Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental method in decen- tralized digital networks for establishing consensus on a shared ledger. By requiring network participants to solve a mathematical puzzle, PoW maintains network integrity. However, PoW has raised environmental concerns due to its significant energy consumption. This paper introduces Proof-of-Encryption-Work (PoEW), a novel PoW consensus mechanism that repurposes computational power to address the challenge of encryption-based data compression. PoEW uses an ex- haustive key search as the PoW puzzle. Given a lengthy plaintext and a fixed ciphertext, the corresponding key is derived. Since the plain- text is much longer than both the key and the ciphertext, this process compresses the plaintext to the key. This data compression is computa- tionally intensive, while decompression is straightforward.

翻译：工作量证明（PoW）是去中心化数字网络中在共享账本上建立共识的基本方法。通过要求网络参与者解决数学难题，PoW 维护了网络完整性。然而，由于其巨大的能源消耗，PoW 已引发环境担忧。本文提出加密工作量证明（PoEW），这是一种新颖的 PoW 共识机制，它将计算能力重新用于解决基于加密的数据压缩挑战。PoEW 使用穷举密钥搜索作为 PoW 难题。给定一段长明文和一个固定密文，推导出对应的密钥。由于明文长度远大于密钥和密文，此过程将明文压缩为密钥。这种数据压缩在计算上是密集的，而解压缩则很简单。