PrimeCoin; What's the deal?

[bigbeninlondon]

So I've been seeing a lot of interest in PrimeCoin, and some mention of scientific work being done using primecoin, but I don't get it.  What's PrimeCoin doing for the scientific community?  The whitepaper says it's not finding new primes because they are too big to work on.  Can someone EILI5?

[digicoin]

Pure mathematical purpose. No real life purpose. I don't mine this coin. Innovative and useless.

[AgentME]

If you read the paper, it explains it's finding prime chains.

It's not terribly useful (like protein folding tier stuff), but it's much more interesting than the chain of arbitrary hashes that every other coin spends tons of computational power into. Bitcoin has tons and tons of computing power just going into verification of the current block. Primecoin does the same thing, but also simultaneously makes a huge blockchain's worth of mildly interesting computations.

[markm]

There isn't enough data storage on earth, maybe not in the entire universe, to remember all primes, so finding new ones surely has to involve forgetting old ones at some point.

Primecoin though isn't looking for primes, it is looking some some fancy pattern/sequence of primes, I dunno though whether they too are so numerous we won't be able to remember them all.

Though if we only need remember on the blockchain those we found for the blockchain that isn't a problem for us; and maybe only bothering to remember some rare sequences is going to let science actually remember what is found instead of trying to find stuff it is only going to have to forget at some point when it runs out of memory/storage...

-MarkM-

[oroqen]

There isn't enough data storage on earth, maybe not in the entire universe, to remember all primes, so finding new ones surely has to involve forgetting old ones at some point.

Primecoin though isn't looking for primes, it is looking some some fancy pattern/sequence of primes, I dunno though whether they too are so numerous we won't be able to remember them all.

Though if we only need remember on the blockchain those we found for the blockchain that isn't a problem for us; and maybe only bothering to remember same rare sequences is going to let science actually remember what is found instead of trying to find stuff it is only going to have to forget at some point when it runs out of memory/storage...

-MarkM-

Same can be said for any number, numbers are infinite regardless if there used in SHA,Scrypt or Prime chains.

[mr_random]

There is some use to the data gathered for pure mathematicians (disproving conjectures, possibly discovering new patterns). In the same way you get programs online that allow people to search for higher and higher prime numbers (often Mersenne primes). It's usefulness is in a similar vein to those. The coin in itself will also strongly motivate people to write efficient algorithms that crunch through prime numbers, so a by product of the coin could be a breakthrough in that direction. A lot of 'pure maths' doesn't (yet) have any real world applications. Over the last hundred years though time and again pure maths that was thought to not be useful was later found to be ideal for solving a problem.

At the end of the day it's still primarily a currency, with 1 minute confirmation times. That's it's main purpose. But as a bonus, at least the proof of work contributes to society in some way rather than meaningless forgotten hashes.

[markm]

Well think about lazguns and shields, as in Dune, especially the later Dune books by his son and a collaborator in which we get the story of the mathematician whose maths led to that stuff.

If you like to manipulate/disintegrate things using harmonics, mightn't primes be more resistant to more higher-frequency harmonics than other numbers?

In fact don't primes have no higher-frequency harmonics (well, except the integer "one") if the universe/substrate is quantised aka fundamentally integer?

Maybe primes will be involved in that ten thousand years ahead future development...

-MarkM-

[tob101]

The 1 minute confirmation time makes it a winner(I prefer to use XPM than those "cheap" scrypt cloneCoins) for those who do lots of arbitrage, it's currently in 3 or 4 exchanges, so moving funds between them with primeCoin is the best option so far. Wait until it hits BTC-e, it's price is gonna explode!  

[oroqen]

The 1 minute confirmation time makes it a winner(I prefer to use XPM than those "cheap" scrypt cloneCoins) for those who do lots of arbitrage, it's currently in 3 or 4 exchanges, so moving funds between them with primeCoin is the best option so far. Wait until it hits BTC-e, it's price is gonna explode!  

didn't BTC-e say no for now?

