How does the proof of work of Primecoin actually work?

Marketplace Primecoin
1

I ike Primecoin, however, I do not understand how the proof of work works.

Say I see the current blopckchain. I am a miner. I see the next block of pending transactions. What do I do? How, exactly, do I produce a proof of work that validates the pending transactions as well as finds a chaib of cunningham primes?

Relevant soure code if avilable would also be good.

Thanks!

2

when mining primecoin you are looking for prime number chains, Cunningham of the first kind, Cunningham of the second kind and Bi-twin chains are accepted. Finding the prime number chains becomes exponentially harder as the chain length is increased (difficulty).

3

I understand that the proof of work is about finding chains of primes.

My question is: given a blockchain state, what is the problem I need to solve?

Are you saying that the problem of finding the chain of primes is independent of the transactions in the blockchain?

4

yes,
transactions are broadcasted on the network, peers collect transactions, when someone finds a block the transactions are added to it

5

So what has finding a chain of primes got to do with the specific transactions on the network? Is it completely independent?

6

Yes, the finding a chain of primes has nothing to do with those transactions.
blocks dont require transactions (except for the coinbase transaction generating the blockreward), transactions do require blocks, so I guess the only relation with finding a chain and the transactions is that the transactions get recorded on the chain when there is a block.

7

I see.

So how does Primecoin decide which blocks are valid? How does it resolve forks? Is it the miner who finds a chain of primes is the one that gets to decide the direction the blockchain goes? Or is there hashing like in bitcoin?