How could ELC be used for mining other coins?
1. if would be harder to set up and use than a mining pool...
2. other coins will have 1min block time, so by the time ELC txs with answers/payments confirm (1min +) it will be to late.
3. what prevents workers/sellers from stealing the coins they mine for you
4. circular reasoning: why would anyone pay good ELC to mine some other junk crypto?
Just some thoughts how this might work. I do not want to say something "binding" as the final design is still to be defined.
But mining other coins could work like any other mining application:
1. Create block template, meaning creating a new block with everything set except the nonce and the timestamp. This block template contains the coinbase transaction that would pay you.
2. Create a custom algorithm that says "take this block template" and "shuffle timestamp as well as the nonce" until the hash of the block meets a value X. Value X is also hardcoded and contains the current required difficulty.
3. You submit that task to the Elastic network and all "Elastic Workers" start working on your block. They both periodically send "proof-of-works" that prove that they are working and so that they get paid regularily, but they will also submit the solution if your predefined condition (hash of the block meets a value X) is met.
4. You do not need to wait for a confirmation, they send you the nonce + timestamp via the blockchain and you get your result with 0-confirmations.
5. You take the nonce+timestamp, then you construct the block that you have created a template for in step 1, and push it to the other coin's network.
6. Nobody can take your coins or anything, because they all have worked on the block template containing the coinbase transaction that will pay you (and nobody else)
All this would have to be automated somehow and yes, this is harder to setup, but I think that once Elastic is working many people will develop "apps" or "scripts" for it.