[bitcoin-dev] Proposal to reduce mining power bill

["Enrique Arizón Benito" <enrique.arizonbenito@gmail.com>]

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Hi all,

just new to the list and curious to know if next proposal (or similar) for
reducing mining-power consumption has already been discussed.

The objective is to reduce the power consumption required while keeping the
network safe and the miners "motivated" and cooperative to continue mining:

The global idea is to introduce the concept of "next-coinbase" for miners.
This will work something like as follow:

- Any miner submitting a block will submit the "next-coinbase" for any new
block mined by itself. (This address can be the same one or different from
the just mined block). The miner keeps the private key associated with the
"next-coinbase" secret.

- The consensus algorithm will add next checks:
 A hash from, for example, the just mined block and the previous one, will
have to match up to N bits for the next "next-coinbase" from the next block
to be valid.

 That means that for the next block only 1/2^N bitcoin addresses will be
accepted from the previously submitted "next-coinbase" list.

Since the last previous block hash can be considered random, miners know in
advance whether they will be able to participate or not in the next block
depending on the just submited "next-coinbase". And since the "punishment"
is distributed uniformely random to all miners no one has any advantage
over the other. But the global miner netwok will consume much less power.

A detail rest: New miners are not allowed in such scheme so next addition
is needed:

- A miner with no previous "next-coinbase" will need to first mine an
special block, "new-miner-block", that instead of normal transactions will
register the new miner and submit a "next-coinbase". This special block
will not be rewarded with new bitcoins. The only reward will be the
permission to mine in following blocks. No reward is applied so only new
miners wanting to "enter" the mining network are expected to create such
block.

Best Regards,

E. Arizón Benito

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