Can ORE make big money without proof of work?

I remember writing about ORE when it first launched in 2024 and the congestion it caused almost brought Solana to its knees.

The explosive popularity of ORE, a nascent proof-of-work (PoW) protocol, has shown mining’s enduring appeal among crypto natives. Who doesn’t love the idea of “earning passive income” and striking digital gold? And as the activity that initially secured Bitcoin, mining has become central to the idea of a cryptographically “hard” currency.

The last cycle offered little reason to look beyond Bitcoin as crypto’s primary store of value, but that is changing. Between its unresolved quantum vulnerability, questions about its long-term security budget, and its growing institutionalization, people are turning to cryptocurrencies that could offer some of the same monetary qualities.

Fittingly, the assets getting the most attention as alternative stores of value retain Bitcoin’s PoW base while building on it to address some of BTC’s shortcomings.

Zcash, for example, combines PoW and fixed supply with native privacy and its quest to become quantum resistant. Newcomers like Pearl I hope improve the economics of BTC mining and thus resolve its security budget problems.

And the market began to reward these ideas. Over the past three months, Zcash And Pearl gained approximately 170% and 400%, respectively, surpassing BitcoinThat’s a gain of around 25%. ORE has joined them, growing by around 170% and increasingly finding itself in the conversation around alternative stores of value.

Yet, unlike Zcash and Pearl, ORE has completely abandoned computational proof of work.

Today, ORE still works on Solana, with a maximum supply of 3 million tokens. Its tokens are “mined,” or rather distributed via a lottery-like mechanism in which participants stake SOLs for a chance to win newly issued coins.

This makes ORE an unusual competitor for hard money: its design is more about making mining accessible again while turning Solana’s speculative culture toward something more sustainable. Let’s look at how ORE works and the arguments for and against its potential as a store of value.

ORE calls its foundation virtual mining. Each round, participants engage SOL on one or more squares of a shared 5×5 grid, hoping to land on the winning square. Here’s how it works:

Validate SOL: Miners deposit SOL on one of 25 grid squares, each with an equal 4% chance of being selected.
Determine the winner: Approximately every minute, one of the 25 squares is randomly selected to receive 1 ORE. Fifteen squares are “divided” squares: if one wins, their miners divide the ORE proportionally to the quantity of SOL they have deposited there. If any of the other ten “solo” boxes win, a single miner wins the entire ORE, with their odds based on their share of the deposits on that box.
Collect the winnings: All miners receive the majority of their SOL deposited. The protocol keeps 1% of deposits on the winning square and 10.9% on the losing squares. The 1% is an administrative fee paid into a separate fee pool for each deposit; the remaining 9.9% from lost squares constitutes the protocol’s revenue.

ORE mining page, showing a 5×5 grid of squares with SOL deployed on each

ORE’s 5×5 mining grid. Star squares are “solo” squares. Source: ORE

There is also a jackpot called the Mother lode. An additional amount of 0.2 ORE is issued there each spin, and each spin has a 1 in 500 chance of triggering a payout to miners on the winning square.

So, “mining” is more of a lottery where participants compete to acquire ORE below the market price, although whether they actually get a discount depends on spending, the price of the ORE, and, of course, luck. Claiming newly mined ore also incurs a separate fee. 10% “refining” feeswhich rewards miners who do not claim their winnings.

However, much of what miners pay goes to support the asset they are trying to conquer.

The 9.9% of deposits that the protocol takes from lost squares constitute its revenue, most of which is used to buy existing ore on the market. These purchased tokens are then distributed in two ways:

90% are burned and removed from the reserve. Because the OREs ceiling of 3 million limits the supply that exists at any given time, not the total ever minted, each burning frees up space for the extraction of new ores. This mining generates revenue that funds more buyouts, and so on.
10% goes to stakers, rewarding holders who stake their ORE with the protocol.

The loop evolves with activity: larger mining generates more revenue, financing larger buybacks that can potentially offset new emissions.

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Founder Hardhat Chad describe this as proof of work”value leak“Bitcoin miners spend on electricity and hardware to secure the network, with this money going to external providers. ORE, in comparison, uses miner spending to purchase ORE on the market, redirecting that spending to the asset itself.

ORE also recently introduced a reservewhich holds a portion of mining revenue in assets such as SOL, USDC, tokenized gold (GLDx), and JitoSOL. It deploys these assets as buy orders in different price ranges below the market price, the ORE acquired following the same 90/10 distribution.

This therefore does not “support” ORE in the traditional sense of the term. Holders cannot exchange ORE for these assets, nor does the reserve guarantee a minimum price. Rather, it is a pool of capital that the protocol can use to purchase ORE during selloffs.

This is a new approach to distributing and supporting a scarce asset.

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But does that mean OREs are hard enough to store value? Let’s look at both sides of the debate.

Against

The major objection to ERO as a store of value, as Tulip King arguesis that it does not control the blockchain that secures it.

Unlike Bitcoin or Zcash, whose native tokens are an integral part of the security of their networks, ORE relies on Solana. Its future is therefore linked to incentives, governance and the development of another network. An upgrade that benefits Solana, for example, might not benefit ORE, and ORE holders would have little say in that decision.

Tulip too wonders if ORE has a compelling reason to existnoting that Bitcoin has a political and social reason to exist. As a reminder, Zcash was created to bring privacy to cryptocurrencies and is now working on quantum resistance, while Pearl addresses miners’ growing interest in AI and concerns about Bitcoin’s long-term security budget. ORE, in comparison, appears to primarily offer fairness and accessibility, giving anyone with a Solana wallet the opportunity to mine. Is this enough to make it a lasting store of value? For many, like lesabrefomo and No Limit Holding Brian Breslowthis is not the case.

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For

Supporters, however, like the ERO lawyer SNGsee these characteristics differently.

For them, accessibility is important. Bitcoin mining has evolved from an activity that anyone with a computer could participate in to an industry dominated by specialized hardware and large-scale operations. Bitcoin is not the only one. Both Zcash and Pearl have high barriers to entry for ordinary miners. With ORE, anyone with a Solana wallet and SOL can participate. Yes, there are still costs, but the barrier to entry is considerably lower. For them, giving people the opportunity to participate in mining, rather than just buying an asset, is valuable in itself.

NSE also sees ORE’s dependence on Solana as a compromise worth making rather than a weakness. NSE argues that ORE inherits Solana’s security and low fees, allowing it to focus on issuance and distribution, while admitting that it is not fully sovereign. Others, like Supporter of ORE, your amibrettargue that the design deliberately prioritizes usability over maximum establishment independence, offering a rare and accessible asset within the Solana ecosystem.

Finally, there is the cultural argument, made by proponents like poker chess player And NYSoul2xwhich positions ORE as a foil to Solana’s frenzied environment of ephemeral speculation: a scarce, fairly distributed asset designed to retain value in this environment.

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There’s something appropriate about using a lottery-style mining mechanism on the “casino chain”, but gearing that activity towards something people might actually want to hold.

ORE’s accessibility and cultural fit offer a compelling answer to why it needs to exist. It addresses the barriers of traditional PoW mining while attempting to transform Solana’s speculative instincts into something more sustainable.

While I wouldn’t put ORE in the same category as Bitcoin, Zcash, or Pearl, the mechanism design and cultural fit of ORE make compelling arguments in favor of the project even if it isn’t. Again establish it as a lasting store of value.

Whether ORE can maintain its momentum and demonstrate resilience over time will tell us more about how far these qualities can take it. For now, it’s an interesting experiment in what hard money might look like without its own proof-of-work consensus.