Bitcoin Forum

http://folding.stanford.edu/

compatible with ati stream and cuda... donate your hashing power to cure cancer and other diseases.

im taking a break from mining for a couple days to do this... looks like a 7850 can complete this first project i found in 13 hours ( using 55% of my gpu power)

and you get points for your efforts! tell your friends you helped find cures and get brownie points with the ladies! who can resist a guy trying to cure cancer with his super computer setup???

 ;D

im guessing this has been posted b4, but it should be brought up again. if the whole bitcoin world took a break from mining every once in a while... we could make stanford university's work go by in a day instead of a year...

id like to see how many projects someone can complete a day with a 10 ghash rig.

oh.. and its really easy to use too... only took about 20 minutes to start processing on my first project.

the points you get i think are not able to trade, but just like a WOW account you could probably sell your accounts to someone who wants to donate to the cure project. then that person could pull up a web page and show their friends his bought account and say "i paid for this guy to complete this many projects".

sounds like a win win for someone with hashing power to spare.

oh, and on their stats page it looks like about 75% of their network is being helped by cpu's .... bitcoin miners could really show these guys how computing power is done... and think about this too... if we broadcast to the world that the bitcoin community is going to use its power to possibly cure cancer, it could mean more media and respect for the bitcoin / altcoin, meaning a possibly much higher value and interest in bitcoins and the people that mine them.

interesting! also a kind of "merge mining" cure cancer and generate money would be great!

WOW I remember being one of the first people to download that in 2000 (?) - I forgot about it, I am happy to see
it is still around 13 years later. Amazing.

Now I am curious to see how Seti @ home did...  :D

I used my ps3 for a long time on that project and then the powers at be decided to end ps3 folding for some unknown ludicrous reason... wonder how it affected their solution rate to be honest, I was happy to donate my ps3 when not being used for other things to that cause so was very disappointed to see it come to an end :-(

Of all the boinc style projects this was my favorite and looking forward to amazing things to come of it!  Wish there was some btc philanthropist types who could come up with a simple way to reward users for mining here with crypto rewards, it would no doubt be worthwhile for folding...

Great idea for an alt coin imo, if it's possible I don't know, I'm not a programmer but it would be great if someone could get it done that when you mine you actually do protein folding and while doing this you secure the network and mine coins . The coin that would do this, surely gets my support.

i might just start sponsoring small prizes for people completing projects through this system. like maybe 1 or 2 feathercoins per project. i can forward a port on my pc to accept connections to anyone how wants to make test out making a pool and we can see what kind of stats can be monitored per user. i would suggest knowing how to log directly into their system first and testing your rig before trying to connect to me to make a pool. its pretty easy though.

oh, and if anyone makes this crypto coin happen i get to name it CureCoin... ive been talking to people about it for weeks and driving my gf nutz with crypto talk lol.

i was thinking maybe it should be a coin that is premined by a trusted project holder, using secure btc or ltc wallet source code. then there should be a server set up to distribute these coins based on peoples efforts. maybe ill contact the project leader at standford and ask them if they want to make their own crypto currency to offer their cure helpers. then the main premined wallet would be held by standford (trustworthy host).

i was thinking about launching such a coin myself.. but stanford would do a much better job then any of us im sure.... they have those endless resources n smart people n stuff.

great idea guys! this coin would be the king of coins! why we haven't implement it earlier?
we would need something like "proof of folding" :D
i fould also this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=186731.0
someone has already proposed it!
CureCoin! i LOVE it

edit: i found more threads :)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176058.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64790.0

i guess this great idea and programming skills have to mature a little longer!

