Proofs of Useful Work

M. Ball, A. Rosen, M. Sabin, P. N. Vasudevan. 2017. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive 2017/203.

Original	https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203
Version	ePrint 2017/203 page, abstract and note read on 2026-10-17 (last of two revisions, 2021-02-26). The page describes it as a major revision of an IACR publication in CRYPTO 2018. Its note says the updated version, ePrint 2018/559, retitled "Proofs of Work from Worst-Case Assumptions" (CRYPTO 2018, LNCS pp. 789–819, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-96884-1_26), accommodates reviewers' observation that the paper's definition of Proof of Useful Work is already satisfied by a generic naive construction. The revised paper drops the usefulness claim. Its abstract presents proofs of work that are hard under worst-case assumptions and proves that they cannot be amortized. The 2017 entry is revised, not withdrawn or retracted.
Accessed	2026-10-17

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