this idea has been gnawing away at my conscious for some time now. if I end up with some spare cycles I'll work on it.

proof of work may literally be the execution of a block of code instructions and some input,  to produce some output.

consensus is simple - other nodes completing exactly the same with a hash of input code block and output.

the first node to execute receives the reward.  alternatively output pipes are designed to accept output idea potently,  and multiple  nodes can receive the reward on a sliding scale.