One thought - has there been anything on something like "Proof of Capability of Work"? ie "Yes, I have all this compute power potential, but I'm not using it".
Oh shit did I just back into what you mean by VDF? Basically Proof of Sitting Around? I'm gonna hit submit before talking myself in circles.
No, actually you didn't.
> has there been anything on something like "Proof of Capability of Work"? ie "Yes, I have all this compute power potential, but I'm not using it".
As far as I know, there has not. But I hope you are a physicist, because this idea is genius.
The key role played by counterfactuals in quantum mechanical systems might make it technically possible to prove potential to perform computation that is never performed.
I'm not an expert on this, but:
Practicality aside this is either still really wasteful (lot's of unused compute sitting around in some datacenter) or really susceptible to attacks (e.g. "proof of the capability to rent a lot of AWS servers for a few seconds - everybody can do that, and somebody will")
Attacks: that's exactly what you would need to build a tool for. You need to prove that you sit around, and not just promising to sit around. It's a tough problem! Proof of Not Work.