Put the network to work

[rusane]

Hey, hi, so, Bitcoin, brilliant. That's great. I was reading up on how stuff works though....

Unless I'm mistaken, there is an entire network of super awesome computers performing calculations en masse for the sole purpose of slowing the system down. That makes sense, except, there is no reason the calculations need be meaningless. Why aren't the crypto-hash-puzzles something more productive; searching for near earth objects, fiddling with the human genome project or patrolling the sky's for ET, curing cancer etc. Surely the miners could be earning their coin for something more productive than wasting computer clock ticks? Smart People, you could make this happen, right?

[DeathAndTaxes]

The proof of work needs to be:
a) probabilistic (i.e. not one long complex problem but a solution that takes on average x number of tries where x is a very large number)
b) based on prior work (bitcoin uses prior blockhash in the new blockheader, this prevents "cheating" and trying to solve future blocks)
c) much faster  to verify than solve (it takes entire global mining 600 seconds to solve a block but individual nodes can verify that solution in a fraction of a second).
d) be deterministic (all nodes working on same problem at same time)
e) peer based (not have any central authority)

There is no known method to achieve that with work like searching for NEO or human genome project ... without a central trusted authority.  Satoshi solution created a system where nobody needs to trust a third party.  Still if you find a solution, make an alt-coin and I am sure it will be popular.

[rusane]

It took me half an hour to figure out how to post, I'm not going to creating an alternate coin anytime soon. Nor would I want to, I like this one just fine. That said; ideally someone, or someones, much more clever than me can reconcile the needs of the Bitcoin system and making the network's work productive while preserving the proof-of-work attributes.

[TangibleCryptography]

I doubt it.  I don't see a way that is possible that can't be trivially gamed or manipulated.  Of course before Bitcoin maybe people thought the solutions Satoshi came up with were impossible without a central authority so anything is possible I guess.  Lets just leave it at the problem is what is called in computer science a "non-trivial solution" which means it isn't just a matter of writing the code and making sure it works.  There currently IS not solution AND there may never be a solution.

[and0r]

jewcoins bro

[rusane]

Fair enough. I'll chock it up in the easier-said-than-done wishful thinking column. Still, I'm going to dream of a glorious future where, one day, proving you're not spam involves donating a few clock cycles to a good cause.

[coinator]

Hey, hi, so, Bitcoin, brilliant. That's great. I was reading up on how stuff works though....

Unless I'm mistaken, there is an entire network of super awesome computers performing calculations en masse for the sole purpose of slowing the system down. That makes sense, except, there is no reason the calculations need be meaningless. Why aren't the crypto-hash-puzzles something more productive; searching for near earth objects, fiddling with the human genome project or patrolling the sky's for ET, curing cancer etc. Surely the miners could be earning their coin for something more productive than wasting computer clock ticks? Smart People, you could make this happen, right?

I understand what you are trying to express. You are saying that we can use this calculation to solve something meaningful that would be beneficial to the society, something like finding large prime number, or that "special" number that can be used for enhancing cryptography securities, encryption and so on. They may not be a way now but people may come up with something in the future.