From POW to vPOW: Analyzing Cellula's Gamified Asset Issuance Protocol

Since 2017, Web3 has entered an era of low-threshold asset issuance. Various projects issue tokens or NFTs through methods such as IDO and ICO, but often face issues of strong control or lack of transparency, with the phenomenon of RugPull occurring frequently. There has been a continuous hope for a fairer and more reliable asset issuance protocol to address various problems during the TGE of new projects.

Cellula provides a new perspective for this, as they have implemented an asset distribution layer that simulates POW, using virtual proof of work (vPOW) to "mine" the asset distribution process, in order to simulate a more equitable asset allocation paradigm compared to Bitcoin.

Cellula can serve as an asset distribution platform with POW effects, bringing broader prospects and imaginative space for Web3 asset issuance, and can be called "a social experiment paying tribute to Bitcoin mining."

POW and vPOW: Unpredictable Lottery Draws

Whether it's authentic POW or POS, or vPOW, the essence is to set up a set of algorithms that produce unpredictable/difficult-to-predict output results, using these output results to conduct a "lottery draw". Bitcoin miners need to construct blocks that meet the constraints locally and submit them to the full nodes in the network for consensus in order to receive block rewards.

Bitcoin mining utilizes the unpredictability of the SHA-256 hashing algorithm to create a "lottery draw" system where miners across the network can participate online. This design, at the cost of electrical energy, ensures that the form of participation is permissionless.

POW is a fairer method of asset distribution. In mainstream POW public chains, the difficulty for project parties to control is much greater than that in POS public chains. Although project parties in POW also have some space for control, the extent is often much lighter than in POS.

Cellula replaces the hash computation of traditional POW with another unpredictable/difficult-to-predict computational method, substituting the form of "Work" in "Proof of Work". Under Cellula's concept, the key is how to obtain a petri dish with more living cells (BitLife), and simulating the state changes of BitLife requires computational resources. Essentially, it transforms the hash algorithm executed in Bitcoin mining into a specific algorithm for simulating Conway's Game of Life, which is referred to as vPOW(Virtual POW).

The Core of vPOW: Conway's Game of Life and BitLife

The Game of Life, devised by John Conway in 1970, can be traced back to the concept of "cellular automata" proposed by John von Neumann in 1950, which simulates the evolutionary rules of life in nature through algorithms.

Suppose we have a petri dish, which is divided into a bunch of small squares according to a two-dimensional coordinate system, and then we perform an "initial setup" on the petri dish, allowing some live cells to occupy part of the squares. After that, the life and death states of these cells will evolve over time, gradually presenting complex forms of cellular clusters. This is essentially a two-dimensional grid game, and the rules are very simple:

• Each cell has two states: alive/dead, and each cell interacts with the cells in the eight surrounding squares;
• Assuming a certain cell is alive, but the number of alive cells in the surrounding 8 squares is less than 2, then this cell enters the death state;
• A cell remains alive if it has 2 or 3 living neighbors.
• A cell is in a living state, and when there are more than 3 living cells around it, the cell enters a death state ( simulating a scenario where excessive life competes for resources );
• A cell in the current dead state will transition to a living state when there are 3 living cells around it ( simulating cell proliferation )

In a two-dimensional petri dish, given the initial pattern of cell states, the cell states will evolve and iterate over time according to the aforementioned rules, producing a myriad of results.

Cellula divides the previously mentioned "petri dish" into 9*9=81 squares, with each cell in the square having two states: alive/dead corresponding to binary 0 and 1(. As a result, according to permutations and combinations, the initial state of the cells in the petri dish has 2^81 variations, which is equal to the square of one trillion, ), essentially an astronomical number (.

What players need to do is select the parameters ) for the initial mode of the petri dish (. BitLife acts as the entity of the petri dish ), which is actually an NFT (, containing 81 squares, with a cell ) placed in each square that can be in either a living or dead state. An empty square is equivalent to a dead cell (. Then, every 3*3=9 adjacent squares form a BitCell in BitLife, and each BitLife is composed of 2 to 9 BitCells.

According to permutations and combinations, the BitCell ) 3*3 grid ( has 2^9 initial patterns. What players need to do is randomly select multiple BitCell combinations of different patterns to construct a BitLife. To put it simply, it means to casually find an initial pattern for your petri dish. As mentioned earlier, there are a total of 2^81 different initial patterns, which is an astronomical number. Therefore, the choice space for participants is very large, which is somewhat similar to the scenario of Bitcoin mining using SHA-256.

![Interpreting Cellula: A Gamified Asset Issuance Protocol Paying Tribute to POW Mining])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-4255a676799fbd6e1ed24506055c7943.webp(

The cell state of BitLife changes with the increase in block height. Cellula allocates computing power based on the status of BitLife at different block heights. Given a block height, the more surviving cells contained in BitLife, the higher the computing power it possesses, which is equivalent to creating a virtual mining machine.

