Bitcoin Forum

Just a concept, but would it possible to create a coin base on prime number. Where each new prime number discovered on system creates a new coin?

So at the beginning it would be really easy to make coins: 2,3,5...and obviously an infinite possibility of coins exists but new coins will be determined on the ability to find new largest prime numbers.

If such a coin existed there would be a gold rush of mathematicians trying to find larger and larger primes. I dunno if this is even possible...anybody?

The larger the prime gets, the greater distance you would have between blocks. This week, it might be an hour next week, a day or two. In a month you may not see a block for a month.

If you increase the payout accordingly it could still be worth it though, right?

it's not really mathematically/computationally expensive to generate primes afaik

How would the network confirm that the number is prime? That's a huge mathematical problem.

You pay miners to verify that new prime candidate is actually prime. They get rewarded with coins for each sucessfull verification.

And how do you confirm its the next prime?

But how can the network node confirm that the number found is prime? In Bitcoin miners solve - network tests. How this approach can be implemented here?

I don't think implementing prime coin as a currency is feasible.  If you want to help find primes you can contribute your CPU or GPU power to a BOINC project.

Ok, it was mainly just a speculation, thought it would be a cool idea since it would be easy for people to understand how to create more coins and would give monetary incentive to contributors to mathematical research

But maybe there are some other NP-hard problems that can be used but I think hashing is the best approach.

Huh? Each block in bitcoin and most alt chains that I am aware of, place transactions into a block. A block happens in BTC, every 10 minutes. In prime coin, blocks could be months apart... what do you do with all of the transactions?

Another good point is who confirms them? Look at the GIMPS project http://www.mersenne.org/

They are excited if they find one mersenne prime a year... and they have tons of people contributing power to the project. Although not as big as Bitcoin, it takes a long time. And then it takes a day or two to verify.

SHA256 is different for proof of work. It is VERY hard for me to find the next block by myself. Without ASICs pretty much impossible. However, on a tiny little Intel Atom, I can verify every single block in the block chain, processing hundreds of blocks per minute.

You can't do the same with very large prime numbers.

That makes sense: SHa256 is a hard to solve easy to verify problem; while Finding large prime numbers is a hard to solve hard to verify problem.

Maybe you make it so that all numbers are coins, however those that someone can find factors of are no longer valid coins and if you find the factors of a coin that is claimed to be prime you get a reward.

So lets say I claim large number "x" is a new prime number. Miners have an incentive to prove that it is not by trying tons of factors to verify that it is not prime.

Lets say if a factor is not found for a new number in "t" amount of time it can be assumed to be safely prime and that number can be spent. As long as miners have not found a factors of the numbers you've stake, your claim of a prime number coin remains valid.

How about a reverse finding the prime numbers? Set the largest ever known primer number as in the genesis block, and the block reward decreases as finding the previous prime because it will be easier. As time goes, the finding process will be faster and faster, it will be very suitable for rapid transactions.

http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2094#WhatIs


Largest RSA number factored

Ref: http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=3723
       http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2093

Hey!  What happened to MokiMarket?  Are you going to put up any more Bitcoins for sale?  My six year old daughter used to love playing the "Bitcoin game"  She was undefeated.  300+ bids was her record and she is very proud of it.

You just cannot beat a determined six year old at a mindless game like bidding on Bitcoins.

All worthy ideas are made possible  :)