2 ms·

What? Any NP-complete problem is "cheap" to verify vs. to solve. You're telling me there are no economically valuable NP-complete problems?

• TylerE 9y ago
  If there are, why has no one built a coin around it unstead of using untold watts to calculate hashes?
  • kirillseva 9y ago
    umm, generating a block whose hash starts with N consecutive zeroes (e.g. 000000009A8C3...) seems to be exactly that - an NP hard problem that's trivial to verify in polynomial time.
    • TylerE 9y ago
      yes, but it's not useful in someway outside of the blockchain, which was the thrust of GP's argument.
  • setr 9y ago
    They did, like protein folding. Part of it is that if its going to be a currency, its not particularly appealing that some group gets arbitrary benefits from the act of mining, for free. The government has the power to force such a currency on us, but otherwise, unless the economically valuable activity is globally valuable, its a difficult proposition to justify.