I don´t like the premine, this way you create a central authority who distributes the coins and this is really against the idea of cryptocurrencies.
It really should have some "proof of folding" imo

Because it isn´t easy to do, if at all :(

Some other points to really make it king:
- no premine
- announcing it weeks in front when it will be released so nobody can complain about early adopter/mining advantage

If this could be done, I think CureCoin would have a pretty good chance to become Bitcoin2.0

well guys i am trying folding client with an ATI 5870. i have "folding power" to 'Full' and i see only 20-30% usage.
then i can use the other 70-80% for the coins! what is your experience when using both cgminer and folding client together?
i am new to this :)

Great, im glad other people have been thinking about this too. the bitcoin community should start working with stanford on an open source project to make it all happen.

i read a few people said they would rather use their electricity on something more useful than random #'s and transactions. im sure with the right people working on it standord could create a great api to feed a new bitcoin block chain with proof of folding. stanford's existing point system appears to be work based on existing speed of your rig. im sure they could easily modify this to plug into a crypto currency that uses a more accurate pay per share type of coins / points system.

i bet there is some bitcoin devs that could make sure this open source projects creates this coin in a manner that is still protected by good encryption. possibly diverting only the amount of hashing power needed to confirm and calculate transactions.

This would require all the big devs on both sides to make the ultimate CureCoin. a BTC 2.0 for sure! i titled the topic " BTC MINER uses MASSIVE HASHING POWER to CURE CANCER!" because i think there is a good chance it could happen.

just like bitcoins, eventually most of (or all) the cures would get "solved / ACCEPTED 1d52s5fd"

so just like bitcoins, there would be a max amount that could be mined / solved. this would create an inflation proof coin from what i read of bitcoin. any disease that pops up afterwards could just be another bonus to get solved and create another block of coins to be distributed.

Biggest problem i see... making sure there is a good system in place to use left over hashing power for other good causes in the event bitcoin miners have enough collective power to cure cancer in the near future. a voting system for causes and other universities joining the system to advance all types of sciences would be great.

HAHA.

soon coming front page of NY times

"Bitcoin miners save the world! All crypto currency prices soar as all venues start accepting these coins in their never ending quest to be the ultimate currency"
 
  

i read that certain drivers like pre 12.4 and sdk 4 will force your card to 100% with folding. there are a few forums out there for folding and posts about cards and drivers.

as far as folding and mining at the same time... somehow it appears to work great.. go figure... this is awesome...

my 7850 normally is tuned for 260 mhashes for low power usage and hopefully no failing hardware.

right now im folding at 50 % card power, and mining at 200 mhash still... AWESOME!!!!!

Than we still have SETI@home, and actually there will always be scientific projects that need huge computer resources, even without diseases.


yeah, soon, only need to find a second Satoshi to make it happen  :P

imagine the IT department at stanford, and  SETI@home's IT team, along with the help of the bitcoin community doing an open source project... they could make the Satoshi BTC 1.0 look obsolete. im sure other universities would jump on the bandwagon as well. im sure BTC will always be a sought after item. the potential of an open source coin like this with the backing of major universities would outdo the BTC in every way with new advancements.

Still it is less, so if you would make a coin where the mining and folding just is divided from each other, some will just strip the folding out of it to mine the coins. Would defeat the purpose unless it is possible to make it waterproof the 2 can't be stripped from each other in order to mine coins. Folding - mining: 90% - 10% and if this isn't accurate no new coins will be generated by you.

This could be solved by interleaving the two things. Like you primarily mine blocks but if a block contains a proof of fold it gets way more coins. So you have to mine blocks to get the others to accept your prof of fold.

But the proof of fold is the interesting thing. Bitcoins POW works because you have to do a lot of calculations to find it but very little to check it. In fact you are doing the same simple calculation over and over again and also do it for checking the POW. In folding there are maybe/most likely a lot of different calculations on the same data, so one big complex calculation. To check the POW you would have to redo that one.

It seems to me that stanford has the same problem. They are not releasing there sourcecode because people used to cheat their credit system.

so i emailed someone at stanford. The response i got was that have already discussed this. sounds like it might become a reality. i urged him to join us here on the bitcointalk.org forums so the bitcoin community can exchange ideas about how to make such a coin work. 

obviously btc and more so ltc are very secure types systems. it would certianly stop people from trying to steal folding points is there was a proof of folding value figured into the coin somewhere. as suggested b4 wouldnt it be possible to make the coin require proof of folding , proof of work, while using maybe 10% of the power to to the actual mining to cover transaction and security??

