Proof of stake systems attempt to create red light - green light types of things with non-gameable attributes (eg collaborative random numbers). This can't be done with mining because mining is completely random - its not possible to know which miner will mine a block. If it were, it wouldn't be proof of work, but something else. What you describe sounds like proof of identity, which isn't possible in a decentralized adversarial environment. In fact, one of the primary achievements of the Proof of Work consensus mechanism is to work around the Sybil issue, where (like ZmnSCPxj mentioned) a single user can have many identities. 

There can be hybrid systems that use both proof of work and proof of stake, but my conclusion after having done a lot of research and thinking about it ([1], [2]) is that the security mostly boils down to the weakest piece of the hybrid system, and so its not very effective to have hybrid systems like you mentioned.

On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 10:43 AM Ruben Somsen via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
Hi Nathan,

That's a fair question, but note that we've already had a bunch of "green mining" related posts a few months ago, so I suspect you'll be able to find many criticisms to this idea in the following thread:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-May/018937.html

It also looks like you'll be able to find some related answers on Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/106308/decreasing-energy-consumption-of-bitcoins-pow-with-paired-mining-rounds

And generally speaking these types of discussions don't end up being very fruitful for bitcoin-dev, because these are the types of changes that are unlikely to ever be seriously considered for Bitcoin.

Cheers,
Ruben

On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 4:09 PM Nathan T Alexander via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
For purposes of conserving energy, couldn't each mining rig have some
non-gameable attribute which would be used to calculate if a block would
be accepted by that rig?

Don't the mining rigs have to be able to identify themselves to the
network somehow, in order to claim their block reward? Could their
bitcoin network ID be used as a non-gameable attribute?

Essentially a green light / red light system. In order for a block to be
accepted by the network, it must have all attributes of a successful
block today, and it must also have come from a rig that had a green light.

Perhaps hash some data from the last successful block, along with the
miners non-gameable attribute, and if it's below a certain number set by
algorithm, the miner gets a green light to race to produce a valid block.

Nathan Alexander

Arlington, TX

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