> that there's no shortcut to doing the hard work Yes, and current proof-of-work schemes allow shortcuts to avoid doing at least the intruction-dispatch portio

> that there's no shortcut to doing the hard work Yes, and current proof-of-work schemes allow shortcuts to avoid doing at least the intruction-dispatch portion of said work, by using a GPU or ASIC that shares dispatch work across multiple proofs in parallel. > complexity I meant the latter type ("is difficult to understand or analyse") actually. That is to say, I suspect that trying to achieve the former will necessarily result in the latter, although it would of course be nice if it didn't.