Empirical Evaluation and Scalability Analysis of Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS): Reward Fairness, Energy Efficiency, and System Stability
Naoki Yonezawa
TL;DR
The paper evaluates Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS) as a cooperative alternative to Proof of Work (PoW), focusing on reward fairness, energy efficiency, and system stability. Using large-scale simulations across diverse team sizes and conditions, PoTS shows markedly reduced reward centralization, near $1/N$ scaling of total active computation time, and robust performance with increasing team size. Key findings include a peak reward–performance correlation around 0.90 at intermediate team sizes and a dramatic decline in dominance by high-performance nodes under PoTS compared to PoW. These results suggest PoTS as a sustainable, fair, and scalable consensus mechanism that mitigates centralization risks while preserving security, with potential applicability to future blockchain systems and hybrid consensus designs.
Abstract
This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS) consensus algorithm, focusing on reward fairness, energy efficiency, system stability, and scalability. We conducted large-scale simulations comparing PoTS with conventional Proof of Work (PoW) across various team sizes and computational conditions. In PoW, the highest-performance node ranked first in all 100 trials, demonstrating extreme centralization. In contrast, PoTS reduced this dominance: the same node ranked first only 54 times, indicating fairer reward distribution. Statistical analysis showed that as team size increased, skewness and kurtosis of reward distributions decreased, confirming improved equity among participants. PoTS also demonstrated significant energy savings. The total active computation time followed a near $1/N$ scaling trend, reducing energy use by up to 64 times when team size was 64, while preserving consensus integrity. Repeated simulations showed stable reward distributions and system performance, affirming PoTS's robustness. Furthermore, the correlation between performance and reward peaked at 0.90 for team size 16, reflecting an optimal balance between fairness and meritocracy. Overall, PoTS offers a cooperative, energy-efficient alternative to PoW, mitigating centralization risks and promoting equitable participation. These findings validate PoTS as a sustainable and fair consensus mechanism suited for future blockchain systems.