Abstract
Proof of work (PoW), which was initially introduced for combating junk email spam, is extremely energy-thirsty, but the computed outcomes are of very little relevance to any practical usage. Some existing works tackle this issue by replacing the useless cryptographic puzzles with some pre-determined practical problems. However, the allowable problem types are usually limited and fixed, and some problems are of no significant value. This paper presents a Unified Proof of Work (UPoW) mechanism using flexible problems as puzzles, which features a computation-trading platform where delegators post their problems and PoW executors compute them as a by-product. The proposed UPoW puts known problem types together and frames them as verifiable computation problems using Fully Homomorphic Encryptions (FHE) techniques to replace PoW puzzles. It also secures and preserves the functionality of the delegated problems, which is showcased by delegating a Private Set Intersection (PSI) problem.
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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 62072390, 62102334), and the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong SAR, China (Grant No: 15222118, 15218919, 15203120, 15226221, 15225921, and C2004-21GF).
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Fu, Y., Ye, Q., Du, R., Hu, H. (2023). Unified Proof of Work: Delegating and Solving Customized Computationally Bounded Problems in a Privacy-Preserving Way. In: Li, B., Yue, L., Tao, C., Han, X., Calvanese, D., Amagasa, T. (eds) Web and Big Data. APWeb-WAIM 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13423. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25201-3_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25201-3_24
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