Kaspa Sticks with Proof-of-Work Amidst Industry Trend

Kaspa has chosen to stick with proof-of-work (PoW) despite the trend among other cryptocurrencies to move towards proof-of-stake (PoS). According to its founder, Yonatan Sompolinsky, PoW is the only consensus method that samples an honest majority of the network in real time. This means that it can confirm blocks roughly once every 100 milliseconds using a blockDAG structure.

The project's growth out of research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dates back to the GHOST protocol section of Ethereum's original white paper and continuing through the SPECTRE and PHANTOM research papers into the GHOSTDAG protocol Kaspa runs today. The mining algorithm used by Kaspa is called kHeavyHash, which combines matrix multiplication with two Keccak hash functions.

The decision to stick with PoW has been framed around a concept called Real-Time Decentralization (RTD), where Sompolinsky argues that proof-of-stake splits consensus into two separate steps: producing a block and earning the right to publish it. This is in contrast to PoW, which ties these two steps together as a single atomic act.