  Blockchain technology is a breakthrough in changing the ways of business and
organization operations, in which the consensus problem is challenging with
practical constraints, such as computational power and consensus standard. In
this paper, a novel consensus mechanism named Proof-of-Prospect-Theory (PoPT)
is designed from the view of game theory, where the game prospect value is
considered as an important election criterion of the block-recorder. PoPT
portrays the popularity of a node in the network as an attribute, which is
constituted by the subjective sensibilities of nodes. Furthermore, the
performances of the PoPT and the willingness of ordinary nodes to participate
in the consensus are analyzed, exploring fairness, decentralization,
credibility, and the motivating ability of the consensus mechanism. Finally,
numerical simulations with optimization of the PoPT consensus mechanism are
demonstrated in the scenario of a smart grid system to illustrate the
effectiveness of the PoPT.
