GeoBlockchain: Geolocation Based Consensus Against 51% Attacks
Franco Moloche-Garcia, Pedro Bustamante-Castro and Willy Ugarte
a
Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Lima, Peru
Keywords:
Blockchain, Consensus Algorithm, 51% Attacks, Geolocation, Mining Pools.
Abstract:
Currently, Blockchain technology has been involved in various areas such as medicine, environment, finance,
mining, etc., therefore, the rise of technology causes an increasing use among technology companies, devel-
opers and even malicious attackers. The latter, through 51% attacks, could have the ability to manipulate a
Blockchain network. The present proposal consists of a consensus algorithm for Blockchain networks based
on Proof-of-work (PoW) that, through the use of geolocation, aims to provide protection against 51% attacks.
With enough computational power on one of these Blockchain networks, an attacker could reverse transactions
and identification might be impossible. It is the mining pools, which together, could have the capacity to carry
out these attacks. Using geolocation, it is intended to minimize the probability of generating mining pools,
making their formation unfavorable. In our experiments, the algorithm reduces the probability of 51% attacks
by an average of 29% compared to PoW, providing a new layer of protection when generating consensus
between participating Blockchain nodes.
1 INTRODUCTION
Due to the high popularity of Blockchain and the rise
of its use due to various factors such as cryptocur-
rencies, this growth could represent a danger for this
technology since, as there are more interested in us-
ing and implementing it, there are also greater desires
to attack and violate it. For example, according to
Forbes
1
there are currently around 20,000 cryptocur-
rency projects and where there are around 295 million
users in total. If we consider this number of users, we
could confirm the great popularity of cryptocurrencies
today, but also the impact of being attacked. Since the
nodes are the ones that support the network, many of
them join in what are called mining pools.
From Figure 1, putting together 4 mining pools is
enough to meet the computational power needed to
carry out 51% attacks. It is something that should
be of concern, however, it is still believed that these
groups would not attack the blockchain since they
themselves would be harmed. Even so, it is a pos-
sibility for which there is no contingency. The use
of these mining pools leads to the problem of this re-
search: The 51% attack. Currently this type of attack
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7510-618X
1
“10 Best Crypto Exchanges Of 2022” - Forbes -
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/
best-crypto-exchanges/
Figure 1: Bitcoin mining pools
2
.
has not occurred, however, with the passage of time
and the growth of these mining pools, they could be
carried out with serious damage to cryptocurrencies
and other systems that use Blockchain.
A Blockchain is made up of blocks that are added
by mining them. Nodes can participate in the min-
ing process and only selected ones are used for val-
idation (Zheng et al., 2018). This mining process is
called Proof of Work (PoW) and it is the main cause
that could trigger the 51% attack. This attack consists
of several malicious nodes joining together so that be-
2
https://btc.com/stats/pool
GeoBlockchain: Geolocation Based Consensus Against 51 .
DOI: 10.5220/0011996600003467
In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2023) - Volume 1, pages 255-262
ISBN: 978-989-758-648-4; ISSN: 2184-4992
Copyright
c
2023 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
255
ing the majority they can attack the Blockchain. To
achieve this, these nodes together must exceed 50%
of the total number of nodes used by the Blockchain
in order to violate it. If one of these attacks were to
happen on, for example, a cryptocurrency such as Bit-
coin, fraud or money loss could be generated by dif-
ferent users within the network. Solving this type of
problem is complicated because the larger the mining
pools, the greater the probability that they will come
together to generate the attack. On the other hand,
simulating this type of attack is also complicated due
to the need to have several nodes available to be able
to attack the Blockchain, consuming a lot of compu-
tational and economic resources. The use of PoW as
a consensus algorithm has been an advantage in the
adoption of blockchain technology. However, we also
consider it a limitation as it is an energy-intensive so-
lution that promotes centralization. With the develop-
ment of this work we proposed a decentralized solu-
tion based on the use of geographic validations, which
generates a more efficient and secure system.
