working on this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=247678.0 some question surfaced, I find this idea worth contemplating.
It seems possible to use solved shares of a pool as a form for micropayment. For example, let us imagine a file host, to simplify let's suppose that
it just charges a payment for uploaded file. With storage being very cheap these days the payment should be very small. It can be paid through bitcoin. But let's suppose that a user has no idea what bitcoin is. Why can't he just solve a bunch of hashes and send a solved share to the file host?
the file host, in turn, has a bitcoin pool server functionality, and uses the received share to mine a block (not only bitcoin, if altcurrencies are more profitable). This way we let the user forget totally about payments systems, he just swaps his home pc computing power for a certain service. Naturally we're talking about micropayments, of order of magnitude of 1 cent. The mining functionality can be integrated in the download/upload client (dropbox-like)
Also it can be used for many other services, including simple web-browsing, as a replacement to banner or context ads. Webmaster puts an applet to his website, client launches it, and sends some hashes to the webmaster. In return he can access his content.
Seems to be a viable micropayment solution. The only obvious drawback is the small amount of payments, naturally a home PC can't mine a lot.