Bitcoin Forum

Here is an idea:   a world-wide, distributed, decentralized supercomputer that would use bitcoin's block hashes as timetamps for synchronization of processes.

Such a computer would have quite a low ticking clock (only 6 ticks an hour in average), but it would me massively parallel.

This is just a short description and I'm not going in the details of how exactly it would work but I have some ideas.  I'll be more explicit if some people are interested.

Am pretty sure BenRayField would be interested in this (or was it his post earlier that prompted yours). ;)

Well, I was thinking about the problem of light clients and having to trust a blockchain server, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if, instead of interrogating a single blockchain server about some transaction's validity, wouldn't it be great if the bitcoin network as a single entity, could respond to such requests with a cryptographically secure and verifiable result.

It would be like asking an oracle: "O Bitcoin Network, my buddy Tom wants to pay with this transaction 0xblahblahblah. Canst thou tell me if I should accept it?"

In a certain sense, this would be treating the bitcoin network as a computer, or at least, a computing machine. Once you're adequately connected, the system would be quite secure I think.  Being massively parallel would help with verifying many simultaneous transactions. I got as a far as thinking that this ComputingMachine would merely require an authoritative list of transactions, and then I thought, oh, like a blockchain :-/