Proof of Excellence in Cryptocurrency
I hope it’s not true, but I’m probably the only person writing about Proof of Excellence (PoE) consensus on the whole English-speaking internet right now. Actually, I’m not surprised because it is an unknown and undeveloped idea. The highest profile article I’ve found is from Vitalik Buterin in his early days, interviewing Sunny King one of the creators of the concept.
But since the original paper by Sunny King and Scott Nadal, nobody has taken interest, except Vitalik, probably because it is complex and there are too many easier fish to fry and perhaps everyone, like me, is just too busy figuring out the 3000 new blockchain/crypto projects.
Not giving up and forging ahead, in my previous Medium article, I laid out the value proposition, the problems and an implementation idea but no real solution for PoE. So deciding to look at previous work for guidance, I was led again to Sunny King and this time to the Primecoin (XPM) project. Primecoin is not PoE but is rather a multipurpose Proof of Work (PoW). To explain, PoW’s primary function is blockchain security. So the response to one of PoW’s main criticisms regarding energy consumption is that electricity is not wasted, it is used to create security. Valid, but the amount of power used has reached incredible proportions never envisioned by Nakamoto. As of early 2018 between 20 and 25 TeraWatts/year for bitcoin alone. This is a good article on the topic https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption.
Back to XPM, wouldn’t it be great if in addition to security, running the algorithm could also do something useful for society. XPM does this by finding chains of prime numbers, a computationally intense problem, the results of which are useful to a range of scientific research. Primecoin.io started in 2013 and XPM is currently #339 on Livecoinwatch.com, alive but not exactly killing the market. It appears to have only operated for 2 years and the idea of dual or multipurpose PoW has not caught on anywhere else. XPM did however have great success finding prime numbers in its short lifespan. http://primerecords.dk/Cunningham_Chain_records.htm#programs
It’s hard to analyze the reasons for success 3 years later but I’ll try:
1. Crypto mining already has an element of gaming that appeals to human competitiveness. The element of competition in XPM wasmagnified by the possibility of scientific discovery in addition to monetary reward.
2. Computing power. A quick estimate of XPM showed that its compute was equal to all the individual research projects I could document combined.
3. Drawing in people who would otherwise would have never participated in such a project.
Introducing a new complex, consensus model such as PoE will be difficult but perhaps the idea of a dual purpose PoW could be a stepping stone if the results from the primecoin project are an indicator.
