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The ideal would be useful work that is a public good - no one can profit from it individually (other than by using it as a PoW), but the world benefits from it

The ideal would be useful work that is a public good - no one can profit from it individually (other than by using it as a PoW), but the world benefits from it in some way.

bsbechtel 9y ago
Like carbon sequestration?
- richdougherty 9y ago
  That's an interesting idea, but is there a way to prove carbon sequestration, except by providing me with some physical carbon?
  - bsbechtel 9y ago
    It was more of an off-handed comment, but I suppose you could rig some sort of carbon sensor that measures X amount of carbon pulled from the atmosphere. Of course any sort of sensor to the physical world can be rigged to produce a false signal.
richdougherty 9y ago
That's a really interesting thought. Would you consider public information (e.g. the result of a mining computation) to already be a public good? E.g. see discussion of information goods here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Challenges_in_identifying_public_goods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Challenges_in_iden...
- acheron9383 9y ago
  I wonder about some tasks that people already do for charity with their computers...like protein folding, finding super huge prime numbers. I don't know enough about the algorithms involved though to assert they satisfy the POW requirements. But some infrastructure already exists to distribute these problems.
- 0wing 9y ago
  Satoshi style PoW algorithms are intended to waste as much energy as possible. PoW mining just raises the capital cost to control the network without ever improving the speed or functionality. It's a system that increases the waste as time progresses.
VMG 9y ago
There is a market for public good: charities
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  You and I were thinking on similar lines. Since it's tech, my idea was the money went to FOSS nonprofits that focus on infrastructure like OS's, servers, crypto libraries, and so on. Even the GetRichCoin types building on that kind of foundation might do some incidental good for tech scene even if their plans don't work out.
kurthr 9y ago
Like Protein folding, Search for ExtraTerestrials, Asteroids, etc... there are a lot of them, some of which structured properly could provide public benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_...
- microtherion 9y ago
  I'd like to suggest "AlienCoin": Proof of work consists of processing SETI@Home blocks, and mining rewards are paid out to whoever finds an alien civilization.
eat_veggies 9y ago
Gridcoin [1] has been a thing for a while and you mine coins by participating in BOINC [2] projects like SETI@home. [1] http://www.gridcoin.us/ http://www.gridcoin.us/ [2] https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
- woah 9y ago
  This isn’t mining is it?

The ideal would be useful work that is a public good - no one can profit from it individually (other than by using it as a PoW), but the world benefits from it in some way.

bsbechtel 9y ago

Like carbon sequestration?

richdougherty 9y ago
That's an interesting idea, but is there a way to prove carbon sequestration, except by providing me with some physical carbon?
- bsbechtel 9y ago
  It was more of an off-handed comment, but I suppose you could rig some sort of carbon sensor that measures X amount of carbon pulled from the atmosphere. Of course any sort of sensor to the physical world can be rigged to produce a false signal.

richdougherty 9y ago

That's a really interesting thought. Would you consider public information (e.g. the result of a mining computation) to already be a public good? E.g. see discussion of information goods here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Challenges_in_identifying_public_goods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Challenges_in_iden...

acheron9383 9y ago
I wonder about some tasks that people already do for charity with their computers...like protein folding, finding super huge prime numbers. I don't know enough about the algorithms involved though to assert they satisfy the POW requirements. But some infrastructure already exists to distribute these problems.
0wing 9y ago
Satoshi style PoW algorithms are intended to waste as much energy as possible. PoW mining just raises the capital cost to control the network without ever improving the speed or functionality. It's a system that increases the waste as time progresses.

VMG 9y ago

There is a market for public good: charities

nickpsecurity 9y ago
You and I were thinking on similar lines. Since it's tech, my idea was the money went to FOSS nonprofits that focus on infrastructure like OS's, servers, crypto libraries, and so on. Even the GetRichCoin types building on that kind of foundation might do some incidental good for tech scene even if their plans don't work out.

kurthr 9y ago

Like Protein folding, Search for ExtraTerestrials, Asteroids, etc... there are a lot of them, some of which structured properly could provide public benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_...

microtherion 9y ago
I'd like to suggest "AlienCoin": Proof of work consists of processing SETI@Home blocks, and mining rewards are paid out to whoever finds an alien civilization.

eat_veggies 9y ago

Gridcoin [1] has been a thing for a while and you mine coins by participating in BOINC [2] projects like SETI@home. [1] http://www.gridcoin.us/ http://www.gridcoin.us/ [2] https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

woah 9y ago
This isn’t mining is it?