Making PoW usefull

[Volture]

Wouldn't it be possible to make use of all those ~250 Phash/s of computer power that we today waste on solving fabricated algorithms? The essence of the Internet is information, so if we are looking for something concrete to be mined, encrypted information seems like a valid contender.

What is there to decrypt? The first thing that comes to my mind is Wikileaks. There are X amounts of encrypted documents that still remain hidden from us.

"What's Wikileaks hiding in its 400GB of 'insurance' files?"

"The triumvirate of files are locked with NSA-approved AES encryption and weigh in at a beefy 3.6GB, 49GB and 349GB respectively.
Without a secret key to decrypt them (or a time machine and a very powerful computer) the files are useless blobs of ones and zeros that allow the safe dispersal of secret information beyond the reach of anyone who might want to interfere with Wikileaks."

Mining is one the biggest flaws of Bitcoin, because it's not used productive in any way. It's a common thing to hear that, "Bitcoin seems like a complete waste of resources".

[Volture]

Bitcoin more powerful than fastest supercomputers

[monsterer]

ASICs are custom designed to do only one job, SHA256 hashes. Useless for anything else.

[bitcoin2.0]

Here is a guy who is using the power of bitcoin mining to benefit the planet:

http://www.logicoins.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140523_164302-e1404154208253.jpg

I'm going to buy some of his bitcoins right now, how about you give him your money too!

Bitcoin 1.0 YAY!!!

[Volture]

Hehe! I've now come to understand that brute forcing this form of encryption is practically impossible, even with the power of Bitcoin. 

[flipme]

This a very interesting approach. It could save PoW.
Currently GRIDCOIN just went public and changed their PoW concept to utilise BOINC.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324118.0

[flipme]

ASICs are custom designed to do only one job, SHA256 hashes. Useless for anything else.

Thats a pity for them, because it has no future.

[fenghush]

Cracking the wikileaks insurance files is quite possible in a distributed manner, just not with bitcoin itself but a fork which uses the same encryption algo as the NSA's files for verifying "blocks". It would be bit of a bitch to verify the key and credit miners based on the work submitted, since there is only one "block" that needs to be solved.

[Bizmark13]

There are already projects underway that attempt to bring together traditional PoW mining with solving scientific problems. The mining doesn't directly solve these problems but instead you get rewarded coins when you contribute processing power to distributed projects like Folding@Home and BOINC. Examples of such coins include Foldingcoin, Curecoin, and Gridcoin.

Then you have coins like Primecoin and Riecoin where the hashing algorithm is directly involved with solving the problem at hand. By mining these coins, you help to solve and identify long strings of prime numbers. The results of these calculations could be useful for future research applications.

On the other hand, if the files that OP are talking about are encrypted using AES-256 with a sufficiently strong password, then I don't think a network of miners no matter how numerous or powerful would be able to crack them. A strong password such as the one below would take 94 septemvigintillion (9.4*10^85) years to crack with a typical desktop PC:

"349UnCzEXsY11!_+%nrb--33s0113191..eEeEE!>>Ezqzbaa#3#"

Even if you had 1 trillion people each with 1 trillion ASICs that were 1 trillion times more powerful, it would still take 9.4*1^49 years which is 6,800 billion billion billion billion times longer than the age of the Universe.

However, most people use shitty passwords so perhaps it might only take a few days.

[username18333]

Planting trees would be a useful “Proof-of-Work.” 

[KarmaTeam]

a small miner fish complaining about "not-fairness" is like a small traders complaining it can not buy $10 worth of microsoft stocks like it did decays ago.

Seriously. If you want to be the top fish in POW mining then you have to do what the rest of the top Fishes are doing. invest $$ into buying the equipments. That's the beauty of it. There is nothing stopping you from being one. It's fair game.

Except you do not want to play that game. There was a window of opportunity and it has long past for regular GPU miners to get a shot at Bitcoin POW mining.

Whats next, are you going to complain that you can't buy $0.01 Bitcoins anymore?

[username18333]

a small miner fish complaining about "not-fairness" is like a small traders complaining it can not buy $10 worth of microsoft stocks like it did decays ago.

. . .

(Red colorization mine.)

Wouldn't it be possible to make use of all those ~250 Phash/s of computer power that we today waste on solving fabricated algorithms? The essence of the Internet is information, so if we are looking for something concrete to be mined, encrypted information seems like a valid contender.

. . .

(Red colorization mine.)

Would you care to try that again?

[bitwho]

a small miner fish complaining about "not-fairness" is like a small traders complaining it can not buy $10 worth of microsoft stocks like it did decays ago.

. . .

(Red colorization mine.)

Wouldn't it be possible to make use of all those ~250 Phash/s of computer power that we today waste on solving fabricated algorithms? The essence of the Internet is information, so if we are looking for something concrete to be mined, encrypted information seems like a valid contender.

