# Proof of Participation: ZooBC's Blockchain Consensus > Proof of Participation explained: how ZooBC pays nodes for the work they do rather than the wealth they hold, and how anyone can use, run, and help secure the network. - Canonical page: https://zoobc.com/pop/ - Publisher: ZooBC, https://zoobc.com/ - Language: English. Translations: [中文（简体）](https://zoobc.com/zh/pop/), [Русский](https://zoobc.com/ru/pop/), [Italiano](https://zoobc.com/it/pop/), [Español](https://zoobc.com/es/pop/), [Français](https://zoobc.com/fr/pop/), [日本語](https://zoobc.com/ja/pop/), [한국어](https://zoobc.com/ko/pop/) - Last updated: 2026-10-09 - Topics: Consensus (computer science), Blockchain, Decentralization, Proof of stake, Proof of work - Keywords: Proof of Participation, blockchain consensus mechanism, consensus algorithm, Proof of Stake alternative, Proof of Work alternative, decentralized network, run a node and earn, participation score, decentralization, ZooBC - Site index for language models: https://zoobc.com/llms.txt --- ZOOBC / PROOF OF PARTICIPATION ## Proof of Participation Proof of Participation: a decentralized network people can use, operate, and help secure. zoobc.network ### Enjoy the services. *Or make money running them.* A decentralized network with no landlord: trade, do business, play and call, all from one file on your own computer. Or plug in a machine and get paid to keep it all running. **Your keys. Your node. Your cut.** [Get the wallet](https://zoobc.network/wallet.zip) Grab free coins NO ACCOUNT · NO INSTALL RUNS FROM ONE HTML FILE EARN BY PARTICIPATING ### Take the tour #### 0The protocol Learn the protocol. The formal Proof of Participation specification, on its own site. #### 1Why decentralize What a network without an owner actually means, and why you can be part of it. #### 2Proof of Participation Beyond mining and staking: a chain that pays for doing the work, not owning the wealth. #### 3How it compares The old deal next to the new one, your voice, your files, your records, your cut. #### 4Join the project Six ways in, from downloading the wallet to running your own node or gateway. #### 5Get your first coins The faucet sends you free ZBC so you can try the network in five minutes. #### 6What you can do Exchange, business tools, staked games, calls, and two ways to earn from the plumbing. #### 7Run the numbers How many coins would your node collect? Slide the node count and watch your share. Start here ### Most of the internet has a landlord. *This part doesn't.* Your bank, your messenger, your app store, each one is a company's computer, with a company's rules. They can freeze your account, read your data, raise the fees, or simply shut down. You're a guest. A **decentralized network** replaces that single computer with thousands of independent ones, run by ordinary people all over the world. They constantly check each other's work, so **no single owner** can cheat, censor, or pull the plug. The rules are code that everyone can read, and everyone must follow, including the people who wrote it. #### A centralized service - One company owns the servers, and your account - Can freeze, censor or delete anything, anytime - Goes down when they go down - You take their rules or leave #### A decentralized network - Thousands of independent nodes verify every action - Nobody can freeze your coins or silence you - Keeps running as long as any nodes do - Rules are open code, the same for everyone ### And here's the best part: you can be one of the nodes This isn't a spectator sport. Anyone with a spare computer can download the node software, join the network, and start verifying transactions alongside everyone else, no permission slip, no application form, no minimum fortune. The network literally **is** its participants. That's the idea this project is named after, and the next page explains how we reward it. The idea ### Not proof of wealth. Not proof of wasted power. *Proof of Participation.* Every blockchain needs a way to decide who writes the next block. The classics have a flaw: **Proof of Work** hands the pen to whoever burns the most electricity, and **Proof of Stake** hands it to whoever already owns the most coins. Both drift toward the same place, power concentrating with the biggest players. This chain takes an evolved approach: **Proof of Participation**. The network continuously scores each node on what it actually **does**, staying online, validating honestly, relaying data, behaving well in consensus, and that participation score determines its rewards. #### Join Spin up a node on ordinary hardware and register it on-chain. No mining farm, no giant stake required. #### Participate Your node validates transactions, keeps the ledger, and stays reachable. Every useful act builds its participation score; misbehaving or disappearing erodes it. #### Earn Block rewards are shared according to that score, steady work earns a steady income, instead of winner-takes-all lotteries. ### Why it matters #### Fair entry Influence is earned by doing the work, not bought. A well-run home node counts. #### Light footprint No puzzle-burning hardware race. Ordinary machines, ordinary power bills. #### Healthier network Rewards flow to nodes that keep the network fast and honest, so the incentive **is** the security model. ### Read the protocol itself This page explains the idea. The mechanism behind it, how a participation score is computed, how it decays, and how block rewards are apportioned from it, is written up as a formal specification on its own site. [Learn the protocol →](https://proofofparticipation.network/) Side by side ### Same internet. *Very different deal.