Cardano’s proof-of-useful-work [PoUW] Ofelimos consensus might act as a savior for Bitcoin, IOG founder Charles Hoskinson said in his latest video podcast.
Hoskinson spoke on a report published by the White House detailing climate and energy implications of crypto-assets in the United States. Among its recommendations was putting an end to all energy-intensive industries, including Bitcoin mining.
We predicted that this was gonna be a huge fight in the ecosystem happen which is why I have been pushing very hard for proof-of-useful-work because then your consensus algorthim does more than just secure your cryptocurrency…so it’s our recommendation that Bitcoin consider adopting it.
For those new, Ofelimos is a proof-of-useful-work consensus mechanism that was created to bring down the carbon footprint of proof-of-work chains, like Bitcoin and many other coins.
A recently introduced, PoUW protocol from Cardano has been proven to be secure, and its goal is to reduce the amount of energy utilized by proof-of-work chains down to a minimum.
In contrast, PoW-based blockchain protocols rely on the work performed by protocol participants, called miners. Security of the ledger is ensured when miners compete in solving computational problems to be eligible to produce a new block.
How Does Cardano’s Ofelimos Work?
Although this computational work secures the protocol it consumes tremendous power and resource usage.
According to one report, Bitcoin has an annualized energy expenditure at the same level as many small to medium countries.
On the other hand, Proof of useful work addresses the problem of energy efficiency by redirecting the computational effort required to maintain protocol security to solve complex real-world problems such as optimizing company logistics or event scheduling, for example.
One of the uphill tasks that PoUW faced is to resolve the following dilemma:
If the problems to be solved are truly useful [coming from the real world], a bad actor can hack the system to pose easily solvable [or already solved by the attacker] problems for instance.
However, Cardano’s founder assured that Ofelimos has been able to solve this dilemma.
Hoskinson believed that the authorities across the world have begun carbon scoring of crypto mining. He further recommends that it is time Bitcoin miners switch to the PoUW protocol in order to minimize their carbon footprint, and avoid the wrath of the regulators.