FACT0RN Blockchain, recipient of the 2022 Coinbase Cryptocurrency Community Fund grant, implements an innovative approach to replace hashing with PoW-style integer factorization; a problem of interest to both the private sector, the public sector, and academia . The FACT0RN blockchain was officially launched on April 20, 2022 at 6:09am EST and has been running successfully for over a year. Currently, it has over 120 active nodes and the difficulty is increasing rapidly.

The PoW mechanism employed by the FACT0RN blockchain involves integer factorization of wonderful numbers in base 2. The process of mining blocks is structured in such a way that the most cost-effective method is to screen random intervals of 2-based wonderful numbers given by the nodes. On average, several nonces and thousands of numbers need to be factored before a miner finds a good base-2 number.

Due to the widespread interest in factoring in the cryptography community and a dozen or so enthusiast communities, the FACT0RN blockchain introduces a "dead pool" feature. Users can participate in the dead pool by paying a FACT coin fee and submitting a number. Additionally, others can contribute more coins to any amount already in the dead pool. This feature is currently under development.