What is Solana's fair mining project Ore? Why did the founder suddenly call it quits?

What is the mining project Ore that emerged from the Solana hackathon at the beginning of this month? It gained a lot of attention within two weeks of its launch, but why did the founder Hardhat Chad suddenly announce yesterday that the project will be put on hold awaiting the development of v2? What impact does this have on users?

Background: Ore Allows Fair Mining for Everyone

Ore is an experimental project that utilizes a unique proof-of-work mechanism, enabling anyone to mine on Solana using any device - be it a tablet, mobile phone, or home computer - and earn ORE tokens.

Issue Ore Aims to Solve: High Mining Barrier

Currently, anyone looking to participate in cryptocurrency proof-of-work mining typically requires significant upfront capital investment and advanced hardware setup knowledge. This often excludes many potential miners, ultimately compromising network security and token distribution.

Ore claims to address this mining barrier issue through a novel proof-of-work algorithm. This algorithm allows users to mine on any device without the need for expensive hardware or joining mining pools, ensuring a share of rewards.

Ore Design Concept: Customized Mining Difficulty

Unlike Bitcoin mining where all miners collectively guess the next block's hash value, Ore assigns customized computational challenges to each miner to achieve the goal of "inclusive mining for everyone."

Ore ensures that everyone can participate in mining and receive rewards. It employs a non-exclusive reward mining protocol, meaning if one miner solves their challenge, it does not prevent another miner from winning. Ore does not pit every miner against each other in a winner-takes-all competition but provides each miner with a personalized computational challenge. Additionally, since miners on the Ore network cannot be audited, it ensures that everyone can join.

Ore's core idea is to ensure that "all participants can mine and earn rewards." However, the issue of reward value disparity is another feasibility concern.

While over time miners with better hardware tend to receive more rewards, Ore's ideal design is for everyone to be able to mine successfully using devices like laptops or phones.

Ore Token Distribution: Unlimited Linear Unlocking

Regardless of the number of active miners on the Ore network, the network will maintain a linear supply rate of approximately 1 ORE token released per minute with no total supply limit.

According to the official website, ORE tokens are fairly introduced. There is no team allocation or pre-mined supply of ORE tokens, ensuring a level playing field for everyone to compete in mining, with user participation in mining starting from April 2.

Ore Attracts a Large User Base: Impact on Solana Network Performance

The launch of Ore has attracted many users to join, but it has also led to malicious competition where some miners do not receive more rewards, exacerbating congestion and transaction failures on the Solana network.

Recent congestion on the Solana network is attributed not only to design issues in the network's underlying technology but also to the introduction of meme coins and Ore at the application level.

Recommended Reading: Why are transactions on Solana frequently failing and congested recently?
Recommended for its technical explanation from the perspective of Solana's underlying network architecture on the reasons for recent network congestion and transaction failures, correlating with meme coins and Ore at the application layer, providing readers with a better understanding of the ecosystem's current state.

Founder Announces Temporary Suspension of Ore Mining

Ore, which garnered significant attention since its launch two weeks ago, has been announced for temporary suspension of operations by its founder, Hardhat Chad.

Ore Mining Suspended Pending v2 Optimization

The mining mechanism on the Ore network is currently suspended. Chad stated that the current design has several issues that need addressing, and he plans to spend a few weeks studying, assembling a team, and relaunching v2:

• The existing code design is flawed, resulting in providing some miners with an unfair advantage.
• There is currently no structural incentive for holding ORE tokens; ideally, miners holding ORE tokens should have an advantage while mining.
• Allowing a vote on mining difficulty introduces bias; difficulty changes should be algorithmic or user-driven.

Chad mentioned that once these issues are resolved, a restructured open-source client software will be built for users, and the mining mechanism will resume. It is expected to take a few weeks to complete this work.

Existing User Rights Remain Unaffected

Existing mined ORE tokens can be claimed at any time and can later be upgraded to the token version on the v2 network.