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Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

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Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#41

Post by mpeg »

wellboy wrote: post #39
dnautics wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a silly concept. The whole point of hashing as a proof of work is that verification is faster than generation... It's a one way function. If you intend to use scientific computation as proof of work, then in most cases, verification is just as difficult as generation, so now all you've done is wasted computation by repeating your calculation each time you're verifying. In other cases (protein folding e.g…

Why not reward computation power by the amount of kwh they have spent, regardless of if their computation was worth it or worthless.

Then you have to verify, and as he says, you end up duplicating the work.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#42

Post by nerdponx »

beefield wrote: post #29
nerdponx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with inflationary currency as long as the supply expands at a fixed/steady rate.

From macroeconomic perspective it does not matter if the monetary supply is fixed or just pre-defined, it is equally bad idea. If you want to have a currency that society runs on, that is.

I am talking about the rate of supply increase. A constant, predictable increase in supply over time would hopefully lead to constant, preditctable inflation.

DOGE is my favorite crypto for exactly this reason.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#43

Post by westurner »

ben_w wrote: post #34
oh_sigh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hard to call it a flaw in Bitcoin, considering it was an intentional design decision.

Even intentional design decisions can be flawed.

There's a pretty hard limit bounding the optimizability of SHA256. That's why hashcash uses a cryptographic hash function.

There may be - or, very likely are - shortcuts for proof of research better than Grover's; which, when found, will also be very useful for science and medicine. However, that advantage is theoretically destabilizing for a distributed consensus network; which is also a strange conflict in incentives.

Sort of like buying "buy gold" commercials when the market was heading into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

SSL accelerators may benefit from the SHA256 ASIC optimizations incentivized by the bitcoin design.

"""The accelerator provides the RSA public-key algorithm, several widely used symmetric-key algorithms, cryptographic hash functions, and a cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator"""

GPU prices are also lower now; probably due to demand pulling volume. The TPS (transactions per second) rate is doing much better these days.

How would you solve the local daretime problem in order with Git and signatures?

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#44

Post by beefield »

nerdponx wrote: post #42
beefield wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From macroeconomic perspective it does not matter if the monetary supply is fixed or just pre-defined, it is equally bad idea. If you want to have a currency that society runs on, that is.

I am talking about the rate of supply increase. A constant, predictable increase in supply over time would hopefully lead to constant, preditctable inflation. DOGE is my favorite crypto for exactly this reason.

In early eighties many central banks tried targeting the amount of money in circulation to achieve stabe inflation, but failed. There is no reason to expect that a predefined rate of money supply would generate a predefined inflation. (See: gold, bitcoin)

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#45

Post by beefield »

dmichulke wrote: post #32
beefield wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From macroeconomic perspective it does not matter if the monetary supply is fixed or just pre-defined, it is equally bad idea. If you want to have a currency that society runs on, that is.

May I ask what macroeconomic perspective that is?

Of course. You can and want to adjust aggregate demand by monetary policy. I do not claim that current central banks do perfect job (biggest problem for the last decade has been inability to set properly negative interest rates), but at least to me it is obvious that of you do not manage aggregate demand you end up with massive cycles in economy that cause havoc.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#46

Post by grubles »

akvadrako wrote: post #35
grubles wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primecoin (sign: Ψ; code: XPM) is a peer-to-peer open source cryptocurrency that implements a unique scientific computing proof-of-work system. Primecoin's proof-of-work system searches for chains of prime numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin

Primecoin is dead - go to their website and click on "Forums". Or find the network node explorer online.

Looks like it's very much alive: http://xpm.muuttuja.org/charts/

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#47

Post by knowledgepowers »

comicjk wrote: post #5
cprayingmantis wrote: post #4

In all honesty this is what I've been waiting for in terms of a useful cryptocurrency. Now if we could only decentralize the control of what projects the processing goes towards with smart contracts then we could have a coin with more actual utility. Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

The projects SONM and Golem are trying to do what you describe. Their plan is to use the Ethereum blockchain to sell miners' computing power in units of their coins, thus giving the coins practical value. Neither one is ready enough to buy from yet.

Another: sparc.network

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#48

Post by dnautics »

wellboy wrote: post #39
dnautics wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a silly concept. The whole point of hashing as a proof of work is that verification is faster than generation... It's a one way function. If you intend to use scientific computation as proof of work, then in most cases, verification is just as difficult as generation, so now all you've done is wasted computation by repeating your calculation each time you're verifying. In other cases (protein folding e.g…

Why not reward computation power by the amount of kwh they have spent, regardless of if their computation was worth it or worthless.

I'm sorry, but the world does not work the way that you want it to.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#49

Post by dnautics »

mpeg wrote: post #41
wellboy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not reward computation power by the amount of kwh they have spent, regardless of if their computation was worth it or worthless.

Then you have to verify, and as he says, you end up duplicating the work.

duplicating is very optimistic. Over a distributed network, to achieve trust, it will have to be (n) where n is the average (over all time) number of agents that care about the validity of the chain. Then don't forget to multiply by k^2 where k is the expected blockchain chain length over all time. As an approximation...

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#50

Post by dnautics »

beefield wrote: post #45
dmichulke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask what macroeconomic perspective that is?

Of course. You can and want to adjust aggregate demand by monetary policy. I do not claim that current central banks do perfect job (biggest problem for the last decade has been inability to set properly negative interest rates), but at least to me it is obvious that of you do not manage aggregate demand you end up with massive cycles in economy that cause havoc.

question: what is the neoliberal obsession over negative interest rates? The point of negative interest rates is to encourage borrowing and "reinvestment over saving under the mattress". Typically the lowest interest rates are given to institutional investors (aka the very wealthy) while "the rest of us" have to take on interest rates that don't beat inflation. "Reinvestment" usually means "supporting fortune 500 companies that are in index funds.

If you think about it carefully, it basically sounds an awful like trickle-down economics.

Of course, there's the babysitter's coop parable, but that seems like not a monetary failure, but the failure of a really silly centralized decision to make a unit of labor time be fixed instead of having the unit of labor float in value.

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