{"id":24406,"date":"2025-05-30T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/beyond-the-blockchain-useful-mining-and-the-proof%e2%80%91of%e2%80%91useful%e2%80%91work-concept\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T16:30:00","slug":"beyond-the-blockchain-useful-mining-and-the-proof%e2%80%91of%e2%80%91useful%e2%80%91work-concept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/beyond-the-blockchain-useful-mining-and-the-proof%e2%80%91of%e2%80%91useful%e2%80%91work-concept\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the blockchain: \u201cuseful\u201d mining and the Proof\u2011of\u2011Useful\u2011Work concept"},"content":{"rendered":"

As entire countries set an example<\/a> of efficient mining, ForkLog\u2019s editors wondered whether it is possible to go beyond the paradigm \u2014 to channel vast computing power for good, rather than confining the technology to hash calculation.<\/p>\n

Having studied information compiled by Web3 enthusiast Danil Ivanov on the \u201cuseful\u201d consensus mechanism Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW), we concluded this is the right direction of travel. Sergey Golubenko shares the findings.<\/p>\n

A useful user of the 1990s<\/h2>\n

In January 1997, the RC5-56 cryptographic challenge began on distributed.net. The task was to find an encryption key for a specific algorithm. Over eight months, a group of participants cracked 56-bit encryption. After that success, a 64-bit key was targeted and found five years later, in 2002.<\/p>\n

Alex Petrov, an expert in PoW mining and chip production and co-founder of HyperFusion, told ForkLog about his experience and the start of his career:<\/p>\n

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\u00abI took part in RC5-56 and even led a team that ranked near the top. Back then two people nudged me to dive into analysing the RC, MD5 and SHA algorithms. Alex Biryukov \u2014 through his 1998 research \u2014 and the creator of the equihash\/aragon2 algorithm Dmitry Khovratovich, who is still active today\u00bb<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In 1999 the distributed-computing platform SETI@home<\/span> was released. Built on the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s BOINC<\/span>, it let people join the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The installed software processed small chunks of radio-astronomy data. People donated idle PC resources to science \u2014 much like DePIN<\/a> applications today, only without financial incentives.<\/p>\n

\"Seti_home\"
Interface of the SETI@home software for the search for extraterrestrial civilisations. Source: Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2020 the project was put on hold after the closure of the Arecibo Observatory.<\/p>\n

Many programmes on BOINC helped scientists and researchers in astrophysics and in modelling three-dimensional dynamic maps of stellar streams.<\/p>\n

Riding the trend, universities released their own software. In 2000 Stanford launched protein-folding simulations to help in the fight against common diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Thousands of similar programmes were launched; many still run.<\/p>\n

Crypto-hope and the foundations of PoUW<\/h2>\n

Former IOHK employee and Ergo founder Alexander Chepurnoy<\/a> recalled the popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) computer networks in those years.<\/p>\n

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\u00abAt the turn of the 1990s and 2000s there was a P2P boom, and the first virtual currency for rewarding participants appeared after the 2001 launch of the file-sharing network Mojo Nation. However, the startup failed, partly due to poorly designed rewards\u00bb.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He added that problems usually lurk in the details. When it comes to tokens distributed for useful work, one must always balance supply and demand to avoid a death spiral.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2013 \u2014 bitcoin had existed for five years and Ethereum was two years away. The young blockchain industry brimmed with crypto-enthusiasm without a total fixation on profit.<\/p>\n

Gridcoin and Primecoin were the first crypto-startups to marry utility and monetisation. While the notion of PoUW was only approaching realisation, early protocols toyed with terminology. The former opted for Proof-of-Research; the latter for Proof-of-Work based on prime number search.<\/p>\n

Gridcoin rewarded participants in scientific computations. Initially the system ran on PoW, but by 2014 it had moved to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), while keeping incentives for participating in BOINC projects. Consensus relied on staking, with scientific work layered on top to determine rewards.<\/p>\n

Primecoin was the first experiment in which blockchain computation yielded scientific value. Its creator proposed abandoning classical hashing in favour of rare chains of prime numbers \u2014 Cunningham chains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That period brought a conceptual understanding of \u201cuseful\u201d work \u2014 long before the term Proof-of-Useful-Work appeared.<\/p>\n

In 2014 there were attempts to steer mining energy towards practical ends. One was Permacoin, where network participants engaged in distributed storage of valuable data. Correctness was checked via a Proof-of-Retrievability algorithm.<\/p>\n

The next project, CureCoin, launched the same year, took part in the Folding@home initiative, with a cryptocurrency serving as a bridge between a decentralised economy and scientific tasks.<\/p>\n

A clear formulation \u2014 and plenty of problems<\/h2>\n

The term PoUW was first used in 2017. A paper<\/a> \u2014 Proofs of Useful Work by Marshall Ball, Alon Rosen, Manuel Sabin and Pratik Gopalan \u2014 was expanded in 2021.<\/p>\n

The authors set the main goal: to design a PoW scheme in which computational resources are not wasted but applied to meaningful tasks beyond the blockchain. The key criteria are:<\/p>\n