Introducing Pow5: A New Proof-of-Work Algorithm for EarthBucks That Runs On a GPU, But Verifies On a CPU

Today I’m happy to announce, as promised, that I have transitioned the mine from the old proof-of-work algorithm (PoW algo), called Algo1627, to the new PoW algo, called Pow5.

The advantages of Pow5 are manifold:

• Pow5 runs on a GPU in the browser, but verifies on a CPU on the server, meaning that the separate PoW Validator service (which has a GPU on a server) is no longer necessary. This lowers costs and complexity of operating the mine substantially.
• Pow5 uses WebGPU, which makes it possible to run arbitrary computation, such as cryptographic hash functions.
• Pow5 uses Blake3 for hashing data, which allows it to run the full algorithm including the hash of the header on the GPU, making the number of iterations fundamentally superior.
• The fundamental architecture of Pow5 includes cryptographic hashing and matrix multiplication, and is forwards-compatible with additional computation specifically designed for GPUs. It is intended that Pow5 will be iterated to allow the EarthBucks PoW algo to be changed regularly.

The old algorithm, Algo1627, was useful as a proof-of-concept, but was simply too expensive to operate, and had to be replaced. I settled on Pow5 after a full week of experimenting with WebGPU-based algorithms.

Because the old algorithm used TensorFlow, which is a huge dependency, I’ve decided to archive the old code. If someone wishes to validate the old proofs-of-work, they can find the code in the main repo on GitHub at commit hash 9893feae.

The changes and improvements to the mining API are not yet finished. Expect more changes and announcements soon, all aimed at reducing the cost of operation to make sure EarthBucks is financially sustainable.

You can mine right now in your browser for free (with Pow5) at earthbucks.com/mine.