[tob101]

The 1 minute confirmation time makes it a winner(I prefer to use XPM than those "cheap" scrypt cloneCoins) for those who do lots of arbitrage, it's currently in 3 or 4 exchanges, so moving funds between them with primeCoin is the best option so far. Wait until it hits BTC-e, it's price is gonna explode!  

didn't BTC-e say no for now?

I don't know. Maybe after a test-period they will reconsider it. XPM looks better than all the scrypt altCoin so far.

[Endgame]

It would be good to hear a mathematician's view on the usefulness of these prime chains. Seems dubious to me.

[smoothie]

I'm curious of the efects of the network once difficulty gets really high and prime numbers to be found are insanely difficult to compute let alone verify by nodes to be efficient in any meaningful way.

[AgentME]

It would be good to hear a mathematician's view on the usefulness of these prime chains. Seems dubious to me.

They're useful in showing some empirical data on the distribution of prime chains and maybe primes themselves, but they're not useful in the sense of protein folding calculations. To me, a blockchain full of mildly interesting computations is much better than one of arbitrary hashes that do nothing more than verify the latest transaction.

I'm curious of the efects of the network once difficulty gets really high and prime numbers to be found are insanely difficult to compute let alone verify by nodes to be efficient in any meaningful way.

Each chain length is much harder to find than the previous, but the difficulty in verification is only a constant difference, so I don't see that becoming an issue.

[Taxidermista]

There isn't enough data storage on earth, maybe not in the entire universe, to remember all primes

I didn't know there is a finite amount of primes.

[bitg]

There isn't enough data storage on earth, maybe not in the entire universe, to remember all primes

I didn't know there is a finite amount of primes.

That's indeed what's implied but i think he was only betrayed by the choice of words

OnT: I think Primecoin is a step in the right direction, i am bugged by the general pointlessness and waistness of mining cryptos. I am patiently waiting for a coin which can be actually useful and sets the miners in a cooperative spending of resources, currently this cooperativeness can only be achieved by mining in pools, which Primecoin lacks. But what i would like to see is this cooperation structuraly implemented, otherwise the waist in resources is crasy.

[solracx]

There is some use to the data gathered for pure mathematicians (disproving conjectures, possibly discovering new patterns). In the same way you get programs online that allow people to search for higher and higher prime numbers (often Mersenne primes). It's usefulness is in a similar vein to those. The coin in itself will also strongly motivate people to write efficient algorithms that crunch through prime numbers, so a by product of the coin could be a breakthrough in that direction. A lot of 'pure maths' doesn't (yet) have any real world applications. Over the last hundred years though time and again pure maths that was thought to not be useful was later found to be ideal for solving a problem.

At the end of the day it's still primarily a currency, with 1 minute confirmation times. That's it's main purpose. But as a bonus, at least the proof of work contributes to society in some way rather than meaningless forgotten hashes.

Good answer.

[solracx]

I'm curious of the efects of the network once difficulty gets really high and prime numbers to be found are insanely difficult to compute let alone verify by nodes to be efficient in any meaningful way.

That's the 1,000 XPM question.... as you go from a chain of length N to a chain of length N+1, how much does the difficulty actually change?

[hathmill]

Primecoin will be favored by academia and Thats were the Big money is!!!!

[blastbob]

I'm curious of the efects of the network once difficulty gets really high and prime numbers to be found are insanely difficult to compute let alone verify by nodes to be efficient in any meaningful way.

That's the 1,000 XPM question.... as you go from a chain of length N to a chain of length N+1, how much does the difficulty actually change?

Buy better amazon nodes

[AgentME]

I'm curious of the efects of the network once difficulty gets really high and prime numbers to be found are insanely difficult to compute let alone verify by nodes to be efficient in any meaningful way.

That's the 1,000 XPM question.... as you go from a chain of length N to a chain of length N+1, how much does the difficulty actually change?

I think I saw an estimate that difficulty 8 was 30x harder to find chains for than difficulty 7. (But verifying just means checking one more prime, so it's only 1/7 harder in that case.)