Traditional blockchains usually offer rewards to developers for performing minor computations like successfully executing a DeFi transaction or participating in an airdrop. However, what if you could be incentivized for more substantial computations that create a significant impact? From modeling climate changes to handling complex deep learning tasks, your Proofs of Useful Work (conducting extensive computations) could be instrumental in driving real-world transformations.

If you're interested in assisting people in addressing significant, verifiable mathematical problems or running physical simulations using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) while receiving instant rewards for your contributions, we encourage you to submit a proposal for a Proof of Useful Work Blueprint Grant (RFP).

Challenges Addressed with ZKPs:

Computer scientists typically categorize problems based on their theoretical complexity, ranging from simple tasks like optimizing a supermarket route to find the cheapest bread to complex challenges like determining the shortest path through a list of cities.

Numerous institutions and organizations are already committed to finding solutions to complex issues. Scientific initiatives like BOINC at the University of California, Berkeley, employ collaborative computing to study and research diseases, climate change, pulsars, and various other scientific investigations.

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

Moreover, there are more issues that require computational solutions, including:

Enhancing our understanding of celestial objects and physics.

Deep learning.

Climate modeling.

Medical and biological modeling, like protein folding.

Even SAT competitions involve computational challenges.

The more significant the problem, the more computations are needed to solve it. You can perform extensive computations, even extremely large ones, within Leo, Aleo's programming language, using ZKPs. Some problems demand nearly limitless computational resources, making it more efficient to delegate their solutions to both trusted and untrusted parties (ZKPs enable rapid and secure verification of the latter).

While systems like BOINC and folding@home are essential for valuable work, they do not provide financial rewards to contributors for their solutions. Additionally, many previous attempts to reward "Proofs of Useful Work" often focused on narrowly specialized problems (see Primecoin).

The Aleo Proof of Useful Work Blueprint Grant offers a unique approach. The Aleo network already acknowledges and compensates developers for creating ZKPs. Now you can enable others to offer rewards for solving computational problems that have a meaningful impact.