Maybe something like this:
- Puzzles are standard hash-puzzles, but easier and a lot more of them, say 2^32, by adding different nonces AND the miner's address to the data of the last block added to the chain just before the contest.  (The address is there to prevent copied solutions.)
- Each miner publishes all solutions (nonce-hash pairs) and the address that was added to the contest blocks, allowing verification of solutions.

For the week's blocks:
- A 'selection' algorithm (TBD)  'fairly' distributes block slots for the next week based on each miner's demonstrated processing power. The actual assignments are 'randomized' based on some shared data that can't be predicted prior to the contest end - perhaps an XOR of all unique puzzle hash solutions from the contest.  Miners could randomly select which puzzles to solve, to prevent anyone predicting that XOR value.  (This is needed to avoid miners arranging to eliminate competition for their blocks.)
- All miners would run the 'selection' algorithm, and reject block solutions from anyone not approved to mine a particular block.  Also reject all blocks from a miner that generates multiple block candidates.
- Each miner initially publishes half their candidate block solution and half their block hash. 
- Another shared algorithm picks one of the candidate blocks when all partial blocks are submitted (or all within a time window).  Maybe take all the hash solutions for all candidate blocks, XOR them together, and compare to each miner's solution hash to see which has the most bits in common with the combination.  (Needs a tie-breaker... )
- All miners publish their remainder block and hash portions.  Only the winner's is used, but a fall-back algorithm would select one of the others if the winner doesn't respond with a valid block.
 

Not sure it matters, except in the context of your final remark (addressed below).  If someone rents it out, they are giving up their own opportunity to take part in the contest.


They don't get paid?  But more generally, one would aim to have several miners for each block - see above.


This is a good point.  OTOH, those other altcoins could implement the same method. 
If they don't, THEY are wasting the power, and blame is removed from those that implement PoMoW.

PoW's hunger for electricity is one of the reasons people try to come up with alternatives - including this one:

Instead of miners solving computationally difficult "puzzles" for every block, what if they only had to demonstrate they have the MEANS to do so?

For example, there might be a 5-10 minute contest once a week, during which all miners demonstrate how much processing capacity they have.
Those with the most capacity would be granted the right to publish a larger share of the blocks over the following week, against much lighter competition and with much lighter processing power per block.

I find it appealing is that it would take cryptocurrency to a new level of absurdity as far as the outside world is concerned:  Not only would miners do lots of (otherwise) pointless calculations to earn money, with this they would own a bunch of expensive hardware that sits idle all week, but which they need to win chances to publish blocks during the brief contest period each week.

I have some ideas about how this might be done, but nothing like 'white paper' level.
I'm just tossing it out as an interesting idea that others might want to mull over.

An approach I've proposed in another posting was to have a distributed application that gives people 'tasks'. 

A task would be to walk a few minutes to meet another randomly selected person at a specific nearby location (GPS or land-mark based, so you can find each other) within a certain time limit, and exchange keys you were given to prove that you met that person at that time and place.

After meeting maybe 3 people (with a few fall-back opportunities if the person you were supposed to meet is a no-show), your task is complete and a solution can be generated that includes the collected keys and other information needed to verify that the work was done.

Suppose there are (for example) ten independent blockchains that all achieve consensus using the same physical compute tech (CPU/GPU, a specific ASIC, whichever).
Suppose one of those becomes dominant - say getting 91% of compute resources, while the others get about 1% each.

Then anyone having about 1.2% of compute power on the dominant chain could shift their resources to a minor chain and have 51% of all compute.
Which would allow them to cheat, unless that chain is somehow immune to 51% attacks.

But whether or not anyone DOES cheat, users of the lesser chains would know that the potential exists to cheat on that chain.
Which would make users less willing to use the lesser chains.
Similar reasoning would apply if the most heavily processed chain had less than 91%, just to a lesser degree.

The only way I can see around this is for all of the lesser chains to immediately post hashes of accepted blocks into the dominant chain to enable historical block checking.
But that essentially makes them just sub-chains of the dominant blockchain, not independent chains, no matter how different their protocols may otherwise be.
They can't be used safely without relying on the existance of the dominant chain.

Is this correct?  Does it affect any of the ICOs out there?  I know a lot are based off Ethereum - but maybe some are vulnerable?

People don't really have much control over prices - they can basically take them, leave them, or hunt around to find someone charging less or offering more.

So when prices change, such as the price of gas or meat increasing rapidly (while people's wages increase only slowly if at all) consumers generally pay or go without.

But what if consumers could hedge against their own future purchases?  For example, buying the right to buy milk at $1.69 within 6 months, when the current price is $1.60, and the consumer believes the current price is relatively low and they want to lock it in.