According to Satoshi Nakamoto in the original
Bitcoin paper: The system is secure as long as the
honest nodes collectively control more CPU power
than the attacking nodes (Nakamoto, 2009). There-
fore, with the current popularity of Blockchain, this
type of attack could be possible and harmful, es-
pecially in networks with few nodes. To make a
Blockchain network more resistant to this problem,
we have modified the PoW consensus algorithm to
add geographical restrictions. The project is limited
to the simulation of coordinates (longitude and lati-
tude) given an IP, due to the complexity involved in
implementing a technology such as Octant. The hash
rate represents the computational power that is used
in a blockchain for mining. Having more than 50% of
the hash rate in a blockchain allows its owner to carry
out dishonest actions. With the use of geographical
validations, it is possible to proportionally and impar-
tially discriminate said hash rate and its influence and
to increase the security and trust in the network, as
well as reducing the centralization of power.
The use of geographical validations can help to
create a more secure and trust blockchain network
by reducing the centralization of power. This vali-
dation process can help to ensure that no one entity
has control over the majority of the hash rate, and that
all users are able to participate in the network fairly.
Since this vulnerability (51% of attacks) could go un-
noticed, it is difficult to have a metric. For this project
we counted the ownership percentage of the last 100
blocks mined by dishonest nodes. This metric rep-
resents the distribution of power in the network at a
given time and can be used as a detection system for
these types of attacks.
Our main contributions are the following:
We have developed a consensus algorithm with
geographical validations on a GeoBlockchain
We have developed an unpredictable map gener-
ator of geographic zones for the restrictions and
validations of the GeoBlockchain.
We have proposed a metric for the comparison of
the probability of attacks of 51
This paper is organized as follows. Similar solu-
tions currently implemented in the literature will be
explained in Section 2. In Section 3, the technolo-
gies related to our proposal will be explained, such as:
Blockchain, consensus algorithm and 51% attacks.
Finally, Section 4 will detail the experiments and their
results. To conclude with Section 5
2 RELATED WORKS
Now, the different existing solutions using various
consensus mechanisms for the blockchain protocol
will be briefly discussed. It is worth mentioning that
to the best of our knowledge, none of the related
works use geographical validations and do not nec-
essarily seek to protect themselves from 51% attacks.
In (Nakamoto, 2009), part of the author’s proposal
is the called PoW algorithm, it is intended to be a
source of truth where only the largest chain will be the
chosen one. The blockchain is secure if honest nodes
have most of the participation (Yan, 2022). Also, the
protocol makes the attackers less favored if they have
enough power to support the chain and get more re-
wards. Instead, in our work we have mentioned that
this process is based on trusting potential attackers
and can lead to a 51% attack and we use geograph-
ical validation, restricting an attacker to be enough
distributed around the globe to achieve this attack.
Another related work is ReCon (Sybil-resistant
consensus) (Biryukov and Feher, 2020), a consensus
mechanism that takes external reputation ranking as
input. The consensus can tolerate larger threshold of
malicious nodes compared to another’s. The main dif-
ference with our work is that ReCon is aimed at pro-
tecting the blockchain from sybil attacks, while ours
seeks to add protection against 51% attacks. This type
of attack is known to require a significant number of
nodes in the network, regardless of the computational
power of the attacker. This proposal could be inte-
grated with the present project with the intention of
having a more protected network.
Proof-of-Activity is a fork-free hybrid consensus
algorithm (Liu et al., 2019). It is based on PoW and
256
(a) A example of blockchain from (Zheng et al., 2018).
(b) Taxonomy of consensus properties (Ferdous et al., 2021).
(c) Terahashes per second 7, day moving average. Proof of
the increase in energy cost in PoW from (Wendl et al., 2023).
Figure 2: Examples of blockchain and the taxonomy of consensus.
Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Initially a node can use PoW to
mine a block consisting of meta information, which is
then used to choose a set of validators via PoS (Fer-
dous et al., 2021). The algorithm is characterized by
protecting itself from selfish mining attacks and has a
fairer committee of validators. As with ReCon, this
proposal can be implemented with our work. How-
ever, our project is also indirectly protected from self-
ish mining attacks, as it could not be done without
most of the computing power on the network.
In (Xue et al., 2018), they propose Proof-of-
Contribution (PoC), a consensus algorithm that has
lower power consumption than PoW. This consen-
sus, in addition to rewarding the node that man-
aged to mine a block, also rewards the difficulty ex-
erted by the other miners who did not win the block.
Another variant is Delegated-Proof-of-Contribution
(DPoC) (Song et al., 2021), in which the main con-
tribution is the support of intellectual property. Un-
like these proposals, our project is not intended to re-
duce energy consumption directly. However, the fact
of blocking a portion of the miners leads to lower en-
ergy consumption indirectly.
