Ore, the mining protocol that once caused Solana to "paralyze," has made a comeback. What's new and interesting about this revamped mining protocol?

Author: Nancy, PANews

The long-dormant veteran mining protocol Ore on Solana has recently regained market attention. Despite the overall market downturn, Ore’s token price hit a new high for the year, and the protocol’s daily revenue has continued to rise, quickly boosting market sentiment. This shift is mainly thanks to its recently launched new V2 mining protocol, which features comprehensive upgrades in mechanisms and economic models.

Revenue and Token Price Surge as Ore Launches New Mining Protocol

Recently, the veteran project Ore has regained popularity and received support from the Solana official account, sparking market discussion and interest.

Data confirms this rising enthusiasm. According to Blockworks Research, as of November 6, Ore’s total revenue exceeded $1.689 million. Before mid-October this year, its daily income was consistently low, mostly only a few thousand dollars. However, starting October 22, Ore’s daily revenue exploded, climbing to over $100,000 within just ten days. The latest daily revenue reached $316,000, representing an increase of approximately 576 times from its lowest point (around $548). Over the past week, revenue totaled $1.094 million, accounting for 64.7% of the total accumulated revenue.

Alongside the revenue surge, the price of the ORE token also soared. Data from CoinGecko shows that as of November 6, the ORE price was about $249, up 2,445.2% over the past 30 days, setting a new high for the year. Its market cap has now surpassed $100 million.

Ore’s revival stems from the launch of its new V2 mining protocol on October 22. On that day, the Ore official Twitter announced its return to the scene with a brand-new mining system aimed at establishing a sustainable token economy and protocol value capture mechanism, while creating a native store of value on Solana.

The new mining mechanism resembles an on-chain game. It consists of a 5×5 grid with 25 blocks, each round lasting one minute. Miners can stake SOL tokens to “occupy space” on the grid. At the end of each round, a winning block is randomly selected. The SOL in the other 24 non-winning blocks are proportionally distributed to the miners in the winning block, based on the amount of space they occupied. Additionally, one lucky miner in the winning block will receive an extra 1 ORE token as a bonus (with a special round approximately every three rounds).

Building on this, the system introduces a Motherlode prize pool mechanism, which adds 0.2 ORE each mining round into the pool, with a 1/625 chance to trigger an extra jackpot. If the jackpot isn’t triggered, the pool continues to grow; once triggered, all accumulated rewards are distributed to the winners based on their contribution. This design is similar to a cumulative prize pool, enhancing random incentives and encouraging long-term participation.

When miners claim their rewards, they must pay a 10% “refinement fee,” which is automatically redistributed proportionally to miners who have not yet claimed their rewards. This incentivizes longer holding periods and reduces selling pressure.

Additionally, Ore automatically deducts 10% of SOL mining rewards as protocol revenue, of which 90% is burned and 10% is distributed to stakers. This means,

According to official disclosures, the total supply of ORE remains capped at 5 million tokens, with a steady issuance rate of about 1 ORE per minute. However, with the introduction of protocol income and automatic buyback mechanisms, the net issuance can dynamically balance between inflation and deflation. If the protocol income is sufficient, ORE could enter a deflationary phase. Data from Dune shows that over the past 7 days, ORE experienced a net reduction of 400 tokens, indicating deflation.

Overall, compared to early PoW mining models, Ore’s new mining protocol has undergone multiple optimizations in mechanism design, incentive structure, and economic sustainability.

Once caused Solana network congestion, but version updates have yet to prevent declining popularity

Ore was initially an innovative PoW mining protocol on Solana, developed by anonymous developer Hardhat Chad’s Regolith Labs, and was the champion project of the Solana Renaissance Hackathon. Public information shows that Regolith Labs completed a $3 million seed round in September 2024, with investors including Foundation Capital, Colosseum, and Solana Ventures.

The project aimed to introduce Bitcoin-style mining to Solana, enabling fair and pre-mined free token distribution. Users didn’t need specialized ASIC miners—ordinary devices like computers, tablets, or smartphones could participate by solving cryptographic puzzles. This low-entry barrier quickly attracted attention, making Ore a hot project within the Solana ecosystem.

After Ore v1 launched, user influx was rapid, and it once became the highest-volume program on Solana, with peak transaction rates reaching about 1 million per hour. During high activity, some users earned thousands of dollars daily, further fueling participation and driving the ORE price from an initial $93 to a peak of $3,786.

However, v1’s algorithm had issues that could be gamed. Some miners used high-frequency transaction submissions to increase their “hit rate,” resulting in massive spam transactions that congested the Solana network. As a result, Ore had to suspend mining. Hardhat Chad explained that it took weeks to assemble a team, research, and develop v2, which also helped the ORE price recover.

In August 2024, Ore v2 restarted mining with several improvements to address v1’s problems, including anti-sybil attack measures, difficulty adjustments, and staking mechanisms. But due to lower-than-expected mining rewards, the ORE price continued to decline, and its popularity waned.

The latest Ore mining mechanism combines elements of GameFi and DeFi, moving away from the previous “mine and sell” model. It introduces a delayed payout system, requiring miners to participate continuously to maximize rewards. Currently, only when the reward pool approaches the staking pool or a payout wave is triggered can miners fully benefit. Meanwhile, the protocol enhances economic sustainability, aligning ORE more with market expectations of deflation. Whether this mining hype can be sustained remains to be seen.