The overhead on this would be prohibitive, unless the bitcoin block chain ledger is applied.  Just another form of contract.   

Any laws that would prohibit this?

I was only proposing moderating the fluctuations, but yes, finding a way to fix the exchange rate would do that.

But that's really just sort of a way of restating the problem, isn't it? 

The question is - HOW to do it, and who has the power to do it with Bitcoin?

Should Bitcoin be changed in some fundamental fashion, to make it more stable?  Could it?   How?

Maybe create a non-profit trust fund bank that will buy and hold capital assets to "back" BC.   Change from mining free BC, to mining a right to purchase BC at half the current exchange rate, with the income going into the bank.   Anyone could exchange their BC for their share of their current value of those capital assets (minus a 5% withdrawal penalty).  Normally the price would float somewhat above the asset value - when it rises enough, allow the bank to directly create BC and use them to purchase more assets - locking in gains and at the same time keeping the exchange rate from rising too fast, reducing the impact of speculation. 

Objections / alternatives?

Just an FYI or reminder:  Hydrogen Sulfide might be a threat:
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/awakening-the-horrors-of-the-ancient-hothouse-hydrogen-sulfide-in-the-worlds-warming-oceans/

A random thought about social consequences of the Spatial Location Proof of Identity system:

Some cultures place tight restrictions on women.  That will place members of such cultures at a financial disadvantage, in that their women may not be allowed to go meet random strangers (including men), in random locations.

Maybe the system will provide a little pressure for them to change, which from my perspective would be a good thing.

So far I've described the "spatial identification for coin delivery" process as requiring a smartphone or similar mobile internet device - i.e. needing at least GPS and internet connection and camera. 

By 2020, smartphones will pretty much have displaced feature phones (though some large fraction of them may use WiFi for internet access) with around 80% of global population having one or more mobile internet devices.   And that's before considering any impact on demand from TheCoin being implemented - which might create demand for extremely cheap devices specifically for TheCoin distribution and use.

But suppose we wish to enable near global distribution of TheCoin now - as soon as the software can get written?  Phones at least capable of sending/receiving SMS are now in the hands of around 60% to 70% of global population.  SMS messaging can be gotten very cheaply, once one gets away from the absurd "Wireless Plan" SMS pricing in places like the US.

Can we leverage SMS to get going sooner, at least in areas where smartphone penetration is low and poverty is high?   

Instead of using GPS coordinates and photographs to reliably prove unique spatial identity, what if we use code exchanges between random recipients known to be in an area?    Each locale will have commonly known local places, which could be entered into TheCoin network and used to generate walking instruction messages to get random pairs of people to meet and exchange codes.  Once both parties have sent their codes, both would be sent directions to their next exchange point.    This system is slightly less reliable, in if anyone abandons their walk, they will break the chain of location proof for the person they were to meet.  A fall-back of allowing the abandoned person to try again with a location they haven't yet been to, should be sufficient to fix most of this.

The walking instructions might start with something like "Text back # of nearest location as starting point for TheCoin delivery:   1.Your Home.  2.Han's Bar.  3.Village well..."   That will set the baseline of persons who are ready to receive TheCoin, along with their location, allowing generation of pairs of persons to exchange codes at nearby locations.

A bit later each ready recipient would get a message like: "Your ID is 8253.  Go to Village well and find someone with ID 3549.  Give that person code 2967.  Message back the code they give you."  Etc.

After 3-5 locations and completed exchanges, TheCoins would be deposited to their accounts.  A total of about 8-12 (sent and received)  messages, probably costing less than 50 cents total.

So how might people attempt to cheat this system? 

They might collude to ignore directions and gather in a single spot to use multiple devices.  That won't work for large towns and cities, but could work for tiny villages with very few people, which nonetheless happen to have SMS mobile phone service, but not WiFi or mobile broadband.   Such places would tend to be poor - most people would have at most one device.  Any who have multiple devices would have to agree to pay each person they cheat with, to gain their cooperation.  So initially this would be a very tiny problem, benefiting the poorest, without having significant economic impact on TheCoin system overall. 

Still, it'd be necessary to counter it eventually.  Delays between code exchanges could be examined to look for odd variations in how long it takes recipients to get to exchange points.   When it appears that cheating has become rampant, indicating that most will have gotten enough income to purchase more than one device, it can be assumed that the villagers can now afford mobile internet devices and WiFi, and switch that region over to the standard system.  (Just knowing that this will happen will have some deterrent effect.) 

