Fairness in Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS): Evaluating Reward Distribution Across Performance Levels

Abstract: Blockchain consensus mechanisms must balance security, decentralization, and efficiency while ensuring fair participation. Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS) is a cooperative consensus mechanism designed to address the energy inefficiencies and centralization tendencies of traditional Proof of Work (PoW). Unlike PoW, where rewards disproportionately favor high-performance nodes, PoTS encourages collaboration by forming teams and distributing rewards more equitably among participants. In this study, we evaluate the fairness properties of PoTS by analyzing reward distribution under varying computational power distributions. Through extensive simulations, we compare equal-share allocation and proportional reward allocation, highlighting their impact on decentralization and participation. Our results demonstrate that PoTS significantly reduces reward disparity between high-performance and low-performance nodes, fostering a more inclusive ecosystem. Additionally, we observe that as team sizes increase, the influence of individual computational power is mitigated, allowing lower-performance nodes to contribute meaningfully. Moreover, our findings reveal that the marginal benefit of investing in extremely high-performance hardware diminishes, which discourages centralization and aligns incentives toward sustainable participation. We also discuss the economic implications of PoTS, particularly its potential to reshape blockchain mining strategies by balancing fairness with computational efficiency. These insights contribute to the broader discussion on blockchain fairness and provide a foundation for further research into cooperative consensus mechanisms.