Proof of Work (PoW)

Bitcoin is the issuerless network whose supply rule survived a 2010 overflow through repaired validation and voluntary adoption; BTC conveys spend control, not company or reserve rights.

Dogecoin began as Palmer and Markus’s joke, then outlived both founders by turning Reddit generosity, a permanent mining reward and Litecoin-compatible merged mining into an unusual payment network.

Zcash began with ceremony-dependent Sprout, moved through Sapling to Halo-based Orchard, then had to disable and repair Orchard in 2026. NU6.3 now routes new shielded value into Ironwood and seals Orchard to inflows. ZEC remains optional-privacy proof-of-work money; Ironwood prepares recoverability but is not itself post-quantum protection.

Monero (XMR) is the native coin of a proof-of-work network that makes recipient addresses, sender selection and amounts less visible through one-time outputs, 16-member rings and RingCT. It launched from a new genesis in April 2014 using forked Bytecoin code, then repeatedly changed its privacy rules. Current mainnet remains on the 2022 v16 rules; FCMP++ and CARROT are still development work.

Bitcoin Cash was born when Bitcoin’s block-size dispute became an incompatible ledger on 1 August 2017. Its history runs through emergency mining rules, the 2018 BSV split, the BCHN’s 2020 rise and rejection of Bitcoin ABC’s later 8% coinbase path, and later CashTokens, adaptive blocks and a richer transaction VM.

Litecoin began in October 2011 with published code, a scheduled public mining start and only 150 disclosed early LTC. It kept Bitcoin's UTXO model while choosing Scrypt, 2.5-minute blocks and an 84-million issuance path. SegWit in 2017 and optional MWEB in 2022 show how its developers, miners and validating users coordinate changes without a token vote.

Ethereum Classic is the proof-of-work EVM chain that preserved Ethereum's no-fork state after The DAO recovery fork. ETC pays gas and miners under the 5M20 emission policy; chain ID 61, ETCHash and client adoption define today's protocol, while its history includes replay exposure and repeated majority-hash reorganizations.

Kaspa is a proof-of-work blockDAG whose GHOSTDAG ordering keeps parallel blocks in one ledger history. It launched without a premine, but protocol influence still depends on miners, software authors, community-funded multisigs and operators adopting hardfork releases.

Beldex began as a Monero-derived privacy chain and switched to masternode proof of stake in 2021. Its native privacy and issuance rules are visible in code, while foundation rewards, application claims and EVM bridges add separate trust boundaries.

Dash began as XCoin, inherited Litecoin 0.8 code from Bitcoin's family, became Darkcoin and then Dash. Today miners order blocks, collateralized masternodes lock transactions and blocks, and only masternode votes direct a 20% treasury; ordinary DASH ownership alone grants none of those operating or voting powers.

Bitcoin SV split from Bitcoin Cash in November 2018 and inherited Bitcoin's UTXO and halving lineage. Genesis changed its rules and Chronicle specifies further changes, while signed node alerts can freeze or reassign outputs. Spending depends on the rules participating nodes accept.

CFX is the uncapped native coin shared by Conflux Core Space and its EVM-compatible eSpace. PoW Tree-Graph orders blocks, PoS adds finality, and CFX pays fees, storage, staking and governance—but grants no equity, partner claim or protected price.

DCR powers Decred's unusual chain of consent: miners propose blocks, five tickets are called to judge them, Politeia frames budgets and policy, and on-chain votes activate code or release treasury funds. A liquid coin is not automatically a vote, equity share or treasury claim.

Zano is a privacy-first layer-one where standard transactions hide sender, receiver, amount and asset type. Its live hybrid PoW/Zarcanum consensus, uncapped issuance and issuer-controlled Confidential Assets make privacy distinct from ownership and governance rights.

eCash is the November 2020 Bitcoin Cash ABC chain expressed in XEC after a one-to-one-million redenomination, not a replacement token. SHA-256 proof of work writes its history while eCash Avalanche adds stake-weighted Post-Consensus and, since November 2025, Pre-Consensus. Its unusual story is also a story of policy: each block divides rewards among miners, protocol development, ecosystem funding and stakers.

DigiByte is a UTXO proof-of-work chain launched on January 10, 2014. Five mining algorithms share block production, DigiShield and MultiShield retarget difficulty, and DGB follows monthly subsidy decay toward a 21 billion cap rather than a four-year halving.

Pearl (PRL) is the native UTXO coin of Pearl Research Labs' proof-of-useful-work Layer 1, live since April 27, 2026. Its consensus checks matrix multiplication certificates, while the provenance and commercial usefulness of each workload remain a separate question.

QRL has used stateful XMSS signatures and Proof-of-Work since its 2018 mainnet launch. Its planned PoS successor is public testnet software, making migration and control boundaries as important as the quantum claim.

Qubic issues one trillion native QUBIC units per weekly epoch and burns part of them. UPoW ranks candidates for 676 Computor seats, and 451 matching votes finalize ticks. Holding QUBIC does not confer a protocol ballot; reviewed sources do not grant Aigarth ownership through that holding.

Ravencoin launched without a token sale or founder reserve, then made named assets part of its own consensus rules. That choice simplified issuance but tied every RVN payment and issued asset to the same software. A 2020 inflation flaw and a separate 2026 chain split show how miners, node operators and maintainers repaired two different kinds of failure.

The XPHERE Foundation presents v2 as the EVM-compatible successor to its troubled proprietary chain. Its design opens xpHash mining to supported hardware while reserving Main Chain finality for an approved Union.

Verge began as DogeCoinDark in 2014 and kept the same native chain after its 2016 name change. Tor routing and stealth addresses narrow specific metadata leaks, but ordinary XVG remains on a public ledger; supply documents also disagree by roughly 33 million coins.

Nervos CKB turned blockchain state into a scarce capacity measured in CKBytes. Its Cell model, NC-MAX proof of work and Nervos DAO connect storage, miner pay and dilution—but a DAO deposit is compensation for secondary issuance, not staking or a protocol ballot.