Note that this latter deterrent need only be implemented for the small fraction of the world's population living in tiny villages, so it is not a large added cost, and is a feature that can be added some time after TheCoin system has become globally established.

Once a week would be enough, assuming weekly distribution of TheCoin.  Is a 3-5 minute walk once a week really that much to ask?   If someone thinks it is, maybe they don't need TheCoin distributions.   (Daily position checking was just an attempt to make life harder for those who will hire poorer people to collect TheCoin for them.  But on reflection, they'll mostly hire people who don't yet have their own wireless internet device, and it's better that those poor coin farmers get some income, than none.)


Honestly - I've previously considered and rejected a number of the most obvious options, including a real world verification organization. 

So far the unique spatial position test, backed by random real-time interactions with others who are also verifying their positional identity, is so far the simplest and quickest and best.  Yes, it still has flaws.  Not everyone has mobile internet (yet).  Until everyone can afford that, crooks can hire others to walk for them.  Not everyone could physically perform the "walk".  (Perhaps have randomly selected people verify the physical location of the disabled person as part of their own walks.)   

Hmmm - new names for TheCoin:  "Walkers".  Or  "Walkies".   
-----

TheCoin success depends on rapid roll-out.   Building up real world ID verification organizations would take too long - likely a decade to even get coverage of most major cities on Earth, decades to get close to universal coverage, even assuming no political interference.   In areas with thin or corrupt law enforcement, crooks would take over the local organizations.  Desire to maintain a good reputation is simply not a strong enough motivator - as evidenced by the many known instances of corrupt behavior in organizations, plus the larger number that go undetected.
-----

Biometrics sound good - but unique personal attributes are subject to high measurement error/variation.  A person could count on a slightly different digital representation from every capture.  Hash that, and you'll get a different hash every time - allowing multiple identity creation.   Attempts to eliminate those errors reduce the uniqueness of the measurements - creating higher likelihood of more than one person with the same ID code.

Consider DNA sequencing (though it will be too expensive, for several more decades, to be a practical global solution):   Even the best (expensive) sequencing has error rates of 1 in a million bases.  ("Cheap" methods, ~1 in 1000.)  For the ~3 billion bases in the human genome that's at least ~3000 errors per sequencing.   No two sequencings of a person's DNA are likely to ever give the same digital representation. 

One might imagine cleverly "averaging out" DNA sequencing errors somehow. But human DNA is 99.9% the same for everyone.  Blood relatives will be even more similar - perhaps only 1 in a million bases differing.  That's on the same order of magnitude of the best sequencing error.  Trying to eliminate the errors to get a repeatable digital representation, will map more than one person to the same digital representation, and hence to the same hash code "identity".   

CheapID is interesting for the privacy protection it aims to grant - but still subject to easy acquisition of fake IDs, as well as corruption of accreditation agencies.

I tried to come up with a solution based on Webs of Trust.  But a WoT is not as good at preventing a person from having multiple keys by getting different groups to verify trust in them.  Casual cheaters could probably be blocked by requiring them to inform their trust networks of their name, address, etc.  But a small group of cheaters could build their own sub-web of trust with a number of fake identities per real person.  The best counter I came up with for that was bounties for catching cheaters.  But that adds a lot of complexity for verification of cheater reports.   

The connection of OMIVA to the proposal you sketched previously was not at all clear.  

I'll go into a lot of detail below to explain why what you have proposed is not simple, and far more expensive and susceptible to corruption than what I just proposed.  

But in essence, it sounds like you propose a "traditional" non-profit business version of the network organization I previously proposed trying to implement via network-distributed tasks.  I set that aside as possible but more complex than I would like.  

OMIVA would find the identification task just as complex, but would also be slower to get started, more expensive to operate, and less likely to provide sufficient internal cross-checking to prevent corruption, than the network organization I previously suggested.

-----

So your proposed OMIVA model is analogous to Underwriters Laboratory.  

UL is voluntary only in the sense that their customers voluntarily seek their inspection and stamp of approval - it does not provide free services.   It is a trusted brand/mark only because consumers understand that UL's future income rests on maintaining their reputation as a trusted inspector.  

UL has relatively few customers compared to the potential global 'market' for TheCoin distributions - so the size of organization you are proposing is necessarily much larger.   Creating such a global organization from scratch would not be quick or easy, which would be a major limiting factor on spread of TheCoin distributions.  

It would also cost a lot to create and operate.   Who would pay for OMIVA?  That is - what future business might they lose if they became corrupt and started validating false identities in return for a 50% cut?  

