Proof of Computational Work
kapsi.de
kapsi.de
And the follow-on "On Memory-Bound Functions for Fighting Spam" (which is based on the notion that "since memory access speeds vary across machines much less than do CPU speeds, memory-bound functions may behave more equitably than CPU-bound functions") is: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.85....
It is not novel. It has been discussed extensively in the context of email spam.