The proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model is the mechanism to start the Bitcoin revolution (Bitcoin) In 2009, it was the model of choice behind many popular projects in the early days of the crypto ecosystem.

As time goes by, other consensus models such as Proof of Stake (PoS) have become more and more popular, especially due to the cost of running mining machines, the need to constantly update equipment, and environmental issues that have caused the PoW model to fall out of favor.

Therefore, projects that wish to adopt the proof-of-work model must be adjusted to align with broader market needs. This has led to the emergence of some projects that provide a more environmentally friendly and economically friendly approach to PoW, while also aiming to build Web 3.0.

Let’s take a look at some projects that allow people to contribute resources to protect the network and gain benefits in the process.

helium

Helium is a decentralized blockchain-driven network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It uses a global low-energy wireless “hot spot” network to broadcast data through radio waves and record it on its blockchain.

The network uses a new working algorithm called “Proof of Coverage” to verify whether the hotspot provides legal wireless coverage and whether the miners receive the platform’s local HNT token to help provide coverage for the network.

The Helium network achieved tremendous growth in 2021. There are currently more than 309,000 nodes in operation.

Recently, the Helium network expanded its functions by adding support for 5G wireless functions, including the launch of a new series of mining machines capable of transmitting 5G signals.

On October 26, Helium announced that it had Satellite TV company Dish Network, Making Dish the first major operator to join the Helium network and providing its subscribers with the opportunity to run Helium nodes in exchange for HNT tokens.

Soon after these developments, the price of HNT rose to a record high of $53.11 on November 9.

Kadena

Kadena (KDA) is a scalable PoW first-layer blockchain protocol. Due to the use of a woven chain, it claims to be able to process up to 480,000 transactions per second (TPS).

Unlike the top PoW cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Kadena also provides smart contract functions similar to those on Ethereum, and has its own smart contract programming language Pact.

Having smart contract capabilities means that the Kadena network can host decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) protocols, as well as many other professional projects from stablecoins to payment processors.

Some of the goals of the project are to solve the main problems that plague the Ethereum network, such as high transaction costs and network congestion, and it claims to provide consumers with marginal transaction fees. Introduce the “encrypted gas station” function When certain conditions are met, companies can create accounts to fund natural gas payments on behalf of their user base.

Kadena uses the Blake (2s-Kadena) algorithm as its consensus model, which requires native ASIC miners and cannot use GPU or CPU for mining.

Recently, KDA launched a token packaging version called wKDA, which can interact with all Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible networks and related DeFi protocols.

In the future, the team behind Kadena also plans to increase cross-chain support for other popular blockchain networks, including Terra, Polkadot, Celo and Cosmos.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro with Transaction view It shows that due to recent developments, the price of KDA has soared 1,280% from a low of US$2.05 on October 17 to a record high of US$28.44 on November 11.

Flux

Flux (FLUX) is a native GPU mining PoW protocol that focuses on a scalable decentralized cloud infrastructure for Web 3.0 applications.

According to the project, the Flux ecosystem consists of a set of decentralized computing services and blockchain-as-a-service solutions, which provide a A development environment similar to Amazon Web Services, And the FluxOS second layer operating system that can run “any enhanced dockerized application”.

The Flux network uses the ZelHash algorithm, which is a GPU mining implementation of Equihash 125,4, which can be mined through the Flux community pool or in various third-party pools created by teams supporting the Flux mining ecosystem.

The block generation time of the Flux network is 2 minutes, and the current block generation reward is 75 Flux, of which 50% is given to node operators and 50% is given to miners.

On November 9, the project introduced “light nodes”, allowing the use of light wallets to manage Flux nodes so that operators can start and monitor node metrics from any device that can run the FluxNodes application.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro with Transaction view It shows that since Apple Pay will be integrated with the Zelcore wallet of the Flux network on October 24, the price of FLUX has soared by 802%, from $0.33 to a record high of $2.96 on November 12.

Although the PoW consensus model is no longer the dominant model used by major projects in the crypto ecosystem, these three examples show that it can still provide a lot because the new platform is environmentally friendly and economically sustainable.

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