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You know what would be totally awesome? A cryptocoin whose core workings are derived from Charity. A coin based on Charity† would offer stronger safety guarante

by Dn_Ab 13y ago

You know what would be totally awesome? A cryptocoin whose core workings are derived from Charity. A coin based on Charity† would offer stronger safety guarantees for complex contracts than any other existing or proposed coin (certainly more than Ethereum). Especially if extended to implicitly capture complexity. †If you understand the multiple levels on which that statement works - especially on a site named after a fixed point combinator - then I think you will agree I deserve to feel as clever as I did when I wrote it =D.

makmanalp 13y ago
Could you elaborate a bit? This sounds promising but I'm having trouble understanding how it would work. You need to donate to charity to verify a transaction?
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  I have no idea what he means, but there's an interesting crypto called Devcoin that allocates 90% of the mined coins to selected open source developers. It's sort of a charity coin, in a sense. Opens up other possibilities, certainly. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Devcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Devcoin
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  It seems to me like he's talking in manager speek/buzzwords. I'm entirely unconvinced he has even the slightest idea how it would work.
- silentOpen 13y ago
  Charity is an experimental FP language. < http://pll.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/charity1/www/home.html http://pll.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/charity1/www/home.html >
kingmanaz 13y ago
A cryptocurrency whose hashing was somehow based on protein folding (i.e. Folding@Home) would be comparatively simple to pitch to laymen. Q: "Where does 'curecoin' come from?" A: "From people who research new medicines. Those who perform the most research for new drugs are occasionally awarded new 'curecoins'. Those coins are eventually spent into the economy." Etc.
- gus_massa 13y ago
  Protein folding isn't a good "proof of work" problem. Really the expression "proof of work" is misleading. The main point of mining is not the lottery part. The lottery is only a side effect. The main point of mining is to extend the blockchain. Pick the last block in the blockchain, add the recent transactions and create a new block in a way that is almost imposible to forge. The blockchain keeps all the transactions without a central autority. - Q: How are we sure that nobody replaced the old blocks with fake versions? A: Chain the blocks, so they have to forge the old the chains of block up to the newest. - Q: How are we sure that it's difficult to forge a lot of blocks? A: Made it as difficult as possible, but not so difficult that it's impossible to find the next block. Pick a problem where we can predict and adjust the difficulty of the problem. - Q: How are we sure that the blocks are legit? A: Made it easy to verify. Finding a block should be difficult, but checking it should be easy. - Q: How are we sure that it's really difficult to forge them? A: Use some cryptographic secure problem (and hope that it's secure). Don't create your own apparent difficult problem. - Q: How do we convince people to mine? A: A lottery! Give 50 BTC for each block they found, plus fees.

by Dn_Ab 13y ago

makmanalp 13y ago

Could you elaborate a bit? This sounds promising but I'm having trouble understanding how it would work. You need to donate to charity to verify a transaction?

waterlesscloud 13y ago
I have no idea what he means, but there's an interesting crypto called Devcoin that allocates 90% of the mined coins to selected open source developers. It's sort of a charity coin, in a sense. Opens up other possibilities, certainly. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Devcoin https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Devcoin
sliverstorm 13y ago
It seems to me like he's talking in manager speek/buzzwords. I'm entirely unconvinced he has even the slightest idea how it would work.
silentOpen 13y ago
Charity is an experimental FP language. < http://pll.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/charity1/www/home.html http://pll.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/charity1/www/home.html >

kingmanaz 13y ago

A cryptocurrency whose hashing was somehow based on protein folding (i.e. Folding@Home) would be comparatively simple to pitch to laymen. Q: "Where does 'curecoin' come from?" A: "From people who research new medicines. Those who perform the most research for new drugs are occasionally awarded new 'curecoins'. Those coins are eventually spent into the economy." Etc.

gus_massa 13y ago
Protein folding isn't a good "proof of work" problem. Really the expression "proof of work" is misleading. The main point of mining is not the lottery part. The lottery is only a side effect. The main point of mining is to extend the blockchain. Pick the last block in the blockchain, add the recent transactions and create a new block in a way that is almost imposible to forge. The blockchain keeps all the transactions without a central autority. - Q: How are we sure that nobody replaced the old blocks with fake versions? A: Chain the blocks, so they have to forge the old the chains of block up to the newest. - Q: How are we sure that it's difficult to forge a lot of blocks? A: Made it as difficult as possible, but not so difficult that it's impossible to find the next block. Pick a problem where we can predict and adjust the difficulty of the problem. - Q: How are we sure that the blocks are legit? A: Made it easy to verify. Finding a block should be difficult, but checking it should be easy. - Q: How are we sure that it's really difficult to forge them? A: Use some cryptographic secure problem (and hope that it's secure). Don't create your own apparent difficult problem. - Q: How do we convince people to mine? A: A lottery! Give 50 BTC for each block they found, plus fees.