3 MAIN CONTRIBUTION
3.1 Preliminary Concepts
In the blockchain protocol, the consensus algorithm
is involved, which is the main support to maintain
the correct chain. Specifically the proof-of-work al-
gorithm is involved in issues like mining pools and
51% attacks. Approaches adapted by other research
on these terms are presented below.
3.1.1 Blockchain
According to Z. Zheng et al. (Qiao et al., 2021),
blockchain is the key technology in the digitization
of cryptocurrency systems such as bitcoin. Within the
development of this technology, its consensus mecha-
nism and distributed storage technology are involved.
In addition, it provides an effective solution to trust
problems in open networks and the security of data
storage in centralized institutions. Figure 2a depicts
an example of blockchain (Zheng et al., 2018).
3.1.2 Consensus Algorithm
Figure 2b depicts the taxonomy of consensus proper-
ties (Ferdous et al., 2021).
Proof-of-Work (PoW): Being one of the first con-
sensus algorithms, its main operation lies in what is
defined as mining (Qiao et al., 2021). In order for a
node to add a block in this system, it must first solve
a puzzle that has a dynamic difficulty that depends
on the network computational power. The node that
manages to resolve and distribute the fastest gets a
reward. Bitcoin is credited with an environmental im-
pact whose annual emissions in 2021 are responsible
for around 19,000 future deaths (Truby et al., 2022).
Figure 2c depicts the quantity of Terahashes
per second to prove the increase in energy cost in
PoW (Wendl et al., 2023). Although an attack on
large blockchain networks such as Bitcoin has yet
to be orchestrated, the likelihood of one happen-
ing in the near future is increasingly high. This is
mainly due to the growth that blockchain is having
due to the arrival of Web3, decentralized applications
(dapps) and the growing interest in mining pools.
However, there are currently very small blockchain
applications that can be quickly compromised with
the 51% attack or immutability attack if the neces-
GeoBlockchain: Geolocation Based Consensus Against 51
257
Figure 3: Categorisation of attacks on identity-augmented
Proof-of-Stake systems from (Platt and McBurney, 2021).
sary security measures are not considered. Regional
blockchains are created to be able to create small de-
centralized networks according to the region where it
is located (Shrestha and Nam, 2019). The relationship
between regional blockchain networks and the 51%
attack are more likely, therefore, this research could
be perfectly suited to this type of blockchain today.
Proof-of-Stake (PoS): This algorithm, unlike PoW,
does not require mining, therefore, its environmental
impact is less. Its operation is to randomly choose a
node to validate the next block, to be eligible as a val-
idator it is necessary to deposit a number of coins in
the network (Qiao et al., 2021). The more coins are
deposited, the chances of being chosen increase, this
being its main disadvantage since it promotes cen-
tralization. Below is a diagram of vulnerabilities in
PoS. Figure 3 depicts the categorisation of attacks on
identity-augmented Proof-of-Stake systems (Platt and
McBurney, 2021).
3.1.3 Mining Pool
Blockchains have a degree of decentralization, how-
ever, it is possible that the nodes decide to join to-
gether to form what is known as a mining pool. This
is due to the fact that the rewards end up being dis-
tributed in the network, this favors nodes with lit-
tle computational capacity, increasing the profits they
could obtain. Unfortunately, this represents a secu-
rity risk since gathering enough computational power
makes it possible to perform dishonest or fraudulent
actions (Zheng et al., 2018).
3.1.4 51 % Attack
Computational Power: The hash rate is the num-
ber of hashes that a computer can calculate per sec-
Figure 4: Example of the double spending problem
from (Pinz
´
on and Rocha, 2016), a problem that can be done
through the 51%.
ond (Kausar et al., 2022). With a sufficient hash rate,
fraudulent attacks and actions can be carried out on
the network, such as 51% attacks. The only protection
you have against this “power” is to trust that some-
one who has this ability is honest, since, otherwise,
he would disadvantage himself (Nakamoto, 2009).
