What about a simple, time based altcoin?

[QuietOne]

Mining would be silently done by the coin's client, but instead of, well, mining, it would simply be making sure transactions are valid and everyone else agrees on it. Not sure what algorithm to use, but the idea is this:

Mining ends up being an arms race. I think a better idea would be to reward those who keep the client running on a regular basis, with instead of mining, coins are awarded by lottery to one or more online, properly behaving clients, and all clients try to figure out who the random people should be together. This could be hard-coded to occur on a regular basis, such as once every 6 hours, new coins are rewarded. Or something. Not sure.

[herzmeister]

from Satoshi's paper:

"The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote."

[neo2040]

Sounds pretty much like Timekoin:

http://timekoin.org/

[psylence]

Timekoin has alot going for it, worth checking out

[ilic]

i've been running with TimeKoin for about a month now and in that time the network has more than tripled!

just run it on your mining rig as it doesnt use GPU/CPU power.