I did Seti@Home for years then I switched over to BOINC and did Rosetta and World Community Grid (which has quite a few projects like Cancer, Aids, Water Purification, etc...). I had my computer running this type of software easily for the last 10 years.

Boinc Client is the best client out there for doing this made by Berkeley Labs:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

List of Projects:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

My Favorites:
http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

Folding is, or at least, should be amenable to a proof-of-work function. I'm studying molecular biology, so I can give more background.

Basically, folding is PoW in that:
1. It's difficult to find a configuration that is "better" then the best so far. By "best", I am referring to the minimum free energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_structure_prediction), or a similar score system, where the atoms in the protein are in a most energetically favorable state. That is analogous to "difficulty" - If difficulty increases, then the free energy criteria required to satisfy the "folded" criteria is smaller. This problem is difficult because of the vast configuration space of possible positions for each of the protein residues (something on the order of 3^300), otherwise known as Levinthal's paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinthal%27s_paradox).
2. It's relatively simple to compute the free energy of the system. (More difficult than a hash, but much simpler than trying to find the minimum free energy structure).
3. If someone manages to "cheat" (find a structure with a good MFE in substantially less time than the rest), well that's called a scientific breakthrough. And that someone gets rewarded with a lot of coins. Probably the most direct incentivizing of R&D possible.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit some time. Interesting concept.

Let's get real and forget all this altruism and donation BS.

If you really want people to use their resources for finding cures, make it profitable.

Check out BOINC.  It's what SETI@Home evolved into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

I propose a BOINCoin, redeemable (at market rates) for computer power, to monetize and incentivize an infrastructure for distributed computing.

Kind of like what Coinlab wanted to do, but building on successful existing tools instead of re-inventing the wheel, engine, and automatic transmission.   :D

Wow. This is exactly the kind of stuff that proves that if bitcoin devs and scientists shared some info you can really make it happen.

Love the idea people keep mentioning of a block chain that has normal mining blocks, and then "Folding blocks". the "normal mining blocks" keep the coins secure. since it would be a large project unlikely to be hit by 51% attack. Would it be possible to decrease difficulty of the normal mining blocks to almost nothing, so that the transaction system stays fast. that way the mining part of the coin would not steal computing power from the folding process.

the mining blocks would have no need to go up in difficulty as the folding blocks / projects vary in size. the size of the folding block / project completed could determine the reward in CureCoins.

Making the mining blocks pay out nothing would stop people from trying to bypass the folding blocks. so that solves another problem someone brought up.

great stuff there too! maybe all of these projects from Folding, Boinc, Seti and the rest of them should all make their own coin and compete for the bitcoin worlds hashing power.

they could make "BionCoin","FoldingCoin","SetiCoin" etc

Not quite as altruistic as trying to cure cancer, but there is this also: www.mersenne.org

Great as a stress test!

"Some" amount of centralization will be required for the initial phase of this project, but this is what I see:

Folding blocks: (centralized portion in underline)
- A consensus of N proteins that need structures is arrived at (by the scientific community in collaboration with the coin authors). This times the block reward is the total # of coins in the pool.
Let's say 10000 proteins * 100 reward = 1M coins. We may also want a % to go towards some sort of bounty (below)
- Proteins are introduced at some fixed rate, and the order is determined by SHA256 of the previous block (folding or mining). This to prevent precomputation of folding work, and also prevents too much early hoarding.
- Difficulty retargets per last folding block.
- Once all proteins have been "solved", clients can attempt to solve existing blocks with the "current" difficulty at half block reward. This would be some sort of ratio between the "already solved difficulty" that would determine the new difficulty target. The reward can halve sequentially for each additional attempt, until it goes to zero.
- By default, clients will automatically attempt to solve proteins with the lowest difficulty.

Bounty system: (decentralized)
- Once all proteins in the initial 10000 set have been solved, scientists that want a new structure to be solved can post it as work with any arbitrary block reward / difficulty. These coins come from them personally (hence the above % for the bounty)
- Clients will automatically compete for these block rewards
- Once these proteins are solved, they too go into the "pool" that can be solved at sequentially higher difficulty. they don't go into the pool, unless the researcher puts up additional block rewards (this could happen automatically).

