Bitcoin's decentralized and permissionless nature is its biggest advantage but also its biggest weakness: it's too easy to create fake nodes.
But I believe that a permissioned and decentralized network is also possible. For a node to enter the network, a 51% approval of validators already approved in the network is required.
Then we created a community on some social network or on this forum and created a kind of web of trust
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust.
Thus it will be possible to establish a decentralized network without energy waste. Humans are very good at identifying bots.
At the same time that it will be possible to enter the network with 51% approval, it will also be possible to ban nodes.
If anyone is interested in creating this mechanism please let us know.
1) Fake nodes are not a problem.
2) You prefer to have to receive permission to use the network rather than allow it to be permissionless....this would greatly weaken the idea of Bitcoin
3) And you would allow whoever is in the permission-giving 51% to decide the fate of everyone else who wants to be in the network.
4) PoW doesn't waste energy, it USES energy for a very important purpose. It also CAN use wasted energy, which is a huge benefit.
5) You think its a good thing to ban nodes....
Sounds like you just want a centralized altcoin that isn't useful.