. . .

(Red colorization mine.)

Would you care to try that again?

unrelated to OP more so related to people mocking bitcoin POW no?

[username18333]

. . .

unrelated to OP more so related to people mocking bitcoin POW no?

The fellow disregarded the subject of this thread—the perceived wastefulness of PoW—to propagandize for PoW.

[e-coinomist]

Here is a guy who is using the power of bitcoin mining to benefit the planet:

(image of a really bad investment shown)

I'm going to buy some of his bitcoins right now, how about you give him your money too!

He gave his money to ASIC fabrications, well done! Watching the difficulty too, eh?
The roof will drop down soon.

PS: don't buy in, it is loosing value all year long now

[DrGrid]

Wouldn't it be possible to make use of all those ~250 Phash/s of computer power that we today waste on solving fabricated algorithms? The essence of the Internet is information, so if we are looking for something concrete to be mined, encrypted information seems like a valid contender.

What is there to decrypt? The first thing that comes to my mind is Wikileaks. There are X amounts of encrypted documents that still remain hidden from us.

"What's Wikileaks hiding in its 400GB of 'insurance' files?"

"The triumvirate of files are locked with NSA-approved AES encryption and weigh in at a beefy 3.6GB, 49GB and 349GB respectively.
Without a secret key to decrypt them (or a time machine and a very powerful computer) the files are useless blobs of ones and zeros that allow the safe dispersal of secret information beyond the reach of anyone who might want to interfere with Wikileaks."

Mining is one the biggest flaws of Bitcoin, because it's not used productive in any way. It's a common thing to hear that, "Bitcoin seems like a complete waste of resources".

As stated there are already coins that support this kind of work, Gridcoin probably being the most versatile. You could easily create a BOINC project to do this kind of decrypttion work in a distributed manner and Gridcoin supports BOINC projects. Creating a Proof of Work though that only directs itself to this purpose is questionable though, since it would lead to an insecure and unstable function. So Gridcoin is probably the only platform that currently has the theoretic ability to do this kind of work.

Another apporach for a more useful Proof of Work is basically Little Duke's IDCoin proposal. Here the Proof of Work involves maintaining  PGP keys, so it also becomes a track record for identification and good or bad actors. I believe the Zennet project is also looking to integrate a similar kind of Proof of Work for their project, since it requires some form of trust record.

[fenghush]

There are already projects underway that attempt to bring together traditional PoW mining with solving scientific problems. The mining doesn't directly solve these problems but instead you get rewarded coins when you contribute processing power to distributed projects like Folding@Home and BOINC. Examples of such coins include Foldingcoin, Curecoin, and Gridcoin.

Then you have coins like Primecoin and Riecoin where the hashing algorithm is directly involved with solving the problem at hand. By mining these coins, you help to solve and identify long strings of prime numbers. The results of these calculations could be useful for future research applications.

On the other hand, if the files that OP are talking about are encrypted using AES-256 with a sufficiently strong password, then I don't think a network of miners no matter how numerous or powerful would be able to crack them. A strong password such as the one below would take 94 septemvigintillion (9.4*10^85) years to crack with a typical desktop PC:

"349UnCzEXsY11!_+%nrb--33s0113191..eEeEE!>>Ezqzbaa#3#"

Even if you had 1 trillion people each with 1 trillion ASICs that were 1 trillion times more powerful, it would still take 9.4*1^49 years which is 6,800 billion billion billion billion times longer than the age of the Universe.

However, most people use shitty passwords so perhaps it might only take a few days.

I'd throw books at it rather than do boring brute force, gather all the public domain books from archive.org, permute/concatenate/append/replace and finnaly unique the whole wordlist to have a nice chunk of human language history, then hash away!

[VectorChief]

Although making PoW useful is an interesting idea, it might not be the best approach for universal neutral money system, as usefulness is something that is defined by society and may change over time.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855520.0

[Buffer Overflow]

"Bitcoin seems like a complete waste of resources".

Quote from the bitcoin wiki:
"No more so than the wastefulness of mining gold out of the ground, melting it down and shaping it into bars, and then putting it back underground again. Not to mention the building of big fancy buildings, the waste of energy printing and minting all the various fiat currencies, the transportation thereof in armored cars by no less than two security guards for each who could probably be doing something more productive, etc."

[username18333]

. . .

No more so than the wastefulness of mining gold out of the ground, melting it down and shaping it into bars, and then putting it back underground again. Not to mention the building of big fancy buildings, the waste of energy printing and minting all the various fiat currencies, the transportation thereof in armored cars by no less than two security guards for each who could probably be doing something more productive, etc.

No one said those activities aren’t any less unnecessary than Bitcoin mining.