Topic: WHY ARE WE wasting so much computing power?Cant we get coins for helping science (Read 2669 times)

you make a point.
it's better to be rewarded by a happy ending

Curecoin dev team have been working with Stanford University to do this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/pre-ann-curecoin-development-continues-330685

Latest thread regarding launch in a couple of weeks:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/curecoin-progress-update-launch-approaching-432510

Right now, most of the btc hashrate comes from ASIC instead of CPU and GPU.
If my understanding is correct, ASICs are designed to work well only in integer performance.

What kind of scientific research requires only integer computation instead of floating-point?

I'm trying to solve that exact problem with Scicoin ( http://www.scicoin.org )

My solution to the problem involves a bit of social trickery and a new (non-?)"economic" model.

The idea is to keep the proof-of-work as it is, completely useless, but, have the network "detect" that a block has been "mined by science." When the network thinks a scientific institution found a block, it multiplies the reward by 10,000. Then there's a social contract: scientific institutions should only use these coins to reward useful computing work done by people who donate their computing power to solve useful problems, at the same approximate rate that "mining" the coin itself would reward the users. E.g. if you would earn 1 coin for 1 petaCHOP (Coin Hash OPerations) of work, you would also give 1 coin for whatever cure for cancer computing effort you put in that's roughly equivalent to 1 petaCHOP. The scientific institutions would not spend these coins otherwise (i.e. let them rot). This way for ever X computing effort to "mine" the coins, OVER 9000 times that can be spent on useful work and you still get coins for that AS IF you were mining them too.

The way the network detects a "Block Mined for Science(TM)" is by checking whether there's a pool mining more than half of it. The network simply assumes that whoever mines the majority of the coins is a pool that serves scientific projects and that it does the right thing.

And about the "not-really-a-coin" aspect: the coins are unlimited and you get paid by the hashes you put in, forever. To avoid runaway inflation we can simply use Freicoin's awesome "coin rot" feature (i.e. use it or lose it).

The whole idea is for the system itself to NOT be "money," that is, it is not to be confused with a vehicle for "storing wealth," for the current cultural definition of "wealth." With this, it becomes possible to have a simple "10,000x" reward heuristic based on a simple no-stress honor system. If it is exploited, oh well, no problem, just reset the game or try something else.

And the coins are unlimited, there's no end to mining and therefore no end to the toy-incentive to contribute to science.

And Basic Income was a huge motivator of this whole train of thought. Interesting that that was mentioned in this thread too.

Didn't know about gridcoin, curecoin. Will look into them.

I would support fixing women

Folding@Home should develop their own coin.

For every protein you fold you get a coin.
With a secondary network to process transactions where you can only get tx fees.
Something like that. I was thinking this years ago.

It's a shame we can't put our computing power towards scientific research while getting paid for it.

this idea is crazy compared to today.It possible if food electrvity air = free "Well you keep working on that" too  

according to history books people in medieval ages lived very short cuz of all what they ate breathed etc.Maybe someday mortality will be solved?



back on topic can you ask coin creators too for this idea? if its possible?

Like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Lol, what? Solve things like moratlity and women?! Please explain!

Well you keep working on that. I had a crazy idea today where people would just get paid for whatever they really wanted to do with their lives no matter productive or useless it was. Seems maybe there is room for that in the world. But if someone can write a program to solve things like mortality and women they can get great funding as is, it is a shortage of something beyond computing power is my take. I could be wrong.  

the coim creators

enough people tell them they will do it

Well ok i want to solve mortality. Or maybe women.

Toss up there. In any case if i could do that with my pc i would. Whom shall i ask is writing the software?

gridcoin doesnt allow you to choose what problem you want to solve

You can. You just have to support gridcoin.

Also ripple works with worldcommunitygrid.

Bitcoin won't change, cause it would make asics obvious ...

If a coin like my idea was made tomorrow would you mine it instead of btc?

this isa huge ripoff if you help find a cure and have to pay for it anyway

How do we measure 'hardness'?

You will need at least one really clever person like Satoshi Nakamoto, or Vijay Panda, or leaders of the World Community Grid projects (which I've briefly forgotten), a bunch of other clever people, some support staff and about 2-5 years funding for them.

I do wish we could've used folding but the work isn't flexible and checking it is another manner.

Gridcoin says it does something like this. Inhave no idea if it is legit, only read their page. Altruism and money creation tend to not blend well. Wish that it were, but the concepts behind bitcoin are bound to spill into everywhere. Cure for cancer may be even more lucrative than treatment, also saw bitcongress somewhere with a token system for voting.  

High entropy systems are wasteful by definition, but the synergies they create are often worth it. You just have to look at the big picture with btc.

Improve it by learning how to write grammatically correct posts. People can't help you if they don't understand you.

If English is not your first language then don't use for this idea.

how many people will have to be inlvoled in this to launch off? how hard will it be?