In 2023, one of the most watched projects is undoubtedly Bitcoin Inscription. As a new force, Bitcoin Inscription has become an important driving force for the current market trend. However, while new projects are emerging rapidly, traditional projects are also rejuvenating. In recent months, the price of Kaspa (KAS) has skyrocketed, rekindling people's interest in "POW mining coins".
As an old blockchain, Kaspa was launched in 2021, at a critical point when the cryptocurrency market turned from a bull market to a bear market. Unlike other cryptocurrencies that plunged nearly 90% during the bear market, Kaspa's token KSA showed extraordinary resilience in the bear market and soared against the trend. In the past year, the price of KSA has risen by more than 800 times, significantly outperforming other cryptocurrencies. As the Bitcoin halving date approaches, more miners and funds are expected to pour into the POW mining coin track.
01Revitalized POW Mechanism
POW mining coins refer to cryptocurrencies based on the Proof of Work consensus mechanism. The Proof of Work algorithm of POW mining coins requires miners to invest a lot of computing power and electricity consumption to complete the process of block creation and verification. This method has been criticized in the past and is considered to be a waste of energy. With the conversion of Ethereum POW to POS, doubts about POW have reached a peak. However, POW has not been gradually eliminated as the public expected. Instead, it has been reborn with new vitality, and this phenomenon is closely related to the necessity of POW.
First of all, the POW mechanism is known for its security and reliability. By consuming a lot of computing power and electricity, the POW mechanism ensures the security of the blockchain network. This power-consuming characteristic makes the POW mechanism highly secure and able to resist malicious attacks and tampering. In the context of various threats and risks facing the current digital asset market, security has become an important indicator for users and investors to pay attention to. Therefore, the security characteristics of the POW mechanism have become one of the important reasons for the rise of new projects.
Secondly, the POW mechanism has a stable infrastructure. As the earliest consensus mechanism used in projects such as Bitcoin, the POW mechanism has been widely verified and applied after years of development and testing. This stability enables the POW mechanism to provide new projects with opportunities to learn from and build on mature infrastructure, reducing the risks of development and deployment. In addition, there has always been a consensus in the industry that "POW is the key to success in a bear market", because the output of POW coins requires electricity and has objective value support, which is more stable than POS coins.
In addition, fairness and decentralization are another key feature of the POW mechanism. By competing to select the accounting node for the next block, the POW mechanism ensures that participants have a fair chance to receive rewards. This fairness attracts users and developers who are concerned about community consensus and decentralized value. Under the current trend of pursuing greater fairness, transparency and decentralization in the crypto field, the POW mechanism has once again received attention as a decentralized consensus mechanism.
In addition, the reason why the POW mechanism can rise again is not only because of its security, stable infrastructure, fairness and decentralization, but also because of its combination with emerging technologies, which has brought it new opportunities and development space. Some new POW projects combine current technological trends, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and other technologies, and propose innovative application scenarios and solutions, attracting more attention from developers and users.
As a time-tested consensus mechanism, the POW mechanism has once again become the focus of attention. Compared with the POS mechanism, POW has advantages in security, stability, fairness and decentralization, and can provide a solid foundation for new projects. Through innovative integration with emerging technologies, POW is driving the blockchain towards a more decentralized and secure direction.
02The "POW Mining Coin" craze may become the key to driving the next bull market
Since Ethereum switched from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in September 2022, the miners in the Ethereum market have been divided. Since whales with a lot of capital have monopolized most of the nodes, it is difficult for ordinary players to enter the market, resulting in a lot of idle computing power. However, it was at this time that new POW mining coin projects represented by Kaspa emerged and became the best place for idle computing power in the market. The influx of a large number of miners created the myth of Kaspa and also set off a craze for POW mining coins.
As the key force behind the last round of market rise, Bitcoin Inscription may not be able to play the same driving role in the upcoming next round of market adjustment. In particular, the current BRC20 project has not yet shown the wealth effect of sectorization like DeFi. The market value of Bitcoin Inscription is only US$500 million, and the transaction liquidity within the ecosystem is also quite limited. In contrast, the POW mechanism requires mining machines to mine. This natural moat makes POW mining coins considered to have longer-term value and potential, and are favored by investors, who believe that they have more potential to drive the bull market.
According to the market value, most of the new POW mining coins have a market value of less than 100 million US dollars, and KAS, which has the highest market value, is only about 1.9 billion US dollars. Compared with some old POW coins such as BCH and LTC, these new POW mining coins have greater room for growth. For example, the POW mining coin PEPEW, which combines GPU mining, DASH anonymity technology and MEME attributes, has a market value of only 100,000 US dollars. Compared with Dogecoin, it still has 100,000 times of growth space; compared with Pepecoin, it still has 5,000 times of growth. It can be said that the current POW mining coins are in a golden period with huge potential.
The development of the cryptocurrency industry is like a cycle, and the mainstream consensus mechanism may eventually return to the POW mechanism. Both the previously popular Bitcoin inscriptions and the recently popular POW mining coins have proved that the market demand for the POW mechanism still exists, especially the current new POW mining coins combined with new mining technology, which solves the problem of wasting resources in some traditional POW mining coins, allowing POW mining coins to have longer-term and more lasting development potential.
