Riecoin is a decentralized and open source peer to peer digital currency, released in 2014. It is a fork of Bitcoin, also Proof of Work (PoW) based, and proposes similar features. However, its PoW is better, and this is what distinguishes Riecoin from similar currencies.

In short, computers supporting the Bitcoin network to make it secure by validating transactions are called miners, and must constantly solve a problem defined by the Bitcoin’s PoW type. This is a heavy task, consuming a lot of energy. In the Bitcoin and most PoW altcoins cases, the problem is to find an hash that meets an arbitrary criteria. To solve it, miners are continuously generating random hashes until they find one meeting the criteria.

Riecoin miners are not looking for useless hashes, but doing actual scientific number crunching, like in Folding@Home or the GIMPS (currently, they are looking for prime constellations). The project broke and holds several number theory world records, and demonstrated that scientific computations can be done using the PoW concept, and at the same time power a secure and practical international currency. It effectively solves the Bitcoin's power consumption issue without resorting to ideas like PoS that enrich the richer by design and makes value out of thin air.