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by unsignedinteger 3070 days ago
The answer is yes, since Satoshi's paper back in 2008 a whole subset of CS research has propped up just on consensus algorithms. Other alternatives are simply to switch to a PoS style of consensus, which without a doubt has it's own set of tradeoffs. Currently Ethereum is planning to switch to PoW/PoS system where the amount of computation on the PoW is drastically reduced from the current level of difficulty i.e. There essentially having a PoW/PoS model where the PoW is just like HashCash it's purpose isn't to do consensus but stop "spam".
1 comments

> The answer is yes, since Satoshi's paper back in 2008 a whole subset of CS research has propped up just on consensus algorithms.

That's been an active field of CS research for decades (it was an active field mentioned, though not explored in depth, in an introductory-level class I took in 1990), and (from Google Scholar) seems to have been hugely active starting about 4-5 years before Satoshi’s paper.

But I think the relevant point is that there has been progress since Satoshi, not that the progress is due to or solely in response to Satoshi.