With the new Pow function of TOR the network has gained a lot and we have tor for a long time.

At the time it looked like some token crap was going to be introduced, but in the end it wasn't and it's a very elegant solution.

How does it work?

When you query a service behind tor you have to solve a small puzzle (proof of work) of between 5 milliseconds and 30 milliseconds for slower hardware. If your traffic to that service increases (DDoS) the proof of work increases its difficulty up to one minute, making such attacks unfeasible.

Special mention to Adam back who created the proof-of-work concept with HashCash that Satoshi used for Bitcoin and now used in Tor.

Cypherpunks do more for the world than all the politicians in history combined.