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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07632 |
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Table of Contents:
- 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.