The mechanism
Scientific Money
Three independent lines of work — the physics of computation, the economics of proof of work, and the mathematics of inference — converge on the same conclusion. Thermoeconomics is the science of energy money.
Wolfram Physics
+Proof of Work
+Active Inference
Thermoeconomics
Theoretical Brief
What proof of work is actually doing, in one image: a uniform distribution over hash space, and the constraint that carves information out of it.
SHA-256 outputs are uniform and equiprobable across a 2256 state space. Counting consecutive leading zeros imposes a constraint on that space — and each zero is a bit of uncertainty removed.