Cool idea and good write-up. What you are really describing is scheduled leader election. Once miners join a list with UTXOs and you weight by size/age, you are in Proof-of-Stake territory. That is fine, but the security model changes a lot. The roster must be derived only from finalized chain state. If registrations in the latest blocks change the list, different nodes will pick different leaders after a reorg and you get permanent forks. Freeze the participant set per epoch and only let it update next epoch. If the next leader can influence the nonce that seeds your lottery, they can grind it. Use an unbiased beacon (VRF outputs committed in the prior epoch, maybe mixed with a VDF) so no single leader can skew selection. Scheduled leaders can be knocked offline or censored. Your placeholder trick helps, but an async network will still see competing blocks. You need a fork-choice rule (e.g., chain density/longest-chain variant) and a fallback like k leaders per slot. Weighting by coin size/age encourages large holders and list-spamming. Require bonded stake with lockup, minimum duration, and define penalties for equivocation. Without slashing, scheduled leaders can publish conflicting blocks at no cost. Excluding placeholders from difficulty adjustment invites timing games. Define how timestamps, difficulty, and placeholders interact so nobody can stretch or compress epochs. A central list operator cannot exist. Make the list, weighting, and randomness fully verifiable from chain data, or miners will just delegate to a coordinator again. If your goal is turn-based cooperation, look at slot/epoch designs from Ouroboros/Algorand/SnowWhite and borrow: stake registration epochs, VRF leader election, fork-choice, and slashing for double blocks. If you want to reduce PoW pool centralization without changing security assumptions, p2pool and Stratum v2 job negotiation are the boring, proven levers.
Cool idea and good write-up. What you are really describing is scheduled leader election. Once miners join a list with UTXOs and you weight by size/age, you are in Proof-of-Stake territory. That is fine, but the security model changes a lot. The roster must be derived only from finalized chain state. If registrations in the latest blocks change the list, different nodes will pick different leaders after a reorg and you get permanent forks. Freeze the participant set per epoch and only let it update next epoch. If the next leader can influence the nonce that seeds your lottery, they can grind it. Use an unbiased beacon (VRF outputs committed in the prior epoch, maybe mixed with a VDF) so no single leader can skew selection. Scheduled leaders can be knocked offline or censored. Your placeholder trick helps, but an async network will still see competing blocks. You need a fork-choice rule (e.g., chain density/longest-chain variant) and a fallback like k leaders per slot. Weighting by coin size/age encourages large holders and list-spamming. Require bonded stake with lockup, minimum duration, and define penalties for equivocation. Without slashing, scheduled leaders can publish conflicting blocks at no cost. Excluding placeholders from difficulty adjustment invites timing games. Define how timestamps, difficulty, and placeholders interact so nobody can stretch or compress epochs. A central list operator cannot exist. Make the list, weighting, and randomness fully verifiable from chain data, or miners will just delegate to a coordinator again. If your goal is turn-based cooperation, look at slot/epoch designs from Ouroboros/Algorand/SnowWhite and borrow: stake registration epochs, VRF leader election, fork-choice, and slashing for double blocks. If you want to reduce PoW pool centralization without changing security assumptions, p2pool and Stratum v2 job negotiation are the boring, proven levers.

Cool idea and good write-up. What you are really describing is scheduled leader election. Once miners join a list with UTXOs and you weight by size/age, you are in Proof-of-Stake territory. That is fine, but the security model changes a lot. The roster must be derived only from finalized chain state. If registrations in the latest blocks change the list, different nodes will pick different leaders after a reorg and you get permanent forks. Freeze the participant set per epoch and only let it update next epoch. If the next leader can influence the nonce that seeds your lottery, they can grind it. Use an unbiased beacon (VRF outputs committed in the prior epoch, maybe mixed with a VDF) so no single leader can skew selection. Scheduled leaders can be knocked offline or censored. Your placeholder trick helps, but an async network will still see competing blocks. You need a fork-choice rule (e.g., chain density/longest-chain variant) and a fallback like k leaders per slot. Weighting by coin size/age encourages large holders and list-spamming. Require bonded stake with lockup, minimum duration, and define penalties for equivocation. Without slashing, scheduled leaders can publish conflicting blocks at no cost. Excluding placeholders from difficulty adjustment invites timing games. Define how timestamps, difficulty, and placeholders interact so nobody can stretch or compress epochs. A central list operator cannot exist. Make the list, weighting, and randomness fully verifiable from chain data, or miners will just delegate to a coordinator again. If your goal is turn-based cooperation, look at slot/epoch designs from Ouroboros/Algorand/SnowWhite and borrow: stake registration epochs, VRF leader election, fork-choice, and slashing for double blocks. If you want to reduce PoW pool centralization without changing security assumptions, p2pool and Stratum v2 job negotiation are the boring, proven levers.

Cool idea and good write-up. What you are really describing is scheduled leader election. Once miners join a list with UTXOs and you weight by size/age, you are in Proof-of-Stake territory. That is fine, but the security model changes a lot. The roster must be derived only from finalized chain state. If registrations in the latest blocks change the list, different nodes will pick different leaders after a reorg and you get permanent forks. Freeze the participant set per epoch and only let it update next epoch. If the next leader can influence the nonce that seeds your lottery, they can grind it. Use an unbiased beacon (VRF outputs committed in the prior epoch, maybe mixed with a VDF) so no single leader can skew selection. Scheduled leaders can be knocked offline or censored. Your placeholder trick helps, but an async network will still see competing blocks. You need a fork-choice rule (e.g., chain density/longest-chain variant) and a fallback like k leaders per slot. Weighting by coin size/age encourages large holders and list-spamming. Require bonded stake with lockup, minimum duration, and define penalties for equivocation. Without slashing, scheduled leaders can publish conflicting blocks at no cost. Excluding placeholders from difficulty adjustment invites timing games. Define how timestamps, difficulty, and placeholders interact so nobody can stretch or compress epochs. A central list operator cannot exist. Make the list, weighting, and randomness fully verifiable from chain data, or miners will just delegate to a coordinator again. If your goal is turn-based cooperation, look at slot/epoch designs from Ouroboros/Algorand/SnowWhite and borrow: stake registration epochs, VRF leader election, fork-choice, and slashing for double blocks. If you want to reduce PoW pool centralization without changing security assumptions, p2pool and Stratum v2 job negotiation are the boring, proven levers.