blockchain systems rely heavily on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanisms for decentralized consensus and security assurance. However, the substantial energy expenditure stemming from computationally…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Zishuo Zhao , Zhixuan Fang , Xuechao Wang , Xi Chen , Hongxu Su , Haibo Xiao , Yuan Zhou

While cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications continue to gain popularity, their energy cost is evidently becoming unsustainable. In most instances, the main cost comes from the required amount of energy for the Proof-of-Work, and this…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-08-20 Philippe Jacquet , Bernard Mans

We argue that the current POW based consensus algorithm of the Bitcoin network suffers from a fundamental economic discrepancy between the real world transaction (txn) costs incurred by miners and the wealth that is being transacted. Put…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2024-04-24 Valdemar Melicher

Bitcoin is the first fully-decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol to achieve a high level of security, but at the expense of poor throughput and latency. Scaling the performance of Bitcoin has a been a major recent direction of…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-02-20 Lei Yang , Xuechao Wang , Vivek Bagaria , Gerui Wang , Mohammad Alizadeh , David Tse , Giulia Fanti , Pramod Viswanath

Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains have emerged as a robust and effective consensus mechanism in open environments, leading to widespread deployment with numerous cryptocurrency platforms and substantial investments. However, the commonly…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-05-15 Andrea Merlina , Thiago Garrett , Roman Vitenberg

We revisit the longstanding open problem of implementing Nakamoto's proof-of-work (PoW) consensus based on a real-world computational task $T(x)$ (as opposed to artificial random hashing), in a truly permissionless setting where the miner…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-11-14 Ilan Komargodski , Omri Weinstein

Although proof of work (PoW) consensus dominates the current blockchain-based systems mostly, it has always been criticized for the uneconomic brute-force calculation. As alternatives, energy-conservation and energy-recycling mechanisms…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Shengling Wang , Lina Shi , Hongwei Shi , Yifang Zhang , Qin Hu , Xiuzhen Cheng

This paper introduces Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS), a novel consensus algorithm designed to address the significant energy inefficiencies inherent in traditional Proof of Work (PoW) systems. PoTS shifts the consensus mechanism from an…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Naoki Yonezawa

A key component of security in decentralized blockchains is proof of opportunity cost among block producers. In the case of proof-of-work (PoW), currently used by the most prominent systems, the cost is due to spent computation. In this…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-12-08 George Bissias , Rainer Böhme , David Thibodeau , Brian N. Levine

Blockchains rely on a consensus among participants to achieve decentralization and security. However, reaching consensus in an online, digital world where identities are not tied to physical users is a challenging problem. Proof-of-work…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-11-16 Hjalmar Turesson , Henry M. Kim , Marek Laskowski , Alexandra Roatis

In a blockchain system, consensus protocol as an incentive and security mechanism, is to ensure the participants to build the block honestly and effectively. There are different consensus protocols for blockchain, like Proof of work (PoW),…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Zhongli Dong , Young Choon Lee , Albert Y. Zomaya

The energy sustainability of blockchains, whose consensus protocol rests on the Proof-of-Work, nourishes a heated debate. The underlying issue lies in a highly energy-consuming process, defined as mining, required to validate crypto-asset…

The high electricity consumption of cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithms has raised serious environmental concerns due to its association with carbon emissions and strain on energy grids. There has been…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Elitsa Pankovska , Ashish Rajendra Sai , Harald Vranken , Alan Ransil

Permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin have long been criticized for their high computational and storage overhead. Unfortunately, while a number of proposals address the energy consumption of existing Proof-of-Work deployments, little…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-07-01 Alessandro Sforzin , Matteo Maso , Claudio Soriente , Ghassan Karame