Sorting Race as One Instantiation of Verifiable Distributed Work
Author: Shobikhul Irfan
Part of the series: Redefining Proof of Work
Introduction
In Part 1, I argued that Proof of Work (PoW) has been conceptually misdefined, and that its essence should be understood as Verifiable Distributed Work (VDW).
This article is not a formal proof, and not a final protocol proposal.
Its goal is simpler:
To demonstrate that the VDW paradigm can be instantiated concretely.
One early instantiation I explore is what I call Sorting Race.
Core Intuition of Sorting Race
Instead of miners racing to find a hash with a lucky nonce, in Sorting Race:
Miners receive a deterministic input dataset.
They perform computation to produce a specific ordering.
The output is a sorted data structure, not a random number.
The network verifies that:
the input is valid,
the ordering is correct,
and the ordering rules are satisfied.
This work is:
expensive to produce (computation + memory),
but relatively cheap to verify.
Why Sorting?
Sorting is chosen not because it is “perfect”, but because:
it is a classical computational problem,
has well-understood complexity,
is easy to verify,
and produces deterministic results.
Crucially:
Sorting is not the main claim.
It is merely a vehicle to illustrate VDW.
On Memory-Hard Properties (Optional)
Sorting can be designed to:
rely heavily on memory access,
not just arithmetic operations,
thereby reducing extreme hardware specialization advantages.
However, memory-hardness is not required for VDW,
it is simply one possible design lever.
On the “Race” Aspect
The term race preserves the competitive nature of PoW:
many miners work on the same problem,
the first valid solution wins,
winning probability still correlates with resources.
What changes is:
the nature of the work, not
the competitive structure.
What Sorting Race Does NOT Claim
To be explicit, Sorting Race does not claim:
economic optimality,
perfect ASIC resistance,
final security guarantees,
or immediate mainnet readiness.
These are implementation-level concerns, not conceptual ones.
Why This Example Matters
Sorting Race demonstrates that:
Proof of Work does not need to be hash-based,
computational work can have structural output,
and work results can directly contribute to blockchain state.
In short:
VDW is not an empty abstraction.
It can be instantiated.
Closing
If Proof of Work is redefined as Verifiable Distributed Work,
Sorting Race is merely one starting point, not the destination.
This experiment is intended to:
open discussion,
not close it.
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