That's why all the "enterprise blockchain" stuff doesn't use POW. (These are technically "ledgers" not "blockchains" but people don't understand the difference anyway.)
But then you have nothing new. Hash chains are at least as old as a 1981 Lamport paper, and merkle trees (the data structure inside a blockchain block) were patented in 1979.
I'm not talking about hash chains. I'm talking about systems like Corda, Quorum, or Hyperledger that use BFT to provide mostly-trustless consensus without POW.
