On PoW alts: Proof of Stake, Proof of Activity, Proof of Burn, Proof of Capacity

[Ray P.]

Hey everybody!

I've just finished my article about Proof of Work alternatives and I'd like to share it with you and have a discussion.

The article comes in two parts and describes alternatives for PoW algo.

I've tried to analyze the following algos:

• Proof of Stake
• Proof of Activity
• Proof of Burn
• Proof of Capacity

Part 1: https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-stake-proof-of-work-comparison/
Part 2: https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-activity-proof-of-burn-proof-of-capacity/

A small quote from the first part

Proof of Work criticism

As we remember, the Proof of Work was born in the long past 1993, in the cryptographers' family; parents intended it to become the defender from DoS attacks and spam. However, it received an offer it could not refuse by some anonymous with Japanese accent: to become a basis for distributed timestamp server. The scheme seemed simple: network nodes "vote" for their version of transaction history by introducing their computational powers into calculating "rare" hashes. The version that gets the majority of votes is accepted by all nodes as the reference version.

Would be happy to hear your comments!

[Slimcoin Community]

I bump this olde article because I found it only today and I consider it far better written then a recent article about the same topic on Coindesk. Good work!

I was curious if Proof of Activity was ever implemented, it looks interesting. The other algorithms now have all been used for altcoins:

- Proof of Capacity: Burst
- Proof of Burn: Slimcoin and the defunct TGCoin (Third Generation Coin)
- Hybrid Proof of Work/Stake: Peercoin and a lot of clones
- Byzantine Generals: Bitshares, Lisk and other "DPOS" coins; Ethereum's planned "Casper" is based on a similar idea but uses an algorithm where the participants are not limited to a closed group like in DPOS.

There are two algorithms missing:

- Transactions as Proof of Stake (TAPOS): was never fully implemented (afaik) but parts of the concept are used in Bitshares and Nxt.
- Proof of Importance: Proof of Stake weighted by a transaction graph (NEM)

[d5000]

I've seen that these nice articles are not longer available at bytecoin.org . It's really a pity because they are among the best "short introductions" to alternatives to Proof of Work I have seen. Others are much more superficial - or already to long to be an "introduction".

If you are still around, OP: Publish the text again! It has almost not aged.

Ah, an addition to the last post: "Proof of Activity" (or the "Follow the Satoshi" algorithm) seems to be the base of the Cardano/Ada altcoin that has appeared some weeks ago (and claims to be the "first provably secure Proof of Stake algorithm").

[alani123]

Can still be found on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170416212233/https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-stake-proof-of-work-comparison
https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055454/https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-activity-proof-of-burn-proof-of-capacity

Loading slow, but will load eventually.

Interesting to see those unique concepts being implemented in new technologies throughout the crypto economy space.