Towards a low carbon proof-of-work blockchain
<|reference_start|>Towards a low carbon proof-of-work blockchain: Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains burn a lot of energy. Proof-of-work algorithms are expensive by design and often only serve to compute blockchains. In some sense, carbon-based and non-carbon based regional electric power is fungible. So the total carbon and non-carbon electric power mix plays a role. Thus, generally PoW algorithms have large CO$_2$ footprints solely for computing blockchains. A proof of technology is described towards replacing hashcash or other PoW methods with a lottery and proof-of-VM (PoVM) emulation. PoVM emulation is a form of PoW where an autonomous blockchain miner gets a lottery ticket in exchange for providing a VM (virtual Machine) for a specified period. These VMs get their jobs from a job queue. Managing and ensuring, by concensus, that autonomous PoVMs are properly configured and running as expected gives several gaps for a complete practical system. These gaps are discussed. Our system is similar to a number of other blockchain systems. We briefly survey these systems. This paper along with our proof of technology was done as a senior design project.<|reference_end|>
@article{gemajli2024towards,
    title={Towards a low carbon proof-of-work blockchain},
    author={Agron Gemajli, Shivam Patel, and Phillip G. Bradford},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.04729},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2404.04729},
    primaryClass={cs.CR}
}