If it is the identity-verified coin recipient, and OMIVA is corrupted anyhow, what happens to all the people who had honestly gotten verified by them?  Do we discard their identities and make them to pay for new ID verification?   Even if TheCoin recipients somehow don't have to pay for the service, they might be cut out of the distribution until a replacement validation organization gets around to re-validate them.

What happens if OMIVA is subverted from inside by a short-sighted crook - not necessarily the whole company, just someone with the right access controls - who doesn't care about OMIVA's reputation, but just wants to grab a quick personal fortune and disappear?  What keeps its field agents honest?   High pay perhaps?

Does OMIVA have a monopoly, or would there be multiple ID agencies?  If it is only OMIVA, the disruption of any corruption would be universal and massive.  If there are multiple competitors, the likelihood/frequency of corruption increases even if they are all somehow qualified.  If anyone can start a validation company with no qualification process, you are pretty much guaranteed that crooks will jump into the business.  And if there are multiple agencies, what prevents someone from creating a different fake ID with each?

Which brings us to the question of how OMIVA agents verify personal and unique identity.  

- By residence?  What if someone moves and doesn't tell OMIVA, but goes to a new OMIVA agent in their new town to create a second identity for a double distribution?  What if a group of 4 friends share two addresses under 8 different names to get double identities through two different OMIVA agents? (Lying to landlords and other potential witnesses and spending time in both places to create a convincing facade)?   Does OMIVA check up on people at frequent random intervals (increasing its expenses)?  How can it tell if those 4 friends have other names and another address, if they spend time at both addresses?

- By Government issued ID?  What about places that have none?  There are also those who will produce good fake IDs for a fee.  Also, a big part of TheCoin system is an attempt to end-run around dependence on and limitations of governments.

Etc.  


Effort is not cost.  As for whether TheCoin is worth the opportunity cost - that would be for each potential TheCoin recipient to decide.  For someone unemployed with zero income, I think I know the answer.

I'm sorry, I don't see where you have said any such thing.  Those terms don't show up except in your latest post when I search all Bitcoin Forum, nor in the obvious Google searches.   

Are you just making up this "OMIVA" term to describe your previous unsupported claim that this is actually an easy problem to solve?  Or is this something real that I just can't seem to find?

Describe a real proposal, or provide a link to it, so we can evaluate it.   I'll be happy if it does turn out to have a simple solution, but so far you've only made a vague claim that it is possible, not any specifics of how it would be done.

In the meantime, it appears that you agree that my proposal could work adequately.  I don't see how it increases cost at all (and relative to what?), though it does mean that the effort required is more than zero - maybe half an hour a week to collect TheCoin, plus some other light activity (TBD) to earn the coins.   

"You can't be in two places at the same time."

Suppose TheCoin was distributed at a specific time of day (say local solar noon for every degree of longitude).  Each potential recipient would need to undertake a few actions that take a few minutes, that they could not in general physically do with two or more devices.

For example, they might have one minute in which to log in, after which they would receive a series of instructions directing them to a random series of positions reachable by walking for a few minutes total (by which time the password entry and start walking window would be long over).  Sometimes they would be directed to take a picture in a specified direction.  Sometimes they would meet someone else and exchange random codes to be entered into their devices.  Etc.

Some would attempt to get around this by hiring poorer people to do it for them (similar to gold farming).  One way to reduce the value of this, would be to only pay out TheCoin randomly, averaging once a week.  Anyone who wants to hire others to do this would have to hire them for every day of the week, even though they only get TheCoin once a week on average.  (Longer term, the problem is mostly solved as networked mobile devices get common and cheap enough for all - why do it for someone else? )

In addition to the above control on distribution, TheCoin system might require some small amount of work to earn the distribution, such as running a light weight server, or doing mechanical turk things such as examining photos to verify they were taken where claimed, or show a person matching a photo of the person who claimed to be there at a specific time.

This thread takes it as a given that a basic or minimum income would be desirable and effective, and asks if it can be done via an altcoin system, and if so, how best to do that.
I understand that some of you don't agree, but that is no reason to effectively DOS attack this thread with an off-topic discussion.

There are other discussion threads covering the topic of whether technological unemployment is possible or not,  and whether a basic/guaranteed income is desirable. 
Why not take that discussion there?   

Here's one:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=318001.460

Quite simply, it is not true that giving a basic income to everyone would drive the currency's value to zero.  That would only happen if the distributed coins were not withdrawn from the economy.   This proposal withdraws TheCoin at a rate such that the number of TheCoin in circulation quickly approaches a constant per capita.

Do you think so many economists would have seriously proposed a universal basic income, if it were trivially obvious that it could not work?

And the identity problem is not nearly as simple as you think,  provided only voluntary action (no government) is involved.

