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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?

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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. Mar 20, 2013 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, 2013 at 3:50
  • @Rooke fair enough, I'll re-open it. Mar 21, 2013 at 5:08

3 Answers 3

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Another alternative is proof of burn.

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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.

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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/

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