Recently, I noticed that an old project in the Solana ecosystem, Ore, has once again become popular—and this time, the way it’s revived is quite interesting.

When it comes to Ore, many people may still remember just how wild it once was. The project was originally developed by Regolith Labs, led by Hardhat Chad, with the goal of introducing a Bitcoin-style POW mining mechanism into Solana—so that ordinary users could participate in mining using computers, tablets, or even smartphones. After v1 launched, users flocked in, and it briefly became the highest-volume program on Solana, hitting more than 1 million transactions per hour at its peak. During that period, the price of ORE surged from $93 all the way to $3,786. Some people’s daily earnings reached several thousand dollars—definitely quite exciting.

But problems followed as well. It was found that the v1 algorithm could be gamed: miners used high-frequency trading to boost the “success rate,” which led to a large volume of junk transactions clogging the entire Solana network. Ore was forced to pause operations, and Hardhat Chad spent weeks rebuilding the team to develop v2. v2 restarted in August 2024, introducing improvements such as anti–Sybil/anti-bot protections, difficulty adjustments, and the addition of staking, but mining rewards failed to meet expectations. The price kept falling, and the hype cooled down too.

What’s especially interesting is that Ore’s latest mining protocol has completely changed the gameplay. This time, it’s not just a simple “mine and sell.” Instead, it blends GameFi and DeFi design. The new mechanism is a 5×5 grid system: each round lasts 1 minute, and miners stake SOL to occupy spaces on the grid. In each round, one winning block is selected at random. The SOL in the other 24 blocks is then distributed proportionally to the winners. Additionally, within the winning block, there’s also a lucky miner who can receive an extra 1 ORE. The system also introduces a Motherlode prize pool: it injects 0.2 ORE per round, and a jackpot is triggered with a probability of 1/625. If the jackpot isn’t hit, it keeps accumulating. This design is similar to a lottery’s rollover prize pool, and it genuinely strengthens participation motivation.

Even more interesting is the incentive structure. When claiming rewards, you must pay a 10% “refinement fee.” This fee is automatically allocated to miners who have not yet claimed—effectively encouraging long-term holding. The protocol itself also automatically collects 10% of the SOL mining rewards as revenue; of that, 90% is burned, and 10% is distributed to stakers. This design allows ORE’s net issuance to dynamically balance between inflation and deflation. Dune data shows that over the past 7 days, ORE has been in a deflationary state, with the total amount decreasing by 400 tokens.

This new mechanism delivered immediate results after launch. Ore received support via Solana’s official channels, and market enthusiasm quickly surged. According to Blockworks Research data, as of that time, Ore’s cumulative revenue had already exceeded $1,689,000, and daily revenue jumped from the thousands of dollars level in mid-October to the hundreds of thousands within just a little over ten days. The highest single-day revenue reached $316,000. Compared with the historical low of $548, this is an increase of 576 times. In terms of price, ORE rose 2445% within 30 days, setting a new intra-year high, and its market cap also exceeded $100 million.

In comparison, Ore has gone from v1’s pure mining, to v2’s difficulty adjustment, and now to this new version that integrates playability with economic sustainability—making multiple optimizations in both mechanism design and incentive structure. In particular, the introduction of a delayed cash-out mechanism requires miners to stay continuously engaged, breaking away from the previous “mine and sell” model and aligning better with the market’s preference for a deflation narrative.

However, how long this wave of Ore hype can last still depends on subsequent developments. Mining hype often comes quickly and fades just as fast. The key is whether the protocol can truly establish a sustainable economic model and maintain user stickiness. If you’re interested in mining projects in the Solana ecosystem, Ore’s upgrade this time is definitely worth keeping an eye on.