Traditional blockchains reward developers for minor computations, such as correct DeFi trading or signing up for an airdrop. But what if you could earn rewards for significant computations that have a meaningful impact? From climate change modeling to deep learning, your Proofs of Useful Work (ZKPs) can contribute to real and important changes in the world.

If you're interested in helping people solve complex mathematical problems or physical simulations using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and receiving instant rewards for it, we encourage you to apply for the Proof of Useful Work Blueprint Grant.

Problems Addressed with ZKPs

Computer scientists often categorize problems based on their theoretical complexity, ranging from simple problems like sorting groceries to find the cheapest bread to complex problems like finding the shortest route through a list of different cities.

Many institutions and organizations are already working diligently to find solutions to complex problems. Scientific projects like BOINC at the University of California, Berkeley, use distributed computing to study and research diseases, climate change, pulsars, and various other scientific investigations.

Another initiative, folding@home, allows developers to share their computational power to combat global health threats such as COVID-19, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.

However, there are still many more problems that require computational solutions:

Improving our understanding of celestial objects and physics.

Deep learning.

Climate modeling.

Medical and biological modeling, such as protein folding.

Even SAT competitions involve computational problems.

The more complex the task, the more computations it requires to solve it. You can perform large, very large computations using Leo, Aleo's programming language, and ZKPs. The computational power required for some problems is virtually unlimited, making it more efficient to delegate their solutions to trusted and untrusted parties (ZKPs allow for quick and secure verification of the latter).

While systems like BOINC and folding@home are crucial for valuable work, they do not financially reward workers for their solutions. Furthermore, many previous attempts to reward "Proofs of Useful Work" focused on solving narrowly specialized problems (see Primecoin).

The Aleo Proof of Useful Work Blueprint Grant offers a different approach. The Aleo network already rewards developers for creating ZKPs. Now you can allow others to reward solutions to computational problems that matter.

Rewards for Useful Work

If your proposal is approved, you'll be eligible for a grant to create Leo programs with encoded problems. These programs will instantly reward people who submit correct solutions to the encoded tasks.

With a distributed ledger like Aleo, anyone can create rewards for solving computational problems without relying on an intermediary. Bounties can incentivize developers to tackle complex problems. For example, you can create a Leo program to reward finding new Mersenne prime numbers, improved solutions to the traveling salesman problem, or various other stochastic local search problems.

ZKPs are critical for proofs of useful work. If verifying solutions to complex problems takes a long time, placing decentralized rewards in a distributed ledger can be expensive. ZKPs allow for instant verification of a single or batch of solutions. Moreover, they can guarantee that users receive funds only if the solution is disclosed to the rightful parties.

Some readers may recall that Primecoin also uses Proofs of Useful Work as an integral part of its consensus algorithm. To be clear, the rewards we propose do not contribute to achieving consensus; they are solely meant to reward those who solve a problem. Unfortunately, there is no reliable theoretical basis to support the stability of using Proofs of Useful Work to achieve consensus.

Do you want to tackle significant problems? Apply for this unique Aleo grant, and we look forward to your proposals for useful work.