Accessibility: Although reaching sufficient com-
puting power for this type of attack is directly com-
plicated, it is possible to achieve it through other
such attacks such as: Sybil attacks, DNS attacks,
BGP hijacking and spatial partitioning, double spend-
ing attacks, Finney attacks, Selfish mining attacks,
etc (Kausar et al., 2022). Also, it opens the doors
to other attacks like DDoS. Figure 4 depicts an exam-
ple of the double spending problem from (Pinz
´
on and
Rocha, 2016).
3.2 Method
For the development of a consensus algorithm capable
of disfavoring the formation of mining pools, we pro-
posed a dynamic mining restriction in geographical
areas to the proof-of-work algorithm. Zones which
are randomly generated based on the hash of the pre-
vious block, this allows nodes to verify if an incoming
block comes from a node in a valid mining zone.
3.2.1 Generation of Mining Zones
Due to the need for each node in the network to have
access to a canvas with valid mining areas. It was
proposed to use a seed-based gradient noise random
number generator, since using a seed in this type of
method allows all nodes to generate the same can-
vas. This allows to generate a 2-dimensional canvas
258
in which the axes represent the longitude and latitude
of the planet. Using the hash of the previous block
as a seed, it is possible for any participant in the net-
work that wishes to mine to generate such a canvas
and verify if its location (longitude and latitude) is in
a valid mining area. If it is in a valid area, then the
mining process would continue; otherwise it would
be in standby mode.
In Algorithm 20, in the 1st and 2nd lines the con-
figuration for the generation of random zones is de-
clared. In the 3rd line, the seed is declared by adding
the characters of the hash of the previous block. In
the 4th line, an array is initialized with the dimen-
sions corresponding to the available longitudes and
latitudes (rounded). On line 5, the 2-dimensional ran-
dom number generator is initialized with the Open-
Data: Previous block hash
Result: Boolean matrix with valid mining
zones by longitude and latitude
1 noiseScale 0.03;
2 gap 0.2;
3 seed SumChars( prevHash);
4 canvas Matrix(180, 360);
5 Generator OpenSimplex(seed);
6 xo f f 0;
7 for x 0 to 360 do
8 yo f f 0;
9 for y 0 to 180 do
10 n Generator([xo f f , yo f f ]);
11 if n > gap then
12 canvas[y, x] True;
13 else
14 canvas[y, x] False;
15 end
16 yo f f yo f f +noiseScale;
17 end
18 xo f f xo f f +noiseScale;
19 end
20 return canvas;
Algorithm 1: Mining Zones Generator.
Figure 5: Canvas with blank valid mining areas generated
with 42 as a seed.
Simplex algorithm. In line 6 and 8 the offsets for
the generation of random numbers are initialized. Be-
tween lines 7 and 19 the longitudes and latitudes to be
evaluated are iterated. In line 10 the random number
n is generated based on the offsets. Between lines 11
and 15, if n is greater than the gap, True is assigned to
that zone, otherwise, False is assigned. In line 16 and
18 the offsets are increased respectively by the nois-
eScale. Finally, on line 20 the canvas is returned with
the valid mining regions set to True. For the develop-
ment of this mining zone generator, a gradient noise
function called OpenSimplex was used. Specifically
version 0.7.0 implemented in Rust. Up to 4 dimen-
sions are allowed, however only 2 are needed.
Figure 5 depicts a canvas with blank valid mining
areas generated with 42 as a seed. The use of a seed-
based random number generator was chosen to take
advantage of the hash of the previous blocks. How-
ever, it was also considered to generate gradient ran-
dom numbers, since mining zones will be more sim-
ilar to regions and give nodes more chances of being
inside one.
3.2.2 Consensus Algorithm
For the proposed consensus algorithm, it is taken into
account that it is capable of doing the following: gen-
erate unbiased mining zones, restrict mining in said
zones and validate that the nodes comply with the re-
strictions. On line 1 of our consensus algorithm, we
get g, which represents if a node is in a mining zone
(based on the previous block hash and the node’s IP).
In line 3, if you are not in a valid mining zone and
if you have not exceeded the tolerance limit in line 2,
the mining process is stopped. In Algorithm 9, from
lines 4 to 9, the traditional PoW algorithm is contin-
ued. The situation where a node tries to mine before
the tolerance time is not in scope. Furthermore, it is
not considered to reliably validate the location of a
node due to the complexity involved in developing it.
