you haven't answered this:
how do i prove that i actually invested a certain amount computing power into solving the problem?
for example:
I could get 100/1000 miners (even with the same pc, just a script that sends some junk over and over again pretending to be different clients) submit the same wrong answer and claim it took 100GHash/s
they will be a majority on that specific problem
and the asker isnt allowed to reject the answer
Topic: Could Mining Be Useful? - page 3. (Read 3736 times)
what would prevent me sending junk as an answer?
what would prevent the asker to mark correct answers as junk to gain more computing power?
how much computing power does 1 coin give you?
how do i prove that i actually invested a certain amount computing power into solving the problem? the difficulty of real life problems is not predictable. some could turn out to be unsolvable.
what would prevent the asker to mark correct answers as junk to gain more computing power?
how much computing power does 1 coin give you?
how do i prove that i actually invested a certain amount computing power into solving the problem? the difficulty of real life problems is not predictable. some could turn out to be unsolvable.
Your work would be compared to work being performed by other computers. If your answers conflict with other people's results then the network would reject your answer and you'd get nothing.
The asker has no ability to reject or approve answers. That determination is made by a consensus among all datacoin users. Once the asker burns their coins they have no power over what happens, they just get a result. The asker can't choose to withhold payment.
The computing power 1 coin gives you would be slightly less (1%ish less) than the computing power required to get a coin. The exact amount of computing assigned to each coin doesn't really matter for the concept to work, since if it's less valuable people will just collect/trade/burn larger quantities but use it the same way.
The amount of calculations each coin would give you would never change, although as computers get more advanced and calculations cheaper to do the value of the currency would gradually decline over time. This inflation would be slow and predictable though, since it's tied to progress in computer engineering, not to some government printing coins.
It doesn't matter whether you solve the problem or not. The asker is not guaranteed a satisfactory result, only that they'll have a certain amount of computing power devoted to their problem. The network wouldn't care whether or not miners solve the problem, just that the work they report cross checks with other people's work to prove they're not sending in false answers.
what would prevent me sending junk as an answer?
what would prevent the asker to mark correct answers as junk to gain more computing power?
how much computing power does 1 coin give you?
how do i prove that i actually invested a certain amount computing power into solving the problem? the difficulty of real life problems is not predictable. some could turn out to be unsolvable.
what would prevent the asker to mark correct answers as junk to gain more computing power?
how much computing power does 1 coin give you?
how do i prove that i actually invested a certain amount computing power into solving the problem? the difficulty of real life problems is not predictable. some could turn out to be unsolvable.
Well, I imagine it'd work more or less the same as bitcoin. Except you'd need some way of tagging math problems with your coin's key, and then tracking who works on that problem and how much work they do.
The challenge in that is how to divorce it from some central authority. Sure, you could have some overseer note that these computers each did this much work, and then split the coins up among them. But what you'd need to do is somehow make the overseer a network of all the computers running datacoin.
So the way the process would work is:
Step 1 - Data Coins are initially generated through pointless math (they can always be generated through pointless math, but the code deliberately makes performing useful math more profitable)
Step 2 - People who want calculations performed burn their data coins, and destroying the coin entitles them to upload a math problem to the network of datacoin users.
Step 3 - Miners' machines start contributing to pending problems. As they solve the problem their progress is passed around and compared with other datacoin users, who log who performs work and how much they do. Usually each problem is being worked on by many miners, and each miner is performing a little bit of work on many different problems simultaneously.
Step 4 - Once a certain amount of work is performed and confirmed coins are delivered to the miners.
Step 5 - The completed data is posted to the network (if possible in encrypted form so only the original poster can understand it)
There would be no point to burning datacoins to hire others to mine datacoins for you, since the amount of coins you'd receive would be equal to the coins you spend. Also there should be additional safeguards to prevent people from assigning pointless tasks to the network like this, just to be malicious. For example, perhaps burning datacoins would incur a slight loss, a usage fee, so that the work you can buy with a coin is 99% that of the work it takes to make a coin.
The challenge in that is how to divorce it from some central authority. Sure, you could have some overseer note that these computers each did this much work, and then split the coins up among them. But what you'd need to do is somehow make the overseer a network of all the computers running datacoin.
So the way the process would work is:
Step 1 - Data Coins are initially generated through pointless math (they can always be generated through pointless math, but the code deliberately makes performing useful math more profitable)
Step 2 - People who want calculations performed burn their data coins, and destroying the coin entitles them to upload a math problem to the network of datacoin users.
