Launching a PoW chain is hard. The trust model is far less forgiving than PoS, where you start with initial token-holders running staking nodes. Making a new type of PoW protocol is even harder. As we get closer to launch, I want to share some of the considerations that go into this process.
Most discussions of launching PoW chains focus on basic game theory or hash power requirements. The reality is more complicated. Most chains are PoS these days. PoW launches are few and far between, mostly because they’re harder to pull off.
Recent history offers sobering lessons: Aleo discarded their pure zkPoW plans after a single entity was able to dominate a testnet through various selfish mining strategies. They ultimately switched to a hybrid proof-of-stake system. SiaCoin nearly imploded trying to make their launch fairer while still establishing a profitable business strategy.
Even Bitcoin wasn’t immune – the ASICBoost vulnerability was a protocol flaw in their PoW puzzle that gave Bitmain a structural advantage in mining that persisted for years. This could have had serious ramifications to the chain that, luckily, were overcome at the protocol level.
These problems highlight the requirements for launching a secure PoW chain:
The proof-of-work puzzle must be amortization-resistant. This is exponentially harder for novel PoW designs compared to easy hash-based puzzles. With zkPoW specifically, we need robust guarantees for our whole zkVM – ensuring only one valid computational transcript exists for each puzzle instance. Without this property, clever miners can gain unfair structural advantages that break the protocol’s security assumptions and lead to devastating security losses.
The network needs sufficient honest mining power at genesis to defend against early attacks. The threat isn’t theoretical – botnets performing selfish mining can permanently destabilize young PoW networks. Bitcoin survived its vulnerable e
📌 Making a New PoW Chain: The Hard Parts (India)
🏢 Zorp
📍 India
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