A fundamental problem with proof-of-work (or any proof-of-energy system, really), is that they favour the existing unequal distribution of wealth. The people with the most access to the ability to do computing work, or the most energy, are the existing rich. Obviously, the billionaires of the world can easily afford access to vast computing power that ensures that they would be the ones that would gain most of the newly minted cryptocurrencies.
So, even with the end of fiat and all money is now crypto, lo and behold, the current billionaires are still the billionaires and nothing has really changed. Except maybe people are more dependent on energy, computing resources and access to the network to do something as trivial as buying something, giving the billionaires even more power to de-person anyone they don't want, by denying them access to these things that a person cannot produce by themselves.
Your proof-of-network might be an improvement on this but I'm not sure it really fixes the problem. How hard would it be for a billionaire to own millions of nodes on the network? It's simply a matter of devoting computing resources to running independent nodes instead of calculating hashes.
How hard would it be for a billionaire to own millions of nodes on the network?
It could be limited to IPs, IP ranges or even AS, so IP, IP range or whole AS with multiple nodes receive as much as single node in IP, IP range or AS. So there will be no any reason even to buy IP ranges or Autonomous systems, since it will not give billionaire any advantage over average regular user running node at home, because all his nodes will be accounted as one.
It could be limited to IPs, IP ranges or even AS, so IP, IP range or whole AS with multiple nodes receive as much as single node in IP, IP range or AS.
But this would now limit the ability of an average user to run a node at home. If me and my neighbour have the same ISP, we will likely be on the same subnet and thus function as only a single node. So one node is effectively redundant and will receive no reward (or the reward will be divided). On the other hand, people with control of the IP address allocation will have the ability to allocate themselves a node on every subnet. This likely favours those with control of the network infrastructure, i.e. tech companies who are in turn owned by billionaires. Not sure this has really made anything better.
If me and my neighbour have the same ISP, we will likely be on the same subnet and thus function as only a single node.
You will have half of propability to get reward than single user in network of same size.
Statistically, there will be some known ratio of number of regular crypto users per, say /24 range of regular provider. That could be taken in account and prevent bying of networks specifically to mine coins.
On the other hand, people with control of the IP address allocation will have the ability to allocate themselves a node on every subnet.
So, they will share probability of getting reward with regular users in this networks doing the job of network support.
This likely favours those with control of the network infrastructure, i.e. tech companies who are in turn owned by billionaires.
Even largest companies have a limited address space. And they can't utilise whole networks to run nodes. So, there will be nodes of regular users that will have same probability of getting reward as nodes installed by owners of networks. In any case this will give more uniform distribution of rewards for supporting network than proof-of work degenerate into.
Notice, that even proof-of-work crypto finally come to idea of minimg pools, where multiple people combine their computing power and share reward. Proof-of-network have this feature as basis out-of-the box.
Also, there could be many other ways to prevent "networking power concentration". It is just a testing ground for now, so nothing is settled yet.
All I said is just example that crypto have other ways to develop in something more interesting, than conventional proof-of-work crypto to avoid many drawbacks proof-of-work have.
A fundamental problem with proof-of-work (or any proof-of-energy system, really), is that they favour the existing unequal distribution of wealth. The people with the most access to the ability to do computing work, or the most energy, are the existing rich. Obviously, the billionaires of the world can easily afford access to vast computing power that ensures that they would be the ones that would gain most of the newly minted cryptocurrencies.
So, even with the end of fiat and all money is now crypto, lo and behold, the current billionaires are still the billionaires and nothing has really changed. Except maybe people are more dependent on energy, computing resources and access to the network to do something as trivial as buying something, giving the billionaires even more power to de-person anyone they don't want, by denying them access to these things that a person cannot produce by themselves.
Your proof-of-network might be an improvement on this but I'm not sure it really fixes the problem. How hard would it be for a billionaire to own millions of nodes on the network? It's simply a matter of devoting computing resources to running independent nodes instead of calculating hashes.
It could be limited to IPs, IP ranges or even AS, so IP, IP range or whole AS with multiple nodes receive as much as single node in IP, IP range or AS. So there will be no any reason even to buy IP ranges or Autonomous systems, since it will not give billionaire any advantage over average regular user running node at home, because all his nodes will be accounted as one.
But this would now limit the ability of an average user to run a node at home. If me and my neighbour have the same ISP, we will likely be on the same subnet and thus function as only a single node. So one node is effectively redundant and will receive no reward (or the reward will be divided). On the other hand, people with control of the IP address allocation will have the ability to allocate themselves a node on every subnet. This likely favours those with control of the network infrastructure, i.e. tech companies who are in turn owned by billionaires. Not sure this has really made anything better.
You will have half of propability to get reward than single user in network of same size.
Statistically, there will be some known ratio of number of regular crypto users per, say /24 range of regular provider. That could be taken in account and prevent bying of networks specifically to mine coins.
So, they will share probability of getting reward with regular users in this networks doing the job of network support.
Even largest companies have a limited address space. And they can't utilise whole networks to run nodes. So, there will be nodes of regular users that will have same probability of getting reward as nodes installed by owners of networks. In any case this will give more uniform distribution of rewards for supporting network than proof-of work degenerate into.
Notice, that even proof-of-work crypto finally come to idea of minimg pools, where multiple people combine their computing power and share reward. Proof-of-network have this feature as basis out-of-the box.
Also, there could be many other ways to prevent "networking power concentration". It is just a testing ground for now, so nothing is settled yet.
All I said is just example that crypto have other ways to develop in something more interesting, than conventional proof-of-work crypto to avoid many drawbacks proof-of-work have.