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What I'd love to see (don't know if this has been explored to some extent yet) would be proof of work but for useful work: think Folding@home or Einstein@home (
by duozerk 10y ago
What I'd love to see (don't know if this has been explored to some extent yet) would be proof of work but for useful work: think Folding@home or Einstein@home (BOINC stuff in general) in order to mine a blockchain.
It's very hard to do (if it is even possible) in a non-centralized way though. Who submits the work ? who validates it has been performed properly ? and so on.
- UweSchmidt 10y agoThis is Ethereum: "Mining" generates Ethers, but also runs code, potentially powering useful blockchain apps.
- duozerk 10y agoThe current PoW algorithm in ethereum is ethash and does not perform useful work during coin generation, unless I'm mistaken. You spend ether to fuel useful work. Also, Ethereum (forked) aim to switch to PoS soon (ETC may not).
- UweSchmidt 10y agoOf course you are right, coin generation is a waste. The part where ether is changing hands for useful work is at least somewhat "useful". Best we can hope for is a future blockchain that emphasizes this kind of work more. A seti@home-coin or cure-cancer-coin is, as you suggested, hard to implement.
- codingmyway 10y agoThe http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest link given above explains why you can incentivise useful processing but it won't stop the 'waste' issue. You also have the problem of regulating the difficulty if you want consistent rewards. Non-pure math problems aren't going to allow that.