A white paper was released late Wednesday for a new protocol called Heroglyphs, which aims to provide new tokens to Ethereum sole stakers by mimicking elements of the proof-of-work system.
“We are excited to share Heroglyphs White Paper v0. Heroglyphs is designed to reward solo stakers by adding a bit of PoW to Ethereum’s Proof of Stake (PoS),” said Manny, an anonymous co-author.
Co-authors, including former Sushi core contributor 0xMaki, argue that since Ethereum moved away from its proof-of-work consensus mechanism in September 2022, a fair crypto token distribution mechanism has disappeared. It is becoming increasingly popular. This centralizes control in the hands of a few people, potentially undermining the decentralized nature of the network. They want to solve this problem by encouraging more decentralized and resilient verification through token rewards, such as proof-of-work.
“Heroglyph mining ensures that all full validators receive rewards for their participation, regardless of staking size or whether they are selected as block proposers,” the authors said.
Users can create tokens and specify total supply, specific emission schedule, and initial distribution. By ensuring that only full-fledged validators can mine these new tokens, Heroglyphs aims to provide a level playing field, reduce the dominance of large node operators, and support smaller validators.
However, they do not advocate a return to the energy-intensive processes typical of traditional proof-of-work systems. “Mining” in this context is metaphorical and refers more to issuing tokens as rewards rather than actual computational mining. “Our goal is not to overthrow liquid staking. Rather, we seek to strengthen the security of Ethereum by helping to reverse the consolidation of verification and associated information authority in a small number of validators,” the authors conclude.
Co-author Manny said Heroglyphs’ white paper V1 and launch will be available on Friday.
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