Produced by: TechFlow Research Institute

Author: Yu Zhong Kuang Shui (Rain in Deep Sleep)

Recently, a previously obscure PoW project has entered the public eye—Kaspa.

After Ethereum's merge, GPU miners have been searching for the next promising cryptocurrency. Kaspa uses the KHeavyHash algorithm, which supports mining with both GPU and FPGA devices, allowing common AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards to be used. Additionally, it builds its blockchain using BlockDAG. The advantage of BlockDAG lies in enabling multiple blocks to be recorded simultaneously, then aggregated and honestly ordered, ultimately improving overall blockchain recording efficiency.

KAS did not disappoint miners, rising from $0.0049 on January 10 to a high of $0.039—an almost tenfold increase—proving that PoW still has its season.

Of course, Kaspa’s ambitions go far beyond just being a mineable public chain. According to descriptions from the official community, it is actively expanding real-world use cases for KAS, and developers are rewriting the programming language into Rust to further enhance Kaspa’s performance, aiming to attract Layer2 smart contracts and DeFi development.

The surge in popularity of Kaspa has led many to revisit the PoW sector. Today, we’ll review some lesser-known PoW projects worth paying attention to—strictly for informational purposes and not as investment advice.

Radiant ($RXD)

Radiant is a peer-to-peer Layer1 blockchain launched on June 21, 2022, using Proof-of-Work consensus. It is a fork of BCH initiated by a group of miners. Its advantages include unique work consensus supporting GPU/FPGA/ASIC mining rigs and a block generation speed twice that of Bitcoin.

$RXD has a total supply of 21 billion, halving every two years, with a current market cap of $11.67 million. The official team emphasized that $RXD was not designed for investment or speculation—it serves solely as a medium for paying miner fees and on-chain transaction costs. $RXD can be purchased via txbit.io.

Nexa ($NEXA)

Nexa is a smart contract-enabled Layer1 blockchain launched on June 21, 2021. It created an execution environment similar to EVM, claiming the ability to process over 10 billion transactions per day. By leveraging hardware scaling, Nexa eliminates the two most critical scalability bottlenecks: signature verification and UTXO lookup.

The Nexa team, named Bitcoin Unlimited, is an OG organization with seven years of crypto experience and the developer behind the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) protocol.

$NEXA has a total supply of 210 trillion, with a current market cap of $57 million. Block rewards for mining on Nexa are 10 million NEXA, halving every four years.

Initially, $NEXA could only be mined using CPUs. In November 2022, it migrated to GPU mining, adopting its own GPU-intensive mining algorithm called Nexapow.

Nexa’s roadmap and initiatives for the coming years include:

• Developing and launching $NEXA token functionality, integrating tokens into browsers and mobile wallets;

• Developing a prototype DEX service for tokens, expected to launch by mid-2023;

• From mid-2023 to end of 2024, focus on building business-oriented token infrastructure and full-featured token services such as ticketing and token creation;

• Gigablock Scaling Phase: Finalizing the mining algorithm and UTXO lookup optimization.

Dynex ($DNX)

Dynex is a next-generation neuromorphic computing platform based on the DynexSolve PoUW (Proof-of-Useful-Work) consensus. DynexSolve allows every miner to perform computations on Dynex chips, achieving network decentralization. Dynex aims to deliver highly efficient machine learning through its powerful computational capabilities, meeting growing demands from industries such as fintech (portfolio optimization), pharmaceuticals (drug discovery), genomics (DNA sequencing), and smart cities (traffic management).

Another advantage of Dynex is privacy. It enables fully anonymous peer-to-peer transactions, making it impossible for others to trace specific transactions or link them to users.

$DNX has a total supply of 48,001,819, with a current market cap of $8.88 million. It can be purchased on exchanges such as txbit.io and TradeOgre.

Alephium ($ALPH)

Alephium is a PoW Layer1 sharded blockchain launched in December 2020, based on the BlockFlow algorithm. Drawing strengths from Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, it maintains Ethereum-level programmability, improves upon Bitcoin’s UTXO model, and uses DAG data structures to achieve cross-shard consensus, achieving high performance and scalability. By increasing the number of shards, Alephium can support up to 10,000 transactions per second on-chain.

Notably, Alephium employs “Proof of Less Work,” aiming to reduce energy consumption associated with traditional PoW mining. Under identical network conditions, Alephium’s mining energy usage is only 10% of Bitcoin’s.

$ALPH has a total supply of 174,556,899, with a current market cap of $11.32 million. The founder is Cheng Wang, a cryptographer based in Switzerland.

In 2021, Alephium raised $3.6 million through a token presale, led by Alphemy Capital, with participation from over 80 investors including White Paper Capital and Archery Blockchain.

Raptoreum ($RTM)

Raptoreum is an ASIC/FPGA-resistant PoW Layer1 blockchain launched in February 2021, designed to resist 51% attacks and double-spending. It also supports smart contracts.

It prevents specialized hardware like ASICs and FPGAs from participating by introducing a new algorithm called GhostRider, ensuring truly fair mining. Miners can mine $RTM using CPUs alone.

$RTM has a total supply of 21 billion, with a current market cap of $4.33 million.

Neoxa Network ($NEOX)

Neoxa is a gaming-dedicated blockchain based on Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Gaming-Servers. Its distinguishing feature is that ecosystem participants can earn $NEOX either through PoW mining or simply by playing games such as GTA5, Rust, and Minecraft on its servers. This model may help attract more Web2 gamers into the Web3 world.

Neoxa activated its mainnet masternodes in Q1 2023. Similar to Gala Games, the cost of running a Neoxa masternode is 550,000 $NEOX.

$NEOX has a total supply of 21 billion, with a current market cap of $3.43 million.

Suggestions

When evaluating these PoW projects, consider the following three aspects to assess their potential:

1. What narrative does it follow?

For example, Alephium follows the low-energy narrative with its "Proof of Less Work," while Neoxa embraces the gaming narrative.

2. Has it benefited from Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS?

Kaspa gained significant traction precisely because it absorbed computational power from former Ethereum mining equipment.

3. What needs or pain points does it address?

Alternative Layer1s generally aim to improve performance and scalability to solve existing issues with Bitcoin and Ethereum. For instance, Dynex targets challenges in the machine learning domain.