How will I submit my DNA proof and to whom?  And at what cost?  What if someone else submits my DNA before I do?  What if someone assigned to verify DNA uniqueness decides to charge a small fee to submit fake DNA verifications?

Anyone can generate any number of public/private keys, allowing them to generate new "identities" as often as they wish - precisely the problem we're trying to address.

Businesses can easily adapt to an altcoin with fast demurrage.  They'll spend altcoins as fast as they can, of course, and when they acquire a surplus that they don't need to spend right away (i.e. a profit), they'll be able to exchange it for Bitcoins or dollars or some other currency for a small premium.  When they need to spend more than they have on hand, they will be able to exchange their dollars for altcoins to gain back most of the premium they paid to get into dollars. 

The basic question a capitalist will ask him or her self, will be -"Would I rather incur the small effort and tiny cost of accepting and handling a high demurrage rate altcoin, or let these customers with the altcoins go to a competitor who will accept them?"   

As long as there are fast, convenient and reliable online exchanges, I suspect they will take the business.   

For that matter, it seems like any crypto-coin for crypto-coin exchange could be done completely with an online ask/offer/accept/trade protocol, with only the tiny transaction fees.   No need for an intermediary exchange-for-fee business, as there is for converting to/from government currencies.   

The point of this discussion is not to evaluate whether a "minimum income" altcoin is desirable, but rather how it could best be made functional.  If you don't agree that it is desirable, I would ask that you consider creating a separate discussion thread to debate that.

There is a technical issue with implementing a minimum income scheme using TheCoin, which has a potential solution at the "strategic" level, but which needs to be examined at a more tactical level.  Namely, how to prevent rampant use of multiple false identities for extra distributions. 

The strategic level solution to that, which a few have agreed sounds right, is to require a pledge to do (very light) work validating identity of other claimants, as a condition of accepting a coin distribution   (If you can think of a better approach, that would also be welcome.  Do keep in mind that this is intended to work world-wide, without government intervention.) 

The tactical element, of course, is "How would validation be done?"  with particular focus on keeping down the complexity.  And that's not a trivial problem.  As soon as one proposes some obvious method of validating identity of claimants, one also exposes fairly obvious ways to cheat that method.   

For example:  suppose the validation method was to have a randomly assigned person who lives near a claimant, go visit the latter, check that that person lives under the claimed name at the claimed address, take a photo of the person.  But if the latter is a crook, what if he offers the 'inspector' half of his weekly take under the false name?   Now there are some obvious counter moves to that - say always having two random persons check on a claim, and penalizing someone who falsely makes multiple coins or deliberately validates a false identity.  But THAT adds the complex question of how to determine whether someone merely made a mistake, or intentionally validated a false identity.  And what if the validation agent who says the identity is false, happened to know and hate the person they were asked to validate?  Take the thing to a conventional court?  What if this is in a country with a poor legal system?  Do we then add some sort of "coin court" with judges and juries and that whole mess?   Sent three random validation agents and if 1 of them says the claim is false, send another three?

I hope that illustrates the sort of problems that still need to be solved.   You are welcome to make creative suggestions for validating claimants.  Or maybe a way to avoid that requirement altogether.

Note that even once workable methods are conceived, there would still be a technical implementation effort required.

I hope that answers your question.

No problem.  It's just a placeholder name.  So I'll use a different one, hopefully ugly and generic enough no one will want it.

How about "TheCoin"?  Assuming no one has claimed that, I hear by declare it to mean "any generic coin that I happen to be talking about".

First, this is a voluntary system - if you didn't want to take the coins, or even accept them in payment, no one would force you to.  But many and probably most - including you eventually - probably would, precisely because it would NOT suck to get money for little or no effort.  Even if you think the altcoin is going to drive up prices, it makes less sense to refuse them, than to take them to counter-balance the higher prices you project.  So participation would likely be high, even if you were correct about the impact on prices.

Second, the number of coins per capita in circulation would rapidly approach a fixed level, as the number of new coins created is balanced by the decay of the larger number of coins already in existence.  If the decay rate is 2%/week, the total number of coins in circulation would reach about 50 times the number paid out per week, and stay at that level.   

Dollar circulation would slow somewhat, as people would prefer to spend those last.  And sellers would prefer dollars - so prices in dollars would fall somewhat.  However, by taking that and the expected rate of circulation of the altcoin into account, the "correct" value of the altcoin in terms of dollars can be calculated.  At a rough guess, the dollar value of the distributed coins would be on the order of $10 per person per week.  After some initial fluctuation, the altcoin's value relative to the dollar and to goods would end up close to the original estimated level, rather than inflating dramatically, as you speculate.