Would it be possible to design a cryptocurrency around solving hard problems?

[Dick Justice]

Crypto involves wasting a lot of bandwidth and electricity to run calculations, yes? There are of course, many real world problems that also require a lot of compute time to solve. To take an example, the Folding@home project is nothing more than a lot of computers folding a lot of proteins to make the world a better place. The potential overlap should be obvious, as is the follow-up question: has anyone ever attempted or would it ever be feasible to develop a cryptocurrency that represents the intersection of the two? Instead of mining hashes to mine hashes the hashes you're mining are actively helping to solve these big hard problems while simultaneously mining virtual money.

This intuitively seems impossible because most of these problems are random or at least non-deterministic, but the fact that you're able to read this in near realtime over however many continents for fractions of fractions of a coin already puts to lie so much of what was once known certainly to be impossible.

 

[Blasterisk]

No, don't give them any ideas. I want crypto to die so that I can afford a PC from some year after 1998.

 

[Not Really Here]

I mean, they could just make users running projects like folding@home intellectual property owners of their output, and split income among users who contribute based on how much they contribute, like a vested co-op R&D.
But hijack the current systems that are solving very different problems? I don't think so.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

In a sane world probably yes (if it abides by the rule of each new solution being harder to find than the previous one), but this is clownworld where we waste a fuckton of fuel and resources to create a stock market 2.0 that will make the ability of organizations to track your money even easier.

 

[ditto]

Crypto PoW needs problems that requires identical problems that can be solved in a finite amount of time with adjustable difficultly and where the answer can be quickly verified. No worthwhile real world problem meets these criteria.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I think another part of the issue is that the problems you solve for crypto have to provably be hard. It's possible that someone could come up with a new genius algorithm (or hardware or whatever) that would make protein folding easy, and what happens to your crypto then?

 

[Just Dont]

There are like 700 cryptocurrencies in the world and none of them really work as intended.

Your idea will only serve to either inflate the market with useless problems to solve, devaluating that currency enough as to lose money on electricity running the servers or computers mining it. The moment the problem is solved the trade of it will plummet due to lack of service for it.

On a side note I don't believe for a minute crypto could replace physical currency or bartering.

 

[Least Concern]

Crypto PoW needs problems that requires identical problems that can be solved in a finite amount of time with adjustable difficultly and where the answer can be quickly verified. No worthwhile real world problem meets these criteria.

This is the correct answer. incidentally, "PoW" stands for "Proof of Work" - evidence that your computer did work and found the correct answer. Maybe some day we'll have cases where the problems being solved by these mining algorithms are more practical, but unfortunately that's not where we are now.

Now there are cryptocurrencies that don't work this way. Some, like Sia, work by having your computer volunteer disk space. People can use that disk space to back up files like an elaborate DropBox or Google Drive, and you get the fee that they pay to do so. Steem is another interesting one where you can basically post blog articles and comments to articles on the network which can be upvoted by other users, and you receive a share of the currency created that day in proportion to the upvotes you received. Its primary front-end works like a cross between a blogging site and Reddit.

But mining on most of the most popular cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Etherium, Dogecoin - still requires proof-of-work mining currently.

 

[Finder]

by having your computer volunteer disk space. People can use that disk space to back up files like an elaborate DropBox or Google Drive

Sounds like an amazing way to have your door busted down, your computer sized, and yourself arrested.

The very people I wouldn’t trust storing things on my local network are the exact ones into this tech.

 

[Least Concern]

Sounds like an amazing way to have your door busted down, your computer sized, and yourself arrested.

The very people I wouldn’t trust storing things on my local network are the exact ones into this tech.

A fair concern, but the data is stored encrypted to a key that only the person storing the file possesses. In this hypothetical situation, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the noise on your drive is actually illicit material. Even if they're tapping your line somehow, they still only see noise coming in and going out. Eventually you'll be released and your computer returned. They probably won't pay to repair your door, though.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Eventually you'll be released and your computer returned.

Returned in the way of "pick it up in this computer forensics place in a city where you probably don't live within ten days or it will be forfeit. Can only be done during office hours and not on weekends. Good job on not being a criminal!

Sincerely, we don't care."

I had a friend that got raided at 6am because of his room mate. Not CP or computer crimes!

 

[seri0us]

you'll be released and your computer returned

You're funny.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Sounds like an amazing way to have your door busted down, your computer sized, and yourself arrested.

The very people I wouldn’t trust storing things on my local network are the exact ones into this tech.

Agreed, I also feel this way about libertarians.

A fair concern, but the data is stored encrypted to a key that only the person storing the file possesses. In this hypothetical situation, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the noise on your drive is actually illicit material. Even if they're tapping your line somehow, they still only see noise coming in and going out. Eventually you'll be released and your computer returned. They probably won't pay to repair your door, though.

I love the idea of people actually trying this line. I mean, pedos are so stupid that they'll have plenty of stuff out in the clear anyway, so I doubt it's ever come to it, but I don't think it would take much of a stretch for an expert to convince a jury against this.

It may be true that Freenet is a random collection of child porn plus some bombmaking textfiles, neither of which can be accessed unless you have the keys.. but law enforcement presumably do have the keys for most everything that's in reasonably wide circulation, and so all they have to do is analyze what's actually found itself cached on your node.

If the particular collection of child porn that has found its way onto your Freenet node is all part of the same series, it's going to be pretty obvious that it wasn't just random chance that caused that to happen.