A parasitic coin?

[ttookk]

Ok, this is an idea I just had, don't take it too seriously. It is not meant to solve any real world problems, it is just a thought experiment. Feel free to join in.

How about a cryptocurrency, that uses other coins blockchains to confirm its transactions? Let's say, you have a pool of 10-15 different blockchains you can use. If you send a transaction, it is put in 5 of those, based on the next anticipated blocks. You would have up to 5 confirmations almost simultaneously. Depending on the blocktimes of the used blockchains, you could have a confirmed transaction within seconds.


Edit: looks like merge mined coins are basically what I mean, but as far as I can see it, they are only running on one blockchain. Why not use multiple blockchains to increase speed and stability?

[gustav]

Edit: looks like merge mined coins are basically what I mean, but as far as I can see it, they are only running on one blockchain. Why not use multiple blockchains to increase speed and stability?

because multiple chains for a merge mined coins are multiple sources of failure. If you merge with 5 coins your merge mined coin blows up when any one of these blows up while when only merging with one chain the fate of the merge mined coin is tied to only one other chain instead of more. Along that line it makes most sense to merge with Bitcoin or Litecoin imo and merging with more chains simultaneously would make more trouble than have benefit but maybe i'm wrong. It's just educated guessing.

edit: also merge mined coins turn out to be not parasitic in nature as they don't cause damage to anything. They are actually an aditional source of income for miners. Btc-miners like merge mined coin because it's a little extra money for them with no additional costs. 

[ttookk]

Hmm, then, I think, my idea is a little different from regular merge mined coins. I thought the coin has a blockchain itself, but the confirmations are outsourced to other blockchains. How exactly you would do that, I'm not too sure, one idea was to have a small amount of every currency which blockchain is used and just send a small transaction to oneself, signing it with the stats needed to confirm the transaction of the parasitic* coin itself. Every user can decide which blockchains to use, as long as they allow them to sign transactions. You do that with let's say 7 blockchains and once 5 of your microtransactions have a confirmation**, it is recognized as a confirmed transaction on the parasitic blockchain***.

I want to stress, that this is more a thought experiment than anything else. Apart from not being reliant on a single blockchain enviroment, I don't see a real usecase at the moment. But still, it's interesting to think about.


*I don't mean parasitic in a sense of harming the blockchain used.

**Maybe you need more than one confirmation per blockchain to prevent forking issues.

***You'd still need entities monitoring the used blockchains, though…

[jwinterm]

Maybe look into myriadcoin or unitus. They offer merge mining on multiple algorithms, so it is somewhat similar to what you're looking for I think.

[ttookk]

Maybe look into myriadcoin or unitus. They offer merge mining on multiple algorithms, so it is somewhat similar to what you're looking for I think.

It's still direct mining. That's not what I mean.

Again, I am not saying, it's a good idea, it's more a question of it being possible or not.

Basically, you want to send parasitic coins from wallet A to wallet B. To do so, you send a micro transaction in another blockchain, let's say Litecoin, to yourself, signing it with the transaction details of the parasitic coin.
This within itself doesn't have any advantages over simply using litecoin in this case, but if you would use not only one, but more blockchains with relatively fast blocktimes, you could get multiple confirmations almost simultaneously.
Additionally, you wouldn't be dependend on a single blockchain. If it stalls, you just switch to another one.

[freshman777]

Why should other coins let this coin write to their ledgers? You picked a good name, parasitic, do you often welcome parasites into your body?

[ttookk]

Why should other coins let this coin write to their ledgers? You picked a good name, parasitic, do you often welcome parasites into your body?

How would they prevent it? Plus, in most cases, you would have to pay a transaction fee, thus effectively paying for their service. I don't see how this would harm their blockchains, either.

[jwinterm]

Maybe look into myriadcoin or unitus. They offer merge mining on multiple algorithms, so it is somewhat similar to what you're looking for I think.

It's still direct mining. That's not what I mean.

Again, I am not saying, it's a good idea, it's more a question of it being possible or not.

Basically, you want to send parasitic coins from wallet A to wallet B. To do so, you send a micro transaction in another blockchain, let's say Litecoin, to yourself, signing it with the transaction details of the parasitic coin.
This within itself doesn't have any advantages over simply using litecoin in this case, but if you would use not only one, but more blockchains with relatively fast blocktimes, you could get multiple confirmations almost simultaneously.
Additionally, you wouldn't be dependend on a single blockchain. If it stalls, you just switch to another one.

This sounds kind of like counterparty running on multiple blockchains, which I think would be probably be possible. It was also implemented on dogecoin as dogeparty, which is kind of dying I think, but would probably be pretty easy to at least extend to litecoin.

[ttookk]

Maybe look into myriadcoin or unitus. They offer merge mining on multiple algorithms, so it is somewhat similar to what you're looking for I think.

It's still direct mining. That's not what I mean.

Again, I am not saying, it's a good idea, it's more a question of it being possible or not.

Basically, you want to send parasitic coins from wallet A to wallet B. To do so, you send a micro transaction in another blockchain, let's say Litecoin, to yourself, signing it with the transaction details of the parasitic coin.
This within itself doesn't have any advantages over simply using litecoin in this case, but if you would use not only one, but more blockchains with relatively fast blocktimes, you could get multiple confirmations almost simultaneously.
Additionally, you wouldn't be dependend on a single blockchain. If it stalls, you just switch to another one.

This sounds kind of like counterparty running on multiple blockchains, which I think would be probably be possible. It was also implemented on dogecoin as dogeparty, which is kind of dying I think, but would probably be pretty easy to at least extend to litecoin.

Heyyyy, and there, finally, is my use case, thank you

Custom tokens is where it's at. Nice.