* This isn't really about coins, it's about **data**: who holds it, who profits from it, and what you're allowed to do with it. Here's the deal you get today, next to the one this network offers. The old way · centralized services & classic chains Proof of Participation Who makes the money You create the value, posts, files, trades, traffic, and a large corporation collects it. Servers, ads and fees all feed one balance sheet. The people who run the network **are** the network. Every participating node earns a share of every block, **everyone who participates earns**. Your voice Platforms decide what may be published and seen. Accounts and posts can quietly disappear, and appeals go to the same company that removed them. **Nobody can censor you.** What you publish is carried by thousands of independent nodes, there's no desk where a takedown order can land. Your files Cloud storage is someone else's disk behind a login and a subscription, lose the account (or the company loses interest) and the files go with it. **Save your files to the network itself.** They're addressed to your keys, not to an account, and stay retrievable wherever you are. Your records & paperwork Form submissions, invoices and business records pass through third-party processors, on their terms and their retention policies. **Manage form submissions and records on-chain**, verifiable by anyone you choose, alterable by no one, with escrow and multi-signature built in. Proving things Proving a document existed on a given date means notaries, certificates, fees and filing cabinets. **Proof of existence is built in.** Timestamp any document's fingerprint on the chain, a permanent, independently checkable record, in seconds. Joining in, versus classic blockchains Proof of Work rewards whoever owns the biggest mining farm; Proof of Stake rewards whoever already holds the most coins. Either way, the big get bigger. An ordinary computer and reliable behavior earn influence, **participation is the stake**, and steady work earns a steady share. The energy bill Proof of Work spends a small country's worth of electricity solving puzzles that exist only to be hard. A participation score replaces the hardware arms race, ordinary machines, ordinary power bills, same security goal. Use the services, or be one of the people paid to provide them, the door is the same either way. Get involved ### Pick your way in. The project grows one participant at a time, and there's a door for every level of commitment, from "just curious" to "running infrastructure". #### Use the wallet The whole network in one file that runs on your own computer. Send, trade, chat, play, no install, no account. [Download wallet.zip](https://zoobc.network/wallet.zip) [verify your download →](https://zoobc.com/verify) #### Run a node Validate the chain and collect coinbase rewards, with lottery odds proportional to your participation score. Estimate your rewards. One line on a fresh Ubuntu server: curl -fsSL https://zoobc.network/install | bash -s -- --node [See Genesis node allocations →](https://zoobc.com/genesis#node-allocations) #### Run a gateway Serve the wallet and front nodes for other users. The built-in relay automatically sells your server's unused monthly traffic to third parties, bandwidth you're already paying for becomes income. One line to stand one up: curl -fsSL https://zoobc.network/install | bash -s -- --gateway #### Read & build on the code The full source opens **about six months after mainnet launches**, a head-start that keeps the project from being cloned and hijacked before it stands on its own. Audit it, fork it, and build on it from then on. source opens ~6 months post-mainnet #### Join the conversation Questions, ideas, bug reports, the community is where the project is steered. [Join us on Telegram](https://t.me/zoobc_official) #### Join the foundation The project is steered by a foundation of founding roles and core contributors, and it's recruiting. [Founding roles & contributors](https://zoobc.blog/join-zoobc-founding-roles-and-core-contributors/) #### Just try it Grab a few free coins from the faucet and take the network for a spin. Five minutes, zero risk. ### Learn more #### ZooBC, the book The whole story, from where it began in 2019, volume one. #### Learn on YouTube The ZooBC playlist, concepts and architecture, explained on video. #### Follow ZooBC 2.0 News and progress on the rebuild, straight from the project blog. Faucet ### Your first coins, *on the house.