PoEW:Encryption as Consensus and Enabling Data Compression Services?

TL;DR

This paper proposes PoEW, a novel consensus mechanism that repurposes proof-of-work for encryption-based data compression, addressing energy concerns of traditional PoW and enabling efficient data processing.

Contribution

It introduces PoEW, a new PoW variant that uses exhaustive key search for data compression, combining consensus with encryption-based data reduction.

Findings

PoEW achieves data compression through exhaustive key search.

The process is computationally intensive for compression, but easy for decompression.

PoEW offers an alternative to energy-intensive traditional PoW mechanisms.

Abstract

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental method in decentralized digital networks for establishing consensus on a shared ledger. By requiring network participants to solve a mathematical puzzle, PoW maintains network integrity. However, PoW has raised environmental concerns due to its significant energy consumption. This paper introduces Proof-of-Encryption-Work (PoEW), a novel PoW consensus mechanism that repurposes computational power to address the challenge of encryption-based data compression. PoEW uses an exhaustive key search as the PoW puzzle. Given a lengthy plaintext and a fixed ciphertext, the corresponding key is derived. Since the plain-text is much longer than both the key and the ciphertext, this process compresses the plaintext to the key. This data compression is computationally intensive, while decompression is straightforward.