Mining blocks:
- Only for transaction processing
- No block reward
- Miners get transaction fees, of course.
- Difficulty is decoupled from folding difficulty (PPC style).

For the technical stuff:

1. Structures to be solved will be determined by consensus, and are distributed as PubMed ID's / NCBI reference sequences (this is an example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein/YP_005795070.1 - the bottommost part with a lot of random letters is the actual sequence; the other stuff is identifying information that is useful generally and also for certain domain-based/homology-based folding algorithms (too complicated to discuss here).)
2. Clients download this, begin folding work (using any algorithm). Folding is a vast topic and the # of algorithms is just as vast.
3. Structures that are below a certain minimum free energy (need to determine the exact equation for this beforehand) will be returned as PDBs (example: http://pdb.org/pdb/explore/explore.do?structureId=4A8N - this is a crystal structure, but a computationally generated model looks similar).
4. Other clients verify - if this structure indeed is below a certain MFE, block reward is generated.

1 & 2 sounds good, but the current folding projects contain some thousand atoms (or proteins, don't remember right now) place them in a 3d space ... we are talking about some mb here i would say way to much for a blockchain! bitcoin exists since 2009 and needs something like 8 gb currently, on average a bitcoin block is not more than 10k or so (arverage! currently more like 150)

3 would be great :) (but unlikely)

what about an attacker who simply takes all available atoms and throws them into a space search with heuristics? he may come up with a solution that has low energy but is unrealistic due to some folding rules. or is it really that "simple"?

What does it mean?

You simply take this string and start folding? Is there no other protein or something?

A PDB (structure) is ~500kB. DOn't know if that's too big or small, but for 10000, that is 5GB, less w/ compressing (compression ratio ~ 5:1 with 7-zip). Of course for additional structures beyond the initial set, this will increase further, don't know how much.

No, folding is not that simple. Side chain residues only fit in certain ways; otherwise the sterics will blow the thing apart. MFE also takes into account bond lengths, charge, torsion and dihedral angles, hydrophobicity, all the way to to things like implicit solvation models (which folding@home uses a simplified version of).

That said, you mention a valid concern that proteins may adopt "low energy" configs that are unrealistic. This mainly applies for very dynamic proteins, proteins that form multi-subunit complexes, transmembrane proteins, etc which all require special "rules" to fold properly, but this is kinda beyond my expertise here. To alleviate that, careful selection of the initial set of proteins that are stable, have reasonable dynamics, etc. will be required (by people smarter than me). The bounty system that I proposed can help if scientists can specify specific criteria, that can be checked easily (e.g. must have 2 alpha helices, Ser273 must not be in hydrophobic core, etc). This is complicated though, so I don't expect to see this in the first iteration of the client.


That string describes the amino acid residues on the protein (i.e. L = leucine, E = glutamic acid, etc). Any mediocre biologist has these memorized. See http://bioinformatics.istge.it/bcd/Curric/PrwAli/_18604_tabular513.gif . A protein is made up of a string of these, terminated by a NH3 (N-terminal side) and a COOH (C-terminal side). Other codes can be used to denote post-translation modifications (beyond the scope of this forum).

As for a real project, I'm far too busy (medical school + graduate school) to seriously program anything, but I'm willing to look at code / give advice / refer to people smarter than me for further advice.

For those w/ a computing background, this is one of the original papers from the Pande group (the guys behind Folding@home):

https://mega.co.nz/#!SY8DQJiJ!SZS_HC_-DQBiQJxx1N3dPF-SVw0wYLPFZx8yp_g_JKw (https://mega.co.nz/#!SY8DQJiJ!SZS_HC_-DQBiQJxx1N3dPF-SVw0wYLPFZx8yp_g_JKw)

They go into some of the actual algorithms/equs to implement folding@home on GPUs.

@ jimhsu   You're explanation of the folding process has been awesome. This sounds like something that might end up being a lot easier that previously thought... ( as argued by some people on this thread)

1 You convinced me folding and proof of folding is not something people can easily cheat

2 It was previously mentioned that if someone figured out a way to "Solve" the work quicker, then that would actually be a giant breakthrough in the terms of finding cures faster, and that person with the brains to figure out how to solve this proteins faster is a genius, and should probably get a noble peace prize for sharing this much faster way to solve cures.

