Blockchain-based storage protocol Arweave introduces Succinct Proofs of Random Access (SPoRA), a new consensus mechanism for the Arweave network based on the competition to find a chunk of the past data in a set of historical chunks inferred from the latest agreed-upon blockweave state.
To sum up, the consensus algorithm described in the post aims at two major goals:
1. Disincentivize miners from retrieving data on demand from the network. In other words, incentivize miners to store data as close to the mining machine as possible;
2. Reduce network's energy consumption.