I agree that pools are the biggest problem.
They logically result from the winner take all algo.
I postulate that in a theoretically ideal POW system, every single participant that contributes cycles/work towards securing the network would be rewarded in direct proportion to their contribution. ie, even if they only calculate 1 hash during a given block and do not match target difficulty.
How to achieve that? I have no idea. haha. But I'd like to see more discussion/brainpower/research on it.
I have worked on this,
PoCW, it is based on few tricks:
Trick 1: Miners not only generate nonce for block headers, they are also free to commit to Merkle root by generating nonce for it.
Trick 2: Miners do not include coinbase transaction in the Merkle tree they commit to. This way validating a Merkle path happens once and shares are being validated in microsecond scales to be at least partially difficult (good) compared to what is dictated by the target.
Trick 3: Coinbase transaction provides both proof for difficulty and reward distribution i.e. a coinbase consists of like thousands of wallet addresses and nonces that commit to the Merkle tree (coinbase excluded).
Many other details are also devised ,,,, Understanding that it is about a hard fork, I just decided to postpone implementation to a more complete package and a much stronger community support.
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First question: Is the above scenario ideal/desirable for maximizing distribution of work across non-colluding parties? Or the incentives are flawed somehow?
Followup question: What technical obstacles prevent it, and how might they be overcome? (assuming a brand-new system with no legacy code/chain).
First: It is absolutely a guaranteed secure decentralized schema because when you have tens of thousands of distinct almost anonymous human beings involved in solo mining bitcoin, there would be no practical chance for collusion or state control. Absolutely secure, no doubts.
Follow up: no technical obstacles, I just need more community support and contribution.