3 So there really is no cheating. if you solve faster your a hero.

My questions would be, would this new coin be ASIC capable or Scrypt based so GPU's only can use it?  Ideally for research purposes and speed ASIC would be ideal.  But then that would limit the number of people able to mine it.  And wouldn't it be profitable for a drug company to get into Mining with a ton of ASICs to push out all the independent small miners?  And they would reap the benefit of the coins so they are getting paid and furthering the research?

Can you imagine the amount of TH/s a billion dollar pharmaceutical company could do if they bought out one of the small startup ASIC miners and ran an army of machines?

An ASIC for folding ... I'd love to see that. This isn't a hash function we're talking about here. Folding (at least decent algos) is quite a bit more complicated (even talking about the basic molecular dynamics calcs, much more if you're going to introduce solvation models, etc). Also, folding is very much a floating-point intensive operation, which is really tough to do on ASIC, unlike hash functions. The more fundamental problem is that most folding algos are amenable to parallelization only up to the # of atoms in your system - if your system doesn't have more than 2000 atoms, for instance, then 2000 or 4000 cores doesn't really make a difference.

That said if a pharma really wants to invest millions into this project, well that would simply serve to validate its existence. Similarly to how ASIC development is supporting BTC's existence.

And no, folding doesn't "cure cancer". It does though make the development of targeted drugs against proteins a whole lot easier (for cancer as well as other diseases). If you're going to hit something, it sure is helpful to know what you're actually hitting, and that's part of the problem that protein folding can address. The field as a whole has moved on from studying intact proteins to trying to study the effects of mutations (i.e. why does mutated B-amyloid aggregate more in Alzheimer's?), or trying to do drug-protein docking (to find better inhibitors, etc).

BTW, there are already competitions for protein folding, the most well known of which is CASP: http://predictioncenter.org/casp10/index.cgi ... every year, they give out sequences to researchers all over the world, and hold a structure in secret that has been solved (with X-ray crystallography or EM) before, but not published. Scientists then publish their predictions, and they are compared to the structures that they have for a ranking, which are then released.

Ive been exchanging some emails with a Stanford professor. He wants to know what kind of interest people will have in this... I set up a small poll asking how much of your hashing power you would use to mine a coin that solve cures.

Please visit this poll and vote. I put it on a sub domain I set aside for a mining pool. No need to log in just click your choice.

http://miningpool.marketsmash.com/demo_3.php (http://miningpool.marketsmash.com/demo_3.php)

It sounds like if the bitcoin community shows enough interest... it will happen. so, if you want to mine for a cure and put the energy bill to better use, you better vote or post your comments here on this thread.

Maybe one of the moderators could be kind enough to host this poll right here on the bitcointalk forum!

This is a wonderful idea.

I would put my full support behind a coin whose intention is to help others!

Thanks, guess my ignorance was showing. :blush:

This is an initiative that definitely needs community as well as external support. It isn't as simple as tweaking a few lines of code in bitcoin-qt. And glad to see that Stanford is behind this, at least in part. As a former Cal bear though, we have our differences. Lol :P

I quit mining a while ago, probably pick it back up again and invest in some new mining hardware for this one.
Great to see this idea going somewhere.

It would be good press for digital  currency instead of just the silk road/hit order stuff we read now.

Folding and other molecular dynamic computations have great potential for replacing SHA/Scrypt in a some kind of CureCoin.  They are memory intensive, and not trivially parallelizable.

Still, it's very much centralized (at least at the start). I've been proposing a system that transitions into a decentralized scheme as time goes on, but centralization and consensus of what proteins need to be solved will have to be in place at the start.

Personally, i dont mind a small amount of centralization if it is going to be controlled by doctors and scientists at one of the best universities in the world. (currently we trust in our governments to hold our money LOL, which would u rather have... GW bush? obama? or a scientist? no comparison!!!)

oh, just got a call from my mother. she wants me to go look at a dog with her she might buy  ;D

Keep the posts coming guys we need and the ideas and criticisms we can get to make something like this happen!

