[Cryptography] Prime-based proof-of-work and Nashian cooperative mining (paper for comments)

[oovanes at midlincoln.com]

I’d like to share a draft paper that may be of interest to this list. It 
describes a proof-of-work blockchain where block creation is based on 
deterministic discovery of consecutive rational primes, rather than hash 
preimages.

In the protocol, each block contains the next unused prime
pn+1  together with factorizations for all integers between
pn and p n+1, plus a primality certificate for
pn+1.

Miners are rewarded both for composite factorizations and for 
discovering the next prime, leading to a cooperative incentive structure 
that can be analyzed in Nash-equilibrium terms.

The paper defines the ledger structure, wallet state (prime-indexed 
fractional ownership), the block validity rules, the proof-of-work 
mechanism, and a security model (fork resistance, Sybil considerations, 
and finality). I’d be grateful for feedback from the list—especially on 
the cryptographic and consensus aspects.

Draft PDF: https://midlincoln.com/pdfs/primenumberblockchain.pdf

Best regards,

Ovanes Oganisian