Official Poll for "CureCoin" has been requested by Stanford University

[cygnusxi]

Update on "CureCoin" status

Im not going to say too much... the title says it all. No BS.

Again, trying not to say too much... but with a good turn out on this vote, it is very likely bitcoin miners will be curing diseases and cancers while mining coins.

I just sent another email out to stanford after reading my last reply. And ill tell you what, im excited.

Get voting... the next reply from them depends heavily on the interest of the bitcoin community.

Dont forget about how something of this magnitude will do the following

1. Increase awareness, acceptance, respect, and popularity of all crypto currency

2. Increase value of crypto due to increased acceptance.

3. Give bitcoin miners the title of "hero"

4. You may sleep better at night knowing youre not wasting 500$ on electricity every month to calculate a random number that saves no one.

5. As someone else already mentioned, everyone will probably forget about the silk road crap that gave bitcoins a bad name.

here is a link to the latest discussion about the CureCoin concept.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190401.0

there original poll was located at http://miningpool.marketsmash.com/demo_3.php  but go figure when i really want my server to work it gets stubborn and goes down. i was going to be nice and setup up a payment system to give away some litecoin and feathercoin for voting. Too bad my server hates me this week.

[datguyian]

I'm excited to see where this goes. This has the potential to be really awesome.

[thep33t]

So basically a Folding@Home node?

[BrewCrewFan]

So basically a Folding@Home node?

This^
Then again my Nvidia cards might be more useful in that.

[cygnusxi]

folding@home yes. but possibly instead of only getting points ( which i read someone hacked the point system), you will be getting crypto coins. Crypto currency being secure by nature would ensure they dont have to worry about the reward system being hacked. The coin would of course be tradable. BTC has done quite nicely despite the countless thousands of hours wasted by hackers in an attempt to bring down such a large p2p self securing network.

HAHA @ those that spent the last 2 years of their life trying to hack the BTC. Could have accomplished a lot with all that time.

[skull88]

I voted 100%, actually I have quit mining a while ago, but for this one I would be back in the game and immediately start building again.

Can't wait to finally see this happening.  

[phrozenspite]

This is generally extremely poor for long term coins, but would it be better to be merge mineable with the BTC chain or another chain, and take advantage of the hashing power already available without people going to an alternate coin if we're talking about benefit for research?

[Barnacle_Ed]

I voted 100%, actually I have quit mining a while ago, but for this one I would be back in the game and immediately start building again.

Same situation here; power costs where I'm at now suck big-time. However, I'd want to contribute to this project in some sort of meaningful way. Because, frankly, fuck cancer.


Also, I do like the idea to merge-mine this. That would give it quite the huge amount of initial support.

[Anon136]

Its an interesting idea. Instead of an arbitrary proof of work scheme, why not work on solving a problem that has some utility. as an example (i know its not a good one because this particular example wouldn't work but its just to convey a point) we could be attempting to solve pi. You could prove that you worked hard by discovering a previously undiscovered digit of pi (hence the proof of work) while adding something of value to the scientific community at the same time.

[Peleus]

I'm interested in how this would actually work?

How is the cryptographic principles maintained via the folding@home work?

Wouldn't this be open to forgery etc, as the PoW isn't secure?

[cygnusxi]

FYI to the merge mining ideas... on my pc... somehow i can do folding@home with 55% of gpu power, then i launch cgminer, and magically i get almost the same hash rate. about 20% less. and EVEN WEIRDER YET, when i do both of these at the same time.. my card runs exactly 10 degrees C cooler... and if you really dont believe me try it yourself. if it doesnt work that way, i i could post a screen shot of it working and my settings.

This is great like it is, but fully merged mining would ofcourse be better. Because of the work being done though.. it might take a little while before someone figures out how to make it merge mine. who knows though.

[cygnusxi]

I'm interested in how this would actually work?

How is the cryptographic principles maintained via the folding@home work?

Wouldn't this be open to forgery etc, as the PoW isn't secure?

read the main thread... look for posts by username jimhsu

he helped to paint a picture to bitcoin world from his standpoint of being in molecular biology, of how the folding work might be even harder to dupe then bitcoin work.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=190401.0

edit * also if you do manage to find a faster way to fold.. you have just created a technologically breakthrough that will save lives... so you are encouraged to try

[gramma]

*bump*  Also, why is this under "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"?  Okay, on the one hand CureCoin <> Bitcoin, so yeah, it's an altcoin.  But the issue - and the potential - are larger than "just another altcoin", especially if merge-mining of one sort or the other is possible.

Is there a legit way to get this poll in front of the folks who don't care about the new alt coin of the day and never come to this discussion, but might care about this?

[markm]

I put 100%, on the assumption I will add it to my array of merged mined coins that all also already get 100% of my hashing power.

-MarkM-

[skull88]

*bump*  Also, why is this under "Alternate Cryptocurrencies"?  Okay, on the one hand CureCoin <> Bitcoin, so yeah, it's an altcoin.  But the issue - and the potential - are larger than "just another altcoin", especially if merge-mining of one sort or the other is possible.

Is there a legit way to get this poll in front of the folks who don't care about the new alt coin of the day and never come to this discussion, but might care about this?

valid point

[clownengineering]

This idea doesn't make any sense.

Protein folding simulation is indeed very computationally expensive, but the results of such a simulation are not efficiently verifiable. Therefore, you cannot base a "proof of work" system on this, and the entire idea of CureCoin is meaningless.

[bnogal]

Well, they could do a POS system as PPCoin where instead POW to start distributing coins they use the points u get from the work done.
And i guess they give the same work to different users so they can verify the result.

[matt608]

This idea doesn't make any sense.

Protein folding simulation is indeed very computationally expensive, but the results of such a simulation are not efficiently verifiable. Therefore, you cannot base a "proof of work" system on this, and the entire idea of CureCoin is meaningless.

Anyone have any answers to this?

[bitdwarf]

Protein folding simulation is indeed very computationally expensive, but the results of such a simulation are not efficiently verifiable.

Get the protein folded more than once for verification? It might help to discard floating point errors too.

[tacotime]

Its an interesting idea. Instead of an arbitrary proof of work scheme, why not work on solving a problem that has some utility. as an example (i know its not a good one because this particular example wouldn't work but its just to convey a point) we could be attempting to solve pi. You could prove that you worked hard by discovering a previously undiscovered digit of pi (hence the proof of work) while adding something of value to the scientific community at the same time.

You really can't do that with something like protein folding simulations (I would know, I've worked in the field for three years...).  In fact, most scientific problems involve calculations applied to stochastic problems where they don't necessarily know what the results will be.  The only way I can think of is to just use a ripple like system where whatever at home gives you credits based upon your solutions being provided to them.  But it's not necessarily a bad answer to this problem, it's better than folding and getting nothing but points on a leaderboard.

If opencoin just released their source code you could directly port it and then use it to make a network like ripple for your coins -- but they haven't.