3.2.3 Smart Contracts
Additionally, the blockchain was configured to sup-
port smart contracts. This is possible thanks to the
fact that Substrate, the framework used, supports inte-
gration with this technology. Added Substrate Smart
Contracts module. This module is in charge of being
able to enable Smart Contracts in the Blockchain. For
this, the Substrate library called pallet-contracts had
to be added. Smart Contracts are developed using the
Ink! language. This Rust-based language allows you
to create Smart Contracts in a simplified way and us-
ing the advantages of Rust such as memory optimiza-
tion. For the validation of the blockchain, a Smart
GeoBlockchain: Geolocation Based Consensus Against 51
259
Data: Block info
Result: Nonce that solves the mining puzzle
1 g IsOnMiningZone(prevHash, IP);
2 if not g and currentTime < timestamp + tolerance then
3 return NULL
4 b SHA256HashFunction(txRoot,timestamp, prevHash, IP);
5 nonce 0;
6 while SHA256HashFunction (b, nonce) < targetDi f ficylty do
7 nonce nonce+1;
8 end
9 return nonce
Algorithm 2: Consensus algorithm for GeoBlockchain inpired by PoW from (Juriˇci´c et al., 2020).
Contract oriented to clinical records was developed.
In this Smart Contracts patients are stored along with
their medical records. Substrate has a tool to be able
to develop Smart Contracts called Contracts UI that
allows you to add the Smart Contract to a Blockchain
with the pallet-contracts module. This UI made it
easy for us to deploy the Smart Contract and test it
during development.
Once the blockchain is configured with the mod-
ified consensus algorithm, it is compiled using cargo
build command and the generated compilation is exe-
cuted. This compilation lifts the genesis block of the
blockchain, lifts the endpoints so that clients connect
to the blockchain and can consume data through RPC
API, and also enables the websocket that allows com-
munication with a telemetry server.
4 EXPERIMENTS
In this section we will discuss the experiments our
project has undergone, as well as what is needed to
replicate said experiments and a discussion of the re-
sults obtained after this process.
4.1 Experimental Protocol
To recreate the process of building, deploying, and
testing the blockchain used in our project, we start by
describing what it took to accomplish that task.
4.1.1 Development Environment
Being a blockchain, the development environment is
variable, 3 devices were used that ran Linux either
directly or through WSL2. The blockchain binary
weighs around 3 4 GB, however, a minimum of 16
GB of RAM was required for development.
Figure 6: Substrate architecture from Substrate.io.
4.1.2 Blockchain
The blockchain was developed based on the Sub-
strate SDK, a framework designed for the creation
of blockchains. Substrate has a template called
substrate-node-template which was used as the basis
for developing the blockchain.
Figure 6 depicts the substrate architecture from
Substrate.io. This default template has the PoS con-
sensus algorithm. The PoW consensus algorithm im-
plemented in substrate was modified to transform it
into the one proposed for GeoBlockchain. In addi-
tion, a library with OpenSimplex support in rust was
used for the generation of regions. The blockchain
was configured with the library sp-consensus-pow
and sc-consensus-pow from Substrate and updated to
the latest version to ensure compatibility with the
same framework and other libraries from Substrate
and Rust. The update to the latest version was nec-
essary because Substrate is a new framework which
does not have much documentation and the previ-
260
ous pre-release versions deprecate quickly. After the
configuration of the blockchain, a mining script was
added for the nodes. The mining algorithm invokes
the algorithm proposed in this research when calling
the worker’s submit method. This algorithm has been
added as one more library to order the logic that we
have from the independent blockchain to the proposed
algorithm. This library is implemented in the main
blockchain and is called every time the mining pro-
cess is carried out.
4.1.3 Testing Environment
Docker was used to test the blockchain, creating vir-
tual nodes simulating a computer. The containers can
be configured as it would be with a real computer in
such a way that each one can have assigned amount
of resources, IP address, etc. The use of containers
was necessary to be able to simulate a blockchain due
to lack of resources to be able to have several com-
puters and carry out a real simulation. After gener-
ating the blockchain binaries, an image was created
that was uploaded to different devices to simulate a
network. Substrate has a telemetry application where
connected nodes, blocks, etc. are displayed. When
orchestrating the attack in this application, it is shown
that the dishonest nodes are the ones that take the lead
in the blockchain, even propagating the blocks that
they are mining. Showing that the dishonest nodes are
the ones that have priority because they have greater
computational power than the honest ones. Thanks to
this, dishonest nodes have a greater chance of mining
the block belonging to a mining area. Honest nodes at
times also manage to propagate blocks, however, the
trend is the blocks of dishonest nodes.