Intro CureCoin (CRC)

I feel a little like the turd in the punchbowl here, but I feel I gotta say it:  While I am happy, giddy, to contribute a significant amount of my hashing to a project for the good of humanity, I am not happy to contribute to a project that will result in our mutual discovery being patented and/or sold or licensed.  I am not a profit-hating "socialist" by any means.  I do want the charity of our community respected by not trying to profiteer from it.

Are there any assurances from Stanford that this is pure research, with no restricted rights upon the knowledge gleaned, nor expectation of bottom-line-enhancing performance from these discoveries?

Please don't blindly trust universities especially the rich ones.

Otherwise very cool idea. Centralistic bootstrapping can be useful but minimize it as much as possible.

+10000000000

well, technically the centralization would be rather low. the proposed two different kinds of blocks would ensure that. the low difficulty mining blocks would be much more abundant than the high difficulty folding blocks. so the p2p network would still be responsible for checking its own security exactly the way bitcoin does now. the only difference is that the work to be done in the folding block would not be random crypto but something useful.

I dont think stanford is gonna try to steal your couple of cure coins considering the increased computing power they would gain would have them busy solving new cures.

My wifes uncle has a few months to live, is around 50 years old, terminal liver cancer, want to trade places with him to see if you still have the same opinion then?

Diseases are a natural way of control the human population, but it fails miserably, so curing people and informing people that taking kids is a stupid idea would probably be better than let nature solve it on her own.

are there any assurances?

no, nothing in life is certain. except death. and for a lot of us that death is cancer. that is certain.

i do understand fully your concern for how big medical companies will possibly make money from this research

Big corporations have been making 99% of the money in the world since the day you were born - CureCoin changes NOTHING ABOUT THAT.

there was another post in which someone was slamming the idea of curecoin making money for the "big corps"

so this next statement is directed at that guy, not the turd in the punchbowl.

If youre worried about big corps screwing the people of the world maybe you should run for a seat in congress or the senate... and vote no against the rape of people by "big corps" that has been happening since before youre great great great grandpa right here on the planet I thought most of you lived on. to think that curecoins would be the thing that enables big corps to really screw us... then your eyes have been shut your whole life because its been happening since as far back as recorded history goes.

subSTRATA - your view on this seems like a taoist response, i am / was a bit of a taoist . if you are a taoist or buddhist then i know exactly why you would say that. HOWEVER , if you are a taoist or buddhist then maybe should read.... whats the name of that book... There is a very old taoist book that talks about the 360 degrees of life (not to be confused with the newer book tao 365). basically it says that tao comes in all forms. alchemy, botany, physical training, mathematicians, and a long list of sciences and other things. basically the flow of the tao is supposedly inside anyone who does what they do with passion, even if your a bitcoin miner or a doctor trying to make a cure.

by saying "religion and science are the two sides of the same coin -you should not go crazy after any of them" that sounds like a very taoist standpoint.
if youre not a taoist and youre saying that.... well, not nice. either way... try to wrap your head around "basically the book says that tao comes in all forms. alchemy, botany, physical training, and a long list of sciences and other things"   ... if you have no idea what tao is ... it is a reference to flow of life. great reading that tao stuff.  

long story short, dont just come by and say something negative like " blah blah cancer i wont help", especially without anything real to back it up. your explantion is taoist wanna be empty logic at best. and if are a taoist you a learner just as much as the rest of us.

some of us are trying to accomplish something much bigger than yourself. spare the lame comments.

skull88 thanks for keeping it real and putting this guy in check... sorry about fam member. ive lost a couple in my fam to cancer. my gf's dad died from pancreatic cancer.. bleed to death in her arms . as you can imagine thats traumitic. for her, and the dad that died... people tend to think they are ... limitless

and hold me back skull, im trying to help put the right people together with the right ideas and people are stating science/religion is the same thing dont bother........ next he will be telling us we cant teach evolution, even in its "theoretical" form. hold me back skull!