* You can't feel a network through a paragraph. Paste your address below and the faucet sends you a small amount of ZBC, enough to make a payment, place a trade, or stake a game against a friend. This faucet runs on the public ZooBC TestNet, not MainNet. The coins it sends are test coins with no value, and the test chain can be reset at any time. [Open the testnet faucet](https://zoobc.com/faucet) ### No address yet? #### Download the wallet [wallet.zip](https://zoobc.network/wallet.zip), unzip it and open the HTML file in any browser. It runs locally; nothing to install. Want to be sure it's genuine? [Verify the download](https://zoobc.com/verify), drag it onto the page for a green light. #### Create your account The wallet generates your keys on your own device and gives you a recovery phrase. Write it down, it's the only copy. #### Copy your address Open **Receive**, copy the ZBC\_ address, and paste it above. ### Prefer maximum security? Create your account offline Your account is just a 24-word mnemonic, you can generate it yourself, on a machine that never touches the internet, with a trusted open-source tool. #### Get the generator Download [iancoleman.io/bip39](https://iancoleman.io/bip39/) and run it offline. It's open source, [review the code on GitHub](https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39) first if you like. #### Generate a 24-word mnemonic Keep it secure and **never share it**, those words are the account. #### Derive your ZooBC address In the coin dropdown pick **Zoo Blockchain** (coin type **883**, fifth from the bottom of the list). Your address will look like: ZBC\_T6NDZOTJ\_47567SOU\_2I4PRNKD\_LRNXYJ63\_GXQ2OTD4\_FVZA4LQT\_7Q7KOJ77 One wallet, many doors ### It's not just money. *It's a toolbox.* Your address is a key to every service the network runs. The same identity that holds your coins also trades, does business, plays, and talks, with no company in the middle of any of it. #### Trade on the decentralized exchange Swap ZBC, tokens and bridged coins directly on-chain. Your keys hold the funds until the moment of the trade, there's no exchange account to be frozen or hacked. #### Run your business on-chain Invoices, escrow, multi-signature accounts, recurring payments, vesting, contract-grade money tools, built in, no lawyer's retainer required. #### Play games, for real stakes Challenge anyone to on-chain games where both stakes are locked by the protocol. Win the game, win the pot; nobody can welch and nobody can cheat the payout. #### Call people, wallet to wallet Voice and video calls signalled through the network's relays and addressed to a wallet, not a phone number. Your contact list is yours, everywhere. #### Install a node, earn coinbase rewards Put a spare machine to work validating the chain. Proof of Participation pays it a share of every block, in proportion to how well it participates. #### Install a gateway, sell traffic Gateways are the network's front doors, and their relay turns wasted bandwidth into income. Your server's unused monthly traffic normally just expires; a gateway automatically sells it to third parties who route calls and data through your relay, and you keep the proceeds. #### Give an AI agent a budget it cannot break An agent can hold its own account and spend inside a ceiling the network enforces, not one it is trusted to respect. [See what works today →](https://zoobc.com/ai-agents) #### Pay by tap, settle on the chain ProxCell is a working paper on confirming an in-person payment locally in milliseconds, then settling it globally. [Read the working paper →](https://zoobc.com/proxcell) Every one of these is live in the same single-file wallet. [Download it](https://zoobc.network/wallet.zip), grab some faucet coins, and see for yourself. Where this is heading next is a network where the AI itself is not owned by one company either. [Read the decentralized AI direction →](https://zoobc.com/decentralized-ai) Run the numbers ### How many coins would *your node* collect? Of the 33,333,333.33 ZBC total supply, at most 3,333,333.33 are allocated in the genesis block. At least 30,000,000 enter the world as block rewards, shared among the nodes doing the work. Emission starts at mainnet genesis (Q1 2027) and follows a fixed 15-year curve that is front-loaded: about 18 percent of the pool in the first year, two thirds by year five, everything by year fifteen. The earliest nodes earn the most. Each block's reward is split across the participating winners, so **the fewer nodes on the network, the bigger every node's average share**. Set the node count and see what an equally participating node collects. 10 nodes 100 1,000 5,000 nodes #### Your first year – ZBC collected #### By year 5 – ZBC collected #### Full 15 years – ZBC, your share of all block rewards #### First day – ZBC/day per node, about 16,516 ZBC network-wide Assumes genesis in Q1 2027, the protocol emission of at least 30,000,000 ZBC over 15 years, a constant node count, and every node participating equally. In reality your share scales with your node's participation score, and the node count will change as the network grows.