Cellula participants need to exhaustively explore the 2^81 initial patterns of BitLife off-chain, predict the state after the evolution of each pattern, and then see if it can meet the requirements of the reward system. This is actually the core gameplay of Cellula; your goal is to construct or purchase the BitLife that is most likely to obtain mining rewards. This model is equivalent to allowing ordinary retail investors/advanced retail investors to develop mining machines themselves, and then you can sell the mining machines you create to others or buy others' mining machines to mine.

The system will distribute a certain amount of mining rewards every 5 minutes, referred to as energy points in the game, based on the share of computing power of each BitLife in the network.

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In Cellula, the process for players to synthesize BitLife is essentially a "manufacturing" process for new mining machines. After BitLife is minted on the chain, it needs to undergo a "charging" operation to start mining. The validity period for a single charge is 1 day, 3 days, and 7 days, requiring a small fee to be paid, and it needs to be recharged after expiration.

To encourage users to recharge BitLife more, Cellula has set up a "Recharge Lottery" feature, where you may be selected to receive some additional rewards every time you initiate a recharge operation.

According to the official rules of Cellula, the minting of BitLife containing 3*3 Bitcells ), which includes 81 small squares (, has been stopped. Players have minted over 1.5 million such BitLife. Future new users can purchase BitLife on the secondary market and engage in charging mining. According to the official explanation, limited issuance is to maintain the stability of the game's ecosystem and prevent scientists from infinitely minting BitLife NFTs, which could lead to a devaluation of mining machines.

In the future, Cellula will introduce a role similar to that of mining machine manufacturers. This role is based on a licensing system, requiring token staking, public sales channels, and a certain community size and influence. These manufacturers will be responsible for the issuance and sale of BitLife, which contains 4x4 BitCells, or a total of 16*9=144 small squares. The amount of BitLife that manufacturers can issue will be limited by the amount of tokens they stake.

![Interpreting Cellula: A Tribute to the Gameified Asset Issuance Protocol of POW Mining])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-54351352d216fb2da592d00d32c6fed7.webp(

Analysoor Lottery Algorithm and VRGDAs Index Pricing Curve

Cellula has a charging lottery segment, which uses a random number output algorithm called Analysoor. It takes the block hash as an input parameter for the random number generator to draw a winner among the participants in each block's charging, introducing a lottery system.

In addition, to prevent a certain pattern of BitLife from being minted by a big player and others being able to "follow suit" by minting BitLife according to the same combination scheme, Cellula introduced a variable rate progressive Dutch auction ) VRGDAs (, which is a pricing algorithm developed by Paradigm that dynamically adjusts prices—raising prices when minting volume exceeds expectations and lowering prices when minting volume falls short of expectations.

![Interpretation of Cellula: A Gamified Asset Issuance Protocol Paying Tribute to POW Mining])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-28eda1ef80c887b4b664c300022e36e3.webp(

Viewing Cellula from the Perspective of Player Game Theory

In vPOW, there are many participants, each with different strategies. Taking the primary issuance market as an example, a "scientist" can write code and combine different BitCells to find a BitLife with higher computing power, thereby obtaining higher mining rewards. At the same time, there are some MEV players who monitor the minting events on the chain. When they discover that a certain NB scientist has minted a certain type of BitLife, they will also follow suit and mint a large amount.

However, due to the existence of the VRGDAs exponential pricing algorithm, the minting price of a single type of BitLife can grow exponentially, effectively preventing scientist ) from the anti-witch (. Of course, it will also price BitLife/miners; if a certain type of miner has high computing power, its minting/production price will also be high. The price circulating in the secondary market will reference the production price, which will then be transmitted throughout the entire supply chain.

Analogous to the issuance process of Bitcoin mining machines, scientists found that a certain type of BitLife has high computing power, just like a mining machine company developing new chips. MEV players follow suit to mint, akin to primary dealers completing the pricing of mining machines, and subsequent secondary market trading is similar to retail investors purchasing equipment from dealers.

The difference is that compared to the research and development of mining machines in the real world, scientists have found that the speed of discovering new BitLife is much faster, and anyone can participate in the status simulation of BitLife, which largely reduces the power of R&D for mining machines. "Everyone has the opportunity to become a scientist", which is more friendly for most people and is something that cannot occur in the production chain of mining machines in reality.

For the project parties themselves, adopting a POW-style asset distribution scheme inherently weakens their power. Therefore, whether it is scientists, project parties, or ordinary players, none can unilaterally control the market. In the mining machine casting phase and the issuance phase, a game of three parties emerges, and no party can completely monopolize the market, which can create a dynamic balance.

Overall, compared to the Bitcoin mining machine industry chain, Cellula's solution is a more interesting social experiment.

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