Amazon Wins Patent for Proof-of-Work Cryptographic System

Tech giant Amazon has been granted a patent for various techniques to build a proof-of-work cryptographic system similar to those used by blockchains such as bitcoin.

First filed in December 2016 and awarded Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the patent outlines how Merkle trees can be generated as a solution to a proof-of-work challenge, among other benefits.

The bitcoin blockchain network uses a PoW algorithm with the work done by miners.

In this case, Amazon says, the Merkle tree creation is the work demanded by the algorithm.

"A proof-of-work system where a first party may request access to a computing resource. A second party may determine a challenge that may be provided to the first party. A valid solution to the challenge may be generated and provided for the request to be fulfilled."

"The challenge may include a message and a seed, such that the seed may be used at least in part to cryptographically derive information that may be used to generate a solution to the challenge. A hash tree may be generated as of generating the solution," it adds.

Elsewhere, the patent also mentions "Cryptographic key," "Digital signature" and "Public signing key," among other concepts related to blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

The patent does not directly discuss blockchains or cryptocurrencies, however.

While a much talked about Amazon cryptocurrency has so far remained elusive, the e-commerce giant has been moving further into the blockchain space.

Earlier this month, its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, launched its Managed Blockchain service for wider use among enterprise clients.