4.1.4 Source Code
Our source code for building the blockchain is
publicly available at https://github.com/magpex13/
geoblockchain.
4.2 Results
Eight nodes were deployed for the orchestration of
the 51% attack. For this, 4 containers were used for
the honest nodes and 4 for the dishonest ones. To
simulate a 51% attack, the computational power of the
nodes was distributed 80% to the dishonest ones and
20% to the honest ones. For this, the percentage of
CPU per container was configured in such a way that
the dishonest ones have greater computational power.
Figure 7 depicts the percentage of the last 100
nodes that were mined by an attacker (PoW in blue
and ours in red). Considering that the probability that
Figure 7: Percentage of the last 100 nodes that were mined
by an attacker.
Table 1: Average of the last 100 blocks mined by dishonest
nodes.
Consensus
Percentage of blocks mined
by dishonest nodes
PoW 94.10%
GeoBlockchain PoW 64.70%
Difference 29.40%
a node mines a block in PoW depends on its compu-
tational power, for our experiment this situation was
conditioned 19.63% of the time. Since, generating
mining areas with a seed of 42 to 420, on average
that percentage of valid areas is obtained. In addi-
tion, the computational power of the attacking nodes
was set to 80%, while the remaining 20% went to the
honest nodes. The results shown in the Table 1 indi-
cate that, indeed, the probability of a 51% attack can
decrease depending on the different configurations of
the mining zones generator. On average, PoW had a
94.10% probability of attacks of 51%, compared to
ours, which obtained 64.7%. A difference of 29.40%.
As can be seen, the probability of a 51% attack on a
PoW blockchain is much higher.
4.3 Discussion
As presented above, the results of our experiments in-
dicate that the probability of an attack varies with dif-
ferent settings of our algorithm. In our opinion, this
is a very important aspect to take into account when
designing a blockchain. However, it is important to
keep in mind that in case no nodes are found in valid
mining zones (80.37% of the times) the block will be
mined by the one that managed to distribute it faster
after the tolerance time. Our proposal has been de-
signed to achieve a higher degree of security in the
network, since a malicious node would need to be able
to predict the area of a valid mine in advance, and be
able to deliver the block to the network faster than the
GeoBlockchain: Geolocation Based Consensus Against 51
261
other nodes. The probability of a successful attack is
proportional to the number of miners that are in the
same mining zone at the same time, since in our sys-
tem the mining zone is generated randomly. There-
fore, the probability of an attack is greater the greater
the number of miners in valid zones from which they
cannot be predicted. We propose to decrease the size
of the mining area to decrease the probability of an
attack, however we consider it important to keep in
mind that if the size of the mining areas is too small,
the block will take longer to be distributed.
5 CONCLUSION
We conclude that adding geographical validations to
the PoW algorithm can add a 51% layer of protec-
tion against attacks. Despite not prioritizing the most
optimal configurations, 29% protection was achieved
with our consensus algorithm compared to PoW us-
ing our metric of the average percentage of the last
100 blocks mined by attacking nodes.
We have analyzed the 51% attack on a blockchain
network and its possible countermeasures. The attack
is a serious problem in the world of cryptocurrencies,
as it allows the attacker to manipulate transactions and
even block them, which could lead to double spend-
ing. This shows how important it is to have protection
against this type of attack and the advantages that the
use of geographical validations offers. Considering
that the verification of locations was simulated due
to the complexity of its implementation, it is possible
to develop a system that, through a network, allows
knowing the geographical location of a node with so-
lutions such as Octant. A framework with which the
geographical position of a node can be determined
with great confidence, simply by measuring its la-
tency with reference points (Wong et al., 2007).
In a future work we will seek to implement a ge-
ographic location validator, since our consensus algo-
rithm continues with PoW as there are no valid nodes
in the mining zones, and try it with different kinds of
data such as healthcare data (Arroyo-Mari
˜
nos et al.,
2021) or Wood supply chain (Cueva-S
´
anchez et al.,
2020). With this validator it is possible to prioritize
the distance from a node to a mining area, which pro-
motes lower energy expenditure.
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