US 12,216,661 B2
Externally validated proof of work for appending a block record to a blockchain with a mining node
Roxana Iuliana Teodor, York (GB); Peter Damian Ashton, York (GB); Remy Lyon, York (GB); and Siamak Fayyaz Shahandashti, York (GB)
Assigned to Veiovia Ltd., York (GB)
Filed by VEIOVIA LIMITED, York (GB)
Filed on Sep. 20, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/948,337.
Prior Publication US 2024/0095251 A1, Mar. 21, 2024
Int. Cl. G06F 16/2457 (2019.01); G06F 16/22 (2019.01); G06F 16/23 (2019.01)
CPC G06F 16/24573 (2019.01) [G06F 16/2255 (2019.01); G06F 16/2379 (2019.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method, performed by a mining node in a mining network, for establishing an externally verifiable proof of work as immutable evidence of computational work completed by the mining node to generate a private data output, the proof of work being for use in appending a block record to a blockchain, the method comprising:
receiving, from a data broker server, a data package comprising signal information to be kept private by the mining node;
analyzing, by computational work, the data package to convert the signal information to a corresponding private data output also to be kept private by the mining node;
in response to analyzing the data package, generating metadata characteristic of the analysis of the signal information, the metadata being independent of the private data output generated by the analysis;
using a cryptographic commitment scheme to generate, from a combination of the metadata and validation data, a metadata commitment value for the data package as analyzed by the mining node; and
communicating the metadata commitment value and the validation data to a commitment database server operable to permit external access to the metadata commitment value for use in providing an externally verifiable proof of work.