Step 3 - Miners' machines start contributing to pending problems. As they solve the problem their progress is passed around and compared with other datacoin users, who log who performs work and how much they do. Usually each problem is being worked on by many miners, and each miner is performing a little bit of work on many different problems simultaneously.
Step 4 - Once a certain amount of work is performed and confirmed coins are delivered to the miners.
Step 5 - The completed data is posted to the network (if possible in encrypted form so only the original poster can understand it)
There would be no point to burning datacoins to hire others to mine datacoins for you, since the amount of coins you'd receive would be equal to the coins you spend. Also there should be additional safeguards to prevent people from assigning pointless tasks to the network like this, just to be malicious. For example, perhaps burning datacoins would incur a slight loss, a usage fee, so that the work you can buy with a coin is 99% that of the work it takes to make a coin.
I could burn coins to make more coins. Also, i can submit the same solutions multiple times.
Bitcoin mining is useful. It would be great if it could do X, Y, Z or get me a drink at no extra cost, but how?
Well, here's an idea I had. I'm not sure how technically feasible it is. I'm calling it Data Coins.
In this system people would still mine to generate new datacoins. But instead of having purposeless calculations to mine new coins, people who already possess datacoins would be able to destroy them to determine what the proof of work is.
"Burning" datacoins would allow you to upload a math problem to the network, and all mining computers would begin working on it. To get new coins they wouldn't have to actually solve your problem, but just prove that a certain amount of processing power was spent on it. That way a difficult or impossible wouldn't shut the network down.
You would only receive a limited amount of processing power for each coin, and once the network performs that much work on your problem it would stop doing it. For example, if you burn 1,000 datacoins you're entitled to 1,000 times as much work as someone who burns 1 datacoin.
The work required to generate a coin by working on a problem would be equal to the work you can then destroy the coin to claim. So essentially Data Coins would be a way of trading rights to calculations. The value that would back them is the worth of those calculations to universities, governments, and corporations. For example, if MIT wants to run a simulation they could buy $100,000 USD of datacoins, then burn them to rent out a powerful distributed computing network.
In this system people would still mine to generate new datacoins. But instead of having purposeless calculations to mine new coins, people who already possess datacoins would be able to destroy them to determine what the proof of work is.
"Burning" datacoins would allow you to upload a math problem to the network, and all mining computers would begin working on it. To get new coins they wouldn't have to actually solve your problem, but just prove that a certain amount of processing power was spent on it. That way a difficult or impossible wouldn't shut the network down.
You would only receive a limited amount of processing power for each coin, and once the network performs that much work on your problem it would stop doing it. For example, if you burn 1,000 datacoins you're entitled to 1,000 times as much work as someone who burns 1 datacoin.
The work required to generate a coin by working on a problem would be equal to the work you can then destroy the coin to claim. So essentially Data Coins would be a way of trading rights to calculations. The value that would back them is the worth of those calculations to universities, governments, and corporations. For example, if MIT wants to run a simulation they could buy $100,000 USD of datacoins, then burn them to rent out a powerful distributed computing network.
But you ARE performing useful math - not only does mining "unlock bitcoins" as you put it but it also keeps the whole bitcoin universe secure.
As to your question, of course there are ways block chain hashing can be combined with other useful applications.
Care to come up with and implement one?
As to your question, of course there are ways block chain hashing can be combined with other useful applications.
Care to come up with and implement one?
How could it be combined with other useful applications? Would there be a way of assigning problems to a mining network so that they earn bitcoins (or another currency) by solving specific math problems? But also to avoid having one central authority in control, make it so problems and rewards aren't assigned by one central authority but somehow built into the coin's code or controllable by anyone with the currency?
But you ARE performing useful math - not only does mining "unlock bitcoins" as you put it but it also keeps the whole bitcoin universe secure.
As to your question, of course there are ways block chain hashing can be combined with other useful applications.
Care to come up with and implement one?
As to your question, of course there are ways block chain hashing can be combined with other useful applications.
Care to come up with and implement one?
Bitcoin signature blocks are useful for many things that use secure signatures and open ledgers, amongst other things. There are many apps in development.
One thing that bothers me about bitcoins is that the raw calculations of mining don't do anything but unlock bitcoins.
Is there any way to design a crypto currency that's unlocked by performing useful calculations? Something along the lines of folding @ home, where in addition to enriching yourself you're also performing useful math?
Is there any way to design a crypto currency that's unlocked by performing useful calculations? Something along the lines of folding @ home, where in addition to enriching yourself you're also performing useful math?
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