What is the recently popular ORE protocol?

特邀专栏作者

2025-11-11 07:40

This article is about 3188 words, reading the full article takes about 5 minutes

ORE is an innovative mining and value storage protocol built on Solana, dedicated to making the concept of "mining for everyone" a reality on a high-performance public blockchain.

Project Overview

ORE is an innovative mining and value store protocol built on Solana, aiming to make the "mining for everyone" concept a reality on a high-performance public blockchain. Initially launched in 2024, the project was inspired by Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism, attempting to create a new native Solana store of value. However, due to the mining mechanism at the time attracting too many short-term speculators and even causing network congestion, the team gradually realized that the traditional PoW model had a structural problem of "value leakage," where miners extracted rewards from token holders but failed to bring long-term value accumulation to the protocol.

Therefore, the ORE team completely restructured the protocol in October 2025, launching a brand-new on-chain mining system. The new mechanism is presented in a "5×5 grid" format, with each round lasting about one minute. Users compete for mining qualifications in the grid by investing SOL. The system then randomly selects a winning block as a reward. The winner can share all the invested SOL from the remaining 24 losing grids according to their investment proportion (of which the protocol extracts 10% for ORE buybacks), as well as ORE token rewards, and has the opportunity to trigger the "Motherlode" (mining vein) reward pool to win additional accumulated rewards. At this time, miners can choose whether to withdraw the reward, but all mined ORE will be subject to a 10% "refining fee" when withdrawn. This portion of ORE tokens will be redistributed to miners who have not withdrawn the reward, thereby encouraging long-term holding and reinvestment. Therefore, the longer miners hold the mined ORE, the more ORE rewards they will receive.

The core of the protocol's design lies in creating an "income-driven circular economy." In each mining round, 10% of the SOL invested by all losers automatically enters the protocol's treasury and is used to buy back ORE on the market before being buried. The "buried" ORE will re-enter the mineable reserve pool in the future, creating a dynamic balance between inflation and buybacks. Through this mechanism, ORE allows the protocol's own economic activities to feed back into the token's value, thereby achieving an "income-driven sustainable deflationary model."

At the conceptual level, ORE attempts to reinterpret the spirit of "fair mining" on Solana's high-performance architecture. With a lower barrier to entry, stronger gameplay, and higher capital utilization efficiency, it allows users to truly "mine" on-chain assets with economic value, and through continuous buyback and staking reward mechanisms, it gradually transforms short-term speculation into long-term value accumulation.

Market Dynamics

Since the new protocol launched at the end of October 2025, ORE has shown strong growth in both on-chain economic performance and community engagement. The new mining system has attracted a continuous influx of funds, with thousands of dollars' worth of SOL being used to compete for block positions every minute. The protocol's daily revenue has exceeded $1 million since its launch. Because the protocol automatically uses all mining revenue to buy back tokens, and burns 90% of the bought-back tokens and uses 10% as staking rewards, ORE's burning amount has exceeded its production amount in the past few weeks, showing a net deflationary trend.

Meanwhile, with the gamification and randomization of the mining mechanism, user activity has rapidly increased, with tens of thousands of active wallets on the chain, and ORE's 24-hour trading volume consistently remaining at tens of millions of US dollars. This cyclical structure of high participation and high buyback rate has made ORE one of the most discussed tokens in the Solana ecosystem recently. In addition to buybacks and burns, ORE has also introduced a staking mechanism supported by protocol revenue. Holders can obtain rewards from real revenue distributions through staking, rather than relying on inflation issuance. This distribution model based on protocol revenue further strengthens the token's value support, making its economic model more sustainable.

Previously, in September 2024, ORE received $3 million in investment from well-known investment institutions such as Foundation Capital and Solana Ventures. This laid the foundation for trust building and ecosystem development of the protocol, and also provided it with strong market endorsement.

Team Background

Founded by "Hardhat Chad," the Ore team's initial goal was to "make mining easily accessible to everyone." Starting with a hackathon experiment, the project officially took shape in 2024, positioning itself as an on-chain mining ecosystem that everyone can participate in. While the team maintains a low profile, it is backed by renowned institutions such as Foundation Capital, Solana Ventures, Colosseum, and the Dead King Society, adding a foundation of trust to the project's execution and potential. With its founder at the core, the team focuses on three main areas: mining protocol, user experience, and on-chain distribution mechanisms, avoiding the high barriers and complexities of traditional mining. Overall, Ore is a team with a clear vision and focused execution, dedicated to bringing mining back to ordinary users.

Token Information

ORE is a crypto asset issued entirely under smart contract control on the Solana blockchain, employing a "Fair Launch" model with a maximum supply cap of 5 million tokens. There is no pre-mining, team allocation, or internal distribution. This means all tokens must be generated through on-chain mining, allowing equal participation from any user. The current mining rate is approximately 1 ORE per minute, and new tokens will continue to be minted as long as the circulating supply has not reached its cap.

In terms of value flow design, ORE's token model revolves around three core logics: "revenue buyback, deflationary adjustment, and long-term incentives." The protocol automatically collects 10% of the total SOL deployed by all losers in each round of the game as protocol revenue, which is used to buy back ORE on the open market, burying 90% of the repurchased tokens. This mechanism aims to reduce the circulating supply and, to some extent, offset the inflationary effect of new output. It's worth noting that buried tokens can be remined when the total circulating supply falls below the cap, providing the system with a controllable "recycling" mechanism.

To balance the interests of short-term participants and long-term holders, ORE incorporates a multi-layered incentive mechanism in its distribution logic. First, miners are charged a 10% "refining fee" on their ORE rewards. This fee is distributed proportionally to miners who haven't yet claimed their rewards, thus encouraging longer holding periods. Second, each time the protocol buys back ORE, 10% is allocated to stakers as a return, while the remaining 90% is buried to create a positive deflationary cycle.

In addition, the protocol allocates a very small percentage of operating fees for system maintenance and on-chain automation. For example, 1% of each SOL deployed by a miner is charged as management and development fees, with a small amount of SOL used for automated transaction scheduling and account security checkpoints. This design ensures the protocol's sustainable operation while avoiding excessive pressure on user revenue.

ORE's token economy model attempts to transform the inflationary structure of traditional PoW into a sustainable value capture process through revenue buybacks and dynamic deflation mechanisms, thereby making "long-term participants" the core beneficiaries of the system.

Competitive Landscape

ORE occupies a unique niche: a lightweight on-chain mining and token distribution mechanism based on Solana. It makes mining possible for everyone with an extremely low barrier to entry, requiring no expensive equipment or computing power; users can participate with simple interaction. This mechanism stands out significantly within the Solana ecosystem, allowing ORE to quickly amass a large user base.

Compared to traditional mining projects, one of ORE's biggest innovations lies in combining mining with protocol revenue buybacks. The protocol automatically uses a portion of SOL revenue to buy back and "burn" ORE, creating a deflationary effect and supporting the token's value. However, the low barrier to entry and gamified design also bring challenges: similar projects may quickly replicate its model, and user retention will become a key test after the mining craze subsides. Furthermore, the early experience with network congestion reminds the team that while pursuing scale, they must also consider system stability and long-term growth.

It's important to emphasize that ORE's new mining mechanism resembles an "on-chain game," but its gameplay is actually closer to a probabilistic game. Each round has winners and losers; in most cases, only a small percentage of participants will reap the rewards, while the majority may lose all of their invested SOL. Users should fully understand the relevant mechanisms and potential risks before participating.

This article does not constitute any investment advice.