Hey Tromp, are there any altcoins implementing Cuckoo yet?
No, there is no cryptocurrency using Cuckoo Cycle as proof of work.
Btw, in absolute performance, it runs much better on GPUs than on CPUs.
But I don't know which is better in terms of performance per watt.
To eliminate profitable mining, how about block rewards that are inversely proportional to chain difficulty? Only those who can mine at a (someone elses) loss will mine.
I don't like that, since I want a predictable distribution curve.
But I'd make two changes to Bitcoin's curve.
First, rewards should ramp up slowly, only peaking after a year or two, allowing the mining software to mature and become widespread.
Second, the rewards should converge to some constant greater than zero;
making the currency non-deflationary.
You cannot avoid losing coins due to bugs, misconfiguration, typos, loss of private keys, stupidity, etc.
If we assume a yearly loss rate of 1%, then a limit reward of X per year results in an effective soft-cap of 100X, so it's still not really inflationary.