Proof of Space-Time replaces energy expenditure with storage commitment. Miners plot drives with precomputed data, then read from those plots to generate deadlines for each block. The lowest valid deadline forges the block.
The protocol has some specific mechanisms worth understanding. The handicap rule prevents any single miner from dominating consecutive blocks. Every fifth block is reserved for solo miners only. The 30-second grace window handles network propagation delays and makes private mining attacks impossible.
Some things worth discussing here:
- How plotting works and why it's computationally intensive
- What deadlines represent and how they're calculated
- Solo mining versus the share tier
- The handicap rule and whether it achieves its purpose
- Why a 51% attack isn't feasible in PoST
- How network time synchronizes without a central clock
- The economics of storage-based mining
- What happens after the primary emission phase ends
For further insights see the paper Proof of Space Time: A Secure Datachain Consensus Protocol at https://anne.media/proof-of-space-time-consensus.
If you're trying to understand the protocol at a deeper level, ask here. If you've been running annode and have observations about how it behaves, share them.