The problem of replacing the general purpose proof of work in cryptocurrencies (finding partial SHA256 collisions in the case of Bitcoin) with something more useful is that the attributes for a good PoW computation are hard to find in real world distributed problems. In particular you want something a problem with the following attributes: - must derive somehow from the block data you're trying to mine, otherwise you…
It wansn't a particularly serious suggestion, but thanks for the explanation.
The problem of replacing the general purpose proof of work in cryptocurrencies (finding partial SHA256 collisions in the case of Bitcoin) with something more useful is that the attributes for a good PoW computation are hard to find in real world distributed problems. In particular you want something a problem with the following attributes: - must derive somehow from the block data you're trying to mine, otherwise you…
It wansn't a particularly serious suggestion, but thanks for the explanation.
Oh I took it very seriously because it's something I've given quite a lot of thought. I'm not a huge believer in cryptocurrencies but I would be a lot more optimistic about them if they weren't wasting so much energy. Harnessing all that processing power to do something useful would be amazing. Unfortunately so far the most useful PoW people have manage to implement are things like "compute very large prime numbers" which I suppose is mildly more useful than finding SHA256 collisions but not by a very large margin.
You dont just cure disease by doing protein folding simulations. thats just a very tiny part of drug development.
I'd rather be a tiny way close to new cures than a more pointless hashing for blockchains.
Many things are pointless if you start evaluating things by one's standards. Let the market decide what they should focus on. Otherwise, you can always rely on government funding for less-market-focused initiatives like fundamental research.