VRF-Based Mining Simple Non-outsourceable Cryptocurrency Mining

This paper introduces VRF-based mining, a simple and effective way of making pooled mining impossible. Instead of using hash functions, VRF-based mining uses Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs) for Proof-of-work (PoW)-based consensus. As VRF binds an output with a secret key, a pool operator should reveal its secret key to outsource the mining process to miners, and miners can anonymously steal cryptocurrency in the pool operator’s wallet.