03 Inventory of POW mining coins worth paying attention to
The popularity of Kaspa has triggered a craze for POW mining coins, and has also attracted a large number of investors to enter this market, with everyone looking for the next KAS myth. Here is a list of POW mining coins that are expected to achieve a hundredfold growth in the future.
When
Features: New POW leading coin
Consensus mechanism: PoW+DAG
Kaspa is an innovative decentralized first-layer blockchain project that aims to provide high-speed, scalable and secure blockchain solutions. It uses a proof-of-work mechanism and combines it with the Phantom GhostDAG protocol to provide users with excellent performance and functionality.
Unlike traditional proof-of-work chains, Kaspa leverages the Phantom GhostDAG protocol to enhance its performance and scalability. This protocol allows isolated blocks created at the same time to coexist and sort them. This innovation in the directed acyclic graph (blockDAG) structure changes the single chain model of traditional blockchains and provides higher throughput and scalability. Through the Phantom GhostDAG protocol, Kaspa aims to process one block per second, providing fast transaction confirmation and a highly scalable network.
KAS is the core token of the Kaspa ecosystem. It was launched in November 2021 with no pre-mining, zero pre-sale, and no token distribution. The maximum supply is 28.7 billion tokens, and its emission plan is halved every year by steadily reducing it once a month by (1/2)^(1/12). In the past month, KAS has risen by 38.55% and is currently priced at $0.1219.
Spacemesh
Features: The goal is to become the people's currency, allowing anyone to participate in mining
Consensus Mechanism: Proof of Space-Time
Spacemesh is an emerging project based on blockchain technology, aiming to build a highly secure and highly decentralized consensus network. Different from the traditional Proof of Work (POW) or Proof of Stake (POS) mechanism, Spacemesh introduces an innovative consensus mechanism called Proof of Space-Time.
In Spacemesh, participants participate in the consensus process by allocating storage space to their computers. They create a local storage space called a Spacemesh node to store and verify the transaction data of the blockchain. The size and usage time of the participant's storage space determine their influence in the network and the chance of selecting the next block. In order to demonstrate their long-term participation and contribution, participants need to provide proof of storage space over a period of time. By introducing the time factor, the space-time proof consensus mechanism can identify and prevent the behavior of malicious attackers and improve the security of the network.
SMH is the native token of Spacemesh. Spacemesh's slogan is to become the people's currency. Therefore, SMH has received a lot of attention since its release. From $0.1 at the opening of trading, it soared to $11, with a maximum increase of more than 100 times. The upper limit of SMH tokens is 2.4 billion, which will be issued within 941 years, of which 2.25 billion (94.75%) will be allocated to Smeshers (Spacemesh miners), without pre-mining. Currently, the price of SMH is $2.61.
Conflux
Features: China concept public chain
Consensus mechanism: POW+POS
Conflux is a public, permissionless, layer-one blockchain that aims to build a borderless cryptocurrency project trading and technology ecosystem covering all parts of the world. As China's only compliant, open, and public blockchain, Conflux plays an important role in China's shift in attitude towards Web3.
Conflux's main advantage lies in its unique hybrid consensus mechanism, which combines PoW and PoS. This mechanism takes full advantage of the advantages of both: the PoW mechanism confirms transactions and protects the security of the network through computing power competition, while the PoS mechanism selects block nodes based on the rights and interests of token holders, improving transaction throughput and resource utilization. This hybrid consensus mechanism brings high scalability and security to Conflux, effectively solving the challenges faced by traditional blockchains.
Conflux Token (CFX) is the native token of the Conflux network. CFX token was listed on exchanges in November 2020 and its price has fluctuated greatly. Despite some fluctuations, CFX has gradually increased in value through cooperation with well-known brands and partners, as well as China's changing attitude towards the crypto industry. In the past year, CFX has increased by more than 500%, and the current token price is $0.1747.
Bitten Sensor
Features: Crypto+AI concept project
Consensus mechanism: POW+POS
Bittensor is an AI project based on blockchain technology that aims to promote innovation and sharing of AI technology. The project incentivizes contributors by rewarding them in the form of TAO tokens. TAO is the native currency of Bittensor and the core of the project. TAO tokens serve as both a reward token for miners' contributions and an access token to unlock the huge potential of collective intelligence within the system.
Bittensor uses a hybrid consensus mechanism that combines proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS). In Bittensor, PoW is combined with artificial intelligence for mining and computing AI models, forming a decentralized large-scale model network. Miners host AI models in Bittensor and provide them to the network. Validators rank miners based on their "intelligent contribution". Whenever the network generates a block, 1 TAO reward is generated, which is evenly distributed to miners and validators through mining and verification.
The current price of TAO tokens is $321.72, having doubled in the past month. Unlike the traditional L1 model, which gains value by selling block space, TAO's value is tied to the AI services it supports. As these AI services become more influential and useful, demand for TAO tokens will also increase.
