Bitcoin Forum

Back in the day I used to donate extra CPU cycles for gene folding and SETI.   Is it possible to create a cryptocurrency that does this instead of mining?  I've been searching the forums, but I don't see much discussion on the topic. 
 

Lots of problems.

One problem: If the work exists before it is time to solve it then people can "save up" solutions and cause short term double spends eventually regardless of how small their power is. With Bitcoin the problem is "made up" when the previous block is found.

Wouldn't they still need to devote the power to solve the problem?  Perhaps you could break the problems into smaller chunks to be randomly checked out by single solvers.

There is some hard argument`s against using hash power to something else than just to confirming transaction.
I am forgot them :) Well you should start looking in Satoshi paper.

You need to be able to verify the answer for it to be useful to Bitcoin.

If computers can easily verify the answer, it's highly unlikely that it can be of any use to science. Simple as.

It takes trillions of hashes to solve a block and 1 hash to verify and the difficulty scales easily on a whim. How are you going to get an endless supply of protein problems easily verifiable of arbitrary difficulty that can't be solved beforehand?