Bitcoin Forum

I think the next question had aleready been asked in the forum several times, but i can't find a suitable answer.

Is it possible to redirect the network hash of a cryptocurrency to other tasks ?

What i am thinking about is :

- Medical researche
- Physics and Astrophysics research
- Brute-force attack
- DDOS attack and defence
- Financial data management
- Any other task ?

The idea behinde this post is to ask for the actual viable ways to use the hashrate for something different from mining, it may be interesting to contribute to a project/research by earning coins at the same time.

I know about Folding in Eobot, but i can't trust this project as know nothing about, nor heard about.

Maybe I have an interesting start-up for you

https://golem.network (https://golem.network)

No, it's interesting to think about, but it would require more computational power to convert the hashes to a usable form, than the hashes/hashpower itself.
The proof of work mechanism is set in stone; would not be possible to adopt it for much else than its intended use-set.

The most common argument comes up with something like file encryption; but the specific implementations of any given algorithm to be used in cryptocurrency vs data security are very different.

Edit: Golem is not actually using hashpower to achieve their goal; the idea is having an engine capable of a bunch of different tasks installed on a large amount of workstations, and the workstations subscribing to see what work is available, which changes depending on what people want it to do. For example, its well known now that the US Army used PS3's with a special customized operating system; to perform massive distributed calculations across a vast number of machines (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105767-U-S-Air-Force-Finishes-PS3-Supercomputer-of-Epic-Proportions).

You haven't heard and know nothing about it but you still mentioned it, you can fold here : http://fahwebx.stanford.edu/nacl
You suggesting people redirect the computational power of bitcoin mining into other things? then how could people prove their work if not mining?
POW rings any bell? all other things you said is for companies and governments to use the tax money they take from people and invest in doing those things.

Disclaimer: I am not involved in folding process or website in any way.
PS, EOBOT is a fraud eventually scam you, stay away.

Mining is about securing the network. Attempting to slap on some other use may cause problems. I don't think anyone has any use for sha256 hashes of random data.

Thank you for your great answers.

@0xfff
You know, hashing is computing power, this power can be used to do a lot of tasks. here is an example: https://home.cern/
I remeber that some years ago they was distributing an application people could use to lend computing power to the cern, as they had phenomenous amounts of data to parse.
One of the use cases of Hashpower redirection would be to provide them with enough computation power to help them parse these data.

@digaran
I always suspected Eobot to be a scam or money launderer, but it is a personal opinion.
I am not asking about bitcoin specifically, it can be a new coin, or an aleready existing coin, or something like that, it is pointless to go deeply in the details as it is not the subject.
Let's just imagine.
Regarding what i found about Maidsaife, they reward users not for mining or staking, but for providing ressources to the network, maybe it is a possible answer.

@barrysty1e
It looks like you have aleready thought about this question, and i think you are right about Golem project.
I don't think that file encryption have something to do with the usability of the hashes, but for sure, heavy changes must be done to do it if bitcoin was meant to be used.

golem actually sounds pretty cool. aha back in my high school days, me and a mate built a beowulf-grade cluster out of a bunch of 486dx4/100s, early pentiums; running something like redhat 6 (giving you an indication of the time period). just the boards, powersupplies (in some cases we ran two motherboards off one psu) with no cases on a shelf with a shitty 10mbit hub; and the beowulf distribution/job services.

once we stood it up, we kinda went, 'now what'.
and then we were enlightened.
8)

regarding hashpower:
i do remember reading someone asking this a few years back (particularly sha256 asic). if you were so inclined, you could actually get the asic engines hashing any given hash (say a password converted to hex bytes and then padded); but your parameters would be very limited, and youd need to write software for both the application/protocol layer.

oddly enough, on the antminers (or any unit with broadcom/SoC-based controller with ethernet/wifi running embedded linux), you COULD potentially build a small firmware image with a cpuminer to do cryptonight, or something suitably light on the risc processor. utterly useless, but imagine the odd looks you could get from people.

'... yeh so im just smashn monero with my antminer s3 at minergate ...'

older sha256 units would probably be more useful when used as
https://www.choice.com.au/~/media/89522d983a51465cbb48ca53e6ead707.ashx?jq=80&w=994&h=559

People do have a use for (cost/speed/energy-efficient) improved random-access-memory technology however, so a proof of work that makes random memory access, rather than hash computation, the bottleneck, will provide the right incentives for that...