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In the following article about "IOTA CryptoCore", it is written:

"IOTA core functions like address generation, signing, “Mini-Pow” and Proof of Work (PoW) need much computational power which makes it almost impossible (in a practical sense) to be done by small embedded systems."

  1. What is the difference of Mini-Pow with Proof of Work (PoW) ?
  2. And when they say:

"The PoW-core was later integrated into the IOTA Crypto Core."

Which PoW do they mean? Mini-Pow or Proof of Work (PoW) ? (Regarding to the fact that they say also:

"signing and PoW need much computational power which makes it almost impossible (in a practical sense) to be done by small embedded systems."

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  • what is pow position in iota and its use?
    – user3667
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 7:04

2 Answers 2

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1) In mid 2017 the M-Bug was found and the work-around for it is (inoficially) called "Mini-PoW". It could happen that a Bundle-Hash contained "M" which exposed a private key (and all following keys) directly and weakened signatures significantly. The Workaround simply recreates bundle-hashs until no "M" is contained within the hash. This is a brute-force work-around for which reason it was also called "Mini-PoW". Actually it's not PoW at all, but it should* be done for signatures. The computational work of Mini-Pow vs PoW is about 1:200, so it's more an inconvenience than a real PoW. If in IOTA context is written about PoW, always the real PoW is meant.

2) The real PoW-core was integrated in the IOTA Crypto Core. "Mini-PoW" is more a software-thing which uses hardware-acceleration for keccak384 hashing but it really is more software whereas PoW is done completly on the FPGA.

*should means: it's done in every IOTA library but nodes would accept Bundle-Hashes with 'M's. In contrary transactions containing a wrong PoW-nonce would be rejected. But it's in everyone's interest to do the "Mini-PoW" for security reasons.

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  • Thank you for your answer. Only two points remains yet unclear to me: (1) What do you mean by 'M' ? And (2) Is "CryptoCore" a micro-controller (or FPGA) which is able to do PoW completely ? (Because I heard that micro-controllers are not able to perform PoW.) Thanks again.
    – Questioner
    Commented Sep 2, 2019 at 12:01
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I'll try to answer.

1) The "M-bug" is effectively the normalized bundle-hash containing the character M. More information about it here: Why is the normalized hash considered insecure when containing the char 'M'

2) Proof-of-Work was implemented in VHDL between 26th April '18 and 26th Aug '18 and became the PiDiver: https://github.com/shufps/iota_vhdl_pow (Source: https://gitlab.com/iccfpga/iccfpga-core/wikis/home)

Where did you hear that micro-controllers are not able to perform PoW?

edit: Micro-controllers and PoW are not the best combination, one solution to it is Azimuth

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  • Here: iota.stackexchange.com/a/2140/1928 , ( "... It is not feasible to compute the Proof-of-Work on microcontrollers due to their limited computational speed. Furthermore, the official CCurl implementation (Proof-of-Work computation in C) uses the pthreads library and other functionality which are not typically available on microcontrollers.") And Here: ecosystem.iota.org/projects/… , "... PoW need much computational power which makes it almost impossible to be done by small embedded systems."
    – Questioner
    Commented Sep 2, 2019 at 14:24
  • Thanks for your links. As you can see, there are different approaches to solve the PoW issue for IoT.
    – Antonio Nardella
    Commented Sep 2, 2019 at 14:35
  • Yes, for example, one of the approaches is outsourced PoW server; however, in that case, PoW is not done on the micro-controller, but on an external trusted server. But I mean performing PoW locally and directly on the micro-controller.
    – Questioner
    Commented Sep 2, 2019 at 15:07

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