What is Proof of Useful Work?

Proof of Useful Work Explained

A consensus mechanism called Proof Of Useful Work (PoUW) was created to increase the effectiveness of blockchain technology and mining operations by directing resources that would otherwise be wasted toward resolving real-world issues.

The most widely used consensus in the blockchain sector is Proof of Work (POW) consensus because of its strong security and verification framework. But it wastes things by nature.

Miners throughout the world use a lot of electricity each year, which raises concerns about the environment and finances.

Flux’s proof-of-useful-work methodology addresses this restriction. Additionally, it uses hardware infrastructure to build a decentralized peer-to-peer network that can effectively address the problems facing the AI sector right now.

What is Flux?

Similar to AWS or Google Cloud, the Flux Web3 cloud is an open and decentralized development platform that provides blockchain-as-a-service and decentralized processing.

Flux has turned this ecosystem around. It uses a native Proof-of-Work (POW) token to provide incentives for hardware hosts, on-chain management, and malicious behavior prevention through hardware staking requirements.

The PoUW network, formerly known as ZelHash, relies on FluxCore to allow users to join their workstations. It is intended to be a vital component in closing the “infrastructure gap” by making use of idle hardware in residences, workplaces, and data centers, giving computational power to people who most require it.

Application of Proof of Useful Work

The current infrastructure must maximize decentralization while offering a dependable, secure, and scalable ecosystem to execute a PoUW consensus, which will secure blockchain mining networks while resolving rendering services, artificial intelligence, deepfake detection, and other computational lifting issues.

• Artificial Intelligence

The term intelligence refers to a machine’s ability to simulate or approximate human intelligence. It includes methods ranging from machine learning to deep learning and has applications in various domains, including academic research, medical, and weather forecasting.

To fulfill certain needs, data scientists, academic research teams, and other organizations are equipped with large computing resources. Deep learning models in enterprises currently take a long time to train and compute.

• Deepfake

AI algorithms have made it possible for us to produce clips with changed voices and even faces. However, there are several risks associated with this. Deepfake detection is a sensitive topic that requires careful consideration. The proof-of-useful-work aims to address and solve this problem by enhancing security.

Evidence of valuable effort makes access to the tools required to research, identify, and, most importantly, distinguish genuine faces and voices from deepfakes possible.

• Computer Graphics Rendering

The process by which a computer constructs an image pixel by pixel is called rendering. It even becomes necessary to apply unique effects to intricate designs. This calls for a massive amount of processing power, which frequently causes the entire process to lag.

The primary industries that use it are design visualization, video games, animated movies, simulators, television special effects, and architectural designs. Developers using decentralized rendering services can enjoy all the benefits of a render farm without the hefty upkeep, hardware, and software expenditures.

Environmental Impact of Proof of Useful Work

PoW functions somewhat like a betting mechanism: either you find a block and win a huge reward, or you don’t. Transaction finality is not guaranteed; it is probabilistic. There is always a potential that a longer chain will emerge and reverse a transaction that has been included in a mined block; however, the likelihood of this happening reduces with the inclusion of more blocks.

Unlike PoW, PoUW chooses the best provider that satisfies the service requirements, preventing pointless sprinting to claim a block reward. The providers receive the work according to each one’s hardware specs. Because of the significant payout volatility caused by the lottery effect of miner payouts, miners are encouraged to group together or create centrally directed pools.

This centralization issue significantly impacts the environment. According to the International Energy Agency, data centers account for 0.3% of worldwide CO2 emissions and use about 200 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, or almost 1% of the world’s total electricity demand.

Furthermore, it is costly to concentrate computing power in a single data center site. Because PoW transactions require a significant amount of energy, the transaction fee needs to be high enough to offset the actual cost.

Naturally, reducing the energy used for each transaction also reduces its security. In order to facilitate the PoUW consensus, which aims to secure transactions based on computational activities, Flux is now putting the infrastructure in place.