Relatedly, a precursor to the Bitcoin proof of work algorithm, Hashcash [0], was created to solve this same problem.

This feels like a cool modern iteration of it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Yeah, this gets reinvented every once in a while. I think Balaji’s earn.com was doing this for a while back around 2015/16

super interesting - did not know!