Green-PoW: An Energy-Efficient Blockchain Proof-of-Work Consensus Algorithm

Abstract

This paper opts to mitigate the energy-inefficiency of the Blockchain Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm by rationally repurposing the power spent during the mining process. The original PoW mining scheme is designed to consider one block at a time and assign a reward to the first place winner of a computation race. To reduce the mining-related energy consumption, we propose to compensate the computation effort of the runner(s)-up of a mining round, by granting them exclusivity of solving the upcoming block in the next round. This will considerably reduce the number of competing nodes in the next round and consequently, the consumed energy. Our proposed scheme divides time into epochs, where each comprises two mining rounds; in the first one, all network nodes can participate in the mining process, whereas in the second round only runners-up can take part. Thus, the overall mining energy consumption can be reduced to nearly 50%. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed scheme is the first to considerably improve the energy consumption of the original PoW algorithm. Our analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of our scheme in reducing energy consumption, the probability of fork occurrences, the level of mining centralization presented in the original PoW algorithm, and the effect of transaction censorship attack.

Research on key technologies and development of blockchain

“…But PoW suffers from waste of resources due to the consumption of computing power, and the transaction confirmation time of about 10 minutes cannot meet the needs of efficient business. In order to effectively alleviate the energy consumption problem of PoW algorithm, LaslaNoureddine et al [9] put forward the Green-PoW consensus algorithm, which can reduce the energy consumption of mining to about 50% by reusing the energy consumed in the mining process. MostefaKara et al [10] proposed CW-PoW algorithm, which achieved remarkable results in energy consumption and robustness against Sybil attacks by introducing multiple rounds of proof.…”

Enhanced Elman spike neural network fostered blockchain framework espoused intrusion detection for securing Internet of Things network

“…In this work, a modified PoW mechanism named Green PoW 25 is used for securing IoT system based on blockchain procedure. Green-PoW is an energy-efficient consensus algorithm that decreases the computation load nearly 50% compared with original bitcoin's PoW algorithm, without affecting the other properties of the system.…”

“…For a node, classification can be used for determining the difficulty of a given PoW. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Objective is to implement the security of nodes within the IoT network include the security and privacy of operations. However, security is a challenging task because huge count of devices creates the network and its limited computational capacities.…”

“…From the existing DL paradigms, [25][26][27][28][29][30] several major challenges are identified that are single point of fault, secrecy leak, insufficient training data, lower accuracy. As a result of the DL platform's transfer to IoT edge devices, the learning task operates directly on the edge devices without cloud server.…”

“…Moreover, ensuring the problems of scalability uses blockchain-based mechanism named as GPoW consensus algorithm. 25 Additionally, a CF algorithm is used for mitigating the excessive energy consumption. • Then the performance of the proposed EESNN-GPoW-CF method is analyzed using the evaluation metrics, such as overall accuracy, precision, recall, throughput, overhead, packet loss ratio, packet delivery ratio, computational time, and delay.…”