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Bitcoin uses proof of work to secure the network, Ripple uses a global consensus system and PPCoin uses proof of stake.

Are there any known alternatives to the above methods?

Fernando N.
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Maestro
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    in the ppc paper they talk about a 'proof of excellence' where all peers compete to solve a game. It is basically proof of work, buta better algorithm could score higher. – placeybordeaux Mar 20 '13 at 19:33
  • @David Perry. This is a subtly different question than what you've suggested as a duplicate. This person is asking if there exist alternative distributed synchronization algorithms. The other question asks if the proof-of-work system can prove secondarily-useful work. There is a clear difference. – Rooke Mar 21 '13 at 03:50
  • @Rooke fair enough, I'll re-open it. – David Perry Mar 21 '13 at 05:08
  • possible duplicate of [Is there a way to set up proof-of-work systems so it would be even more useful?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/331/is-there-a-way-to-set-up-proof-of-work-systems-so-it-would-be-even-more-useful) – Stephen Gornick Sep 28 '13 at 15:40

3 Answers3

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A really quick answer is this: The proof of work system is a solution to the distributed synchronization issue; in another guise it is called the Byzantine Generals' Problem. Thus, any solution to this problem is an acceptable alternative, however the proof-of-work solution is particularly suited to distributed systems.

You can read Satoshi Nakamoto's discussion of this here.

Rooke
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Another alternative is proof of burn.

Fernando N.
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I have been researching on blockchain for sometime now and some of them I found are a mix of some existing and some proposed.

  1. Proof-of-Stake
  2. Proof-of-Burn
  3. Proof-of-Capacity
  4. Proof-of-Activity
  5. Proof-of-Checkpoint

Source: https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-activity-proof-of-burn-proof-of-capacity/

trollster
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  • Link is dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055454/https://bytecoin.org/blog/proof-of-activity-proof-of-burn-proof-of-capacity/ – cp.engr Apr 22 '18 at 21:59