Introducing the PoW Validator: A New Service to Validate EarthBucks Proof-of-Work

Today I’m happy to introduce the PoW Validator, hosted at powvalidator.com. Although the website says “coming soon,” what can’t be seen is that the PoW Validator has an API to validate EarthBucks proof-of-work using GPUs in the cloud. Because web servers don’t have GPUs, it is extremely inefficient to validate proof-of-work on a mine’s web server. The PoW Validator solves this problem by providing an API to validate proof-of-work using GPUs in the cloud. All of my EarthBucks mining software will use the PoW Validator by default. Anyone will be able to host their own PoW Validator if they would prefer to validate proof-of-work themselves.

The Need for GPUs in the Cloud

As stated in the original blog post, EarthBucks uses GPUs for mining to ensure that ordinary people have a chance to mine on day one. However, this creates a complication for the verification of proof-of-work. Because the mining is performed on a GPU, verification must also be performed on a GPU, otherwise it would totally consume the CPU of whoever is doing the verification. The solution is to use GPUs in the cloud to validate proof-of-work. However, this is non-trivial, because most web servers don’t have GPUs, and it is complex to set up a GPU in the cloud. The PoW Validator solves this problem by providing an API to validate proof-of-work using GPUs in the cloud.

EarthBucks Software Architecture

The EarthBucks software architecture is modeled around a single horizontally scalable web app that orchestrates mining. This app, the mining software, runs in an ordinary web server. While ordinary consumer computers have GPUs, most web servers in the cloud do not. Instead, entirely different instances with GPUs, with totally different computing architectures and cost structures are used.

As such, I have decided to separate the proof-of-work validation, which requires a GPU, from all other operations of operating a mine. Running a mine will require a horizontally scalable web app, plus a PoW Validator. My apps will use one unified PoW Validator, but anyone can host their own PoW Validator if they prefer.

Conclusion

It took about two weeks or so to abstract the proof-of-work validation into a separate service and make it actually work on GPUs in the cloud. I am now integrating the PoW Validator back into the main EarthBucks mining software. The PoW Validator doesn’t make any noticeable difference to end users, but it is a critical step to ensure the blockchain is correctly validated. Right now, the PoW Validator is only used internally, but the API will be opened up and the software will be open-sourced in the near future. Stay tuned for more updates!