FYI i also do sorta believe in all gods, just incase anyone took any offense from anything here. i call it being omniist. the belief in all Religions And Sciences being caused simultaneously be the collective conscience of the world... its all real , even aliens.

Do someone know what is the computational power of bitcoin network compared to the current fastest computer http://top500.org/featured/systems/titan-oak-ridge-national-laboratory/?
Of course it must be much higher but what scale? Thanks

If someone actually makes a CureCoin, I claim some for coming up with the name  ;)

Doesn't really translate because bitcoin is not floating point ... but:

That computer: 17.6 pflops
Bitcoin network: 918 pflops (http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/)

In fact, Bitcoin is fasterhas more processing power than all of the computers on that list, combined. Times 5. This is also 100x the computing power of the entire BOINC network. That's the magnitude of computing power we're talking about here. Bitcoin is on track to becoming the first exaflop distributed computer in the world (most likely ahead of NSA).

Basically, imagine protein folding with 1% of that power. That'll make a huge difference.

Prediction: by the time NSA gets their exaflop supercomputer (end of this decade), bitcoin will likely be at 100 exaflops. Conservatively.

I find this idea absolutely mind blowing.  Long before bitcoin I always was into distributed computing and I tried various scientific projects with BOINC.   While all these projects are all great and gratifying, the accepted shares or WU was always just a number on a web page.   Bitcoin started as a cool experiment for me but since it's worth something I got greedy and it's all my computers work for now.

If you can make a coin that is tradable and secure like Bitcoin with proof of work but that the same time produce something more tangible with all that processing power it would be totally awesome.   If such coin get on the exchanges, it means that people without the ability to mine can also invest in various scientific projects by buying coins which in turns encourage people to mine even more.   I can see a lot of people doing that as a sort of geeky donation and investment at the same time.

What I really like about your idea is also that this can be applied to all projects where a proof of work can be applied mathematically.  Folding@home is a great project but your idea could be applied to many more.   With some projects might even be easier to implement a proof of work concept.    Something like einstein@home where you find pulsars must be provable or something more basic like PrimeGrid which is simply searching for mega prime numbers.

Your idea applied to any project where the output is useful scientific data, could seriously change the world.   I can only see good thing coming out of this if someone make it true.  This could increase public awareness to various scientific projects in a way never seen before.

If what the proof-of-work does is calculate protein folding, then I would assume that the result, when found, would then be part of the blockchain would it not? Wouldn't that also necessarily make the results public knowledge? That seems to solve the problem of big corporations owning it as intellectual property, if it's in fact known to everyone.

yes, this could be another great benefit. Ive followed some of the links on the projects that are being done. it looks like the info is all made public... but i dont know enough about folding to know if there is anything not posted that should be.

A great point though! This would indeed prevent someone from being able to hide or hoard secrets.

If you havent voted yet about this matter please do so here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192033.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192033.0)

im doing some experimenting with folding and mining at the same time right now. With the beta 13.3 drivers im able to get high folding speed and also mine for coins with only about a 20% sacrifice to mining hashrate.
Ill share some results after the pc runs all night folding and mining. I recommend giving folding and mining at the same time a try.

EDIT * the older drivers are no good for folding and mining at the same time.

folding@home cost me billions lol.  I was hardcore into f@h for yeaaaaars and years, right up until 2011 when I heard about Bitcoin.  I do NOT regret any of my processor cycles, hopefully the efforts were useful for them and I contributed to something useful.

But hearing after the fact, that a small portion of my power could have made 10's of millions if I knew about Bitcoin back then. Drat!

Hello everyone. First of all I would like to tell you that I am very excited to be part of your community. (This is my first post)
Do you think it would be possible to shift performance measurement to the client? For example by measuring flops in real time? Is there any other useful measurement of CPU and gpu performance?

Anything ever happen with this?

There is another thread.

But basically its kind of a fail because the whole blockchain concept is a pointless and exceedingly expensive bunch of overhead crap that is not needed for accounting benefits or rewards to give to people who do folding.

So mostly it is just another scamcoin taking advantage of the whole cancer/folding thing as an excuse for making another coin, not an actually efficient way to subsidise folding or curing diseases or anything else.

-MarkM-