Simulated proof of work

[puppies]

Thanks for all the ideas guys.  I can't believe I missed that thread btswolf. 

[yvv]

Ripple did something like this two years ago. Google for  "computing for good". It brought hell a lot of users into their network, but whole thing was gamed by guys with cheap/free computational power on HPC clusters, and ended up in no where. If you want to give it another try, go ahead, this can be a lot of fun, but don't overlook ripple's poor experience.

[Ben Mason]

Cool idea puppies!!

[liondani]

we have really so many cool ideas... if we implemented only 1% of them, we would be elsewhere right now....   

[btswolf]

Related
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21930.msg285691.html#msg285691

[tbone]

We've already created a platform where other coins can avoid the wasteful work and lower their security costs by migrating onto the Bitshares DEX.  At that point they are free to do whatever they please with the savings.  They can pass the savings on to their users in the form of lower fees.  They can lower their dilution rate.  Or some combination thereof.  I suppose they could also divert some of currently wasteful spending to useful work instead.  Is there anything that would prevent them from doing that right now?

No there is nothing preventing them from doing this.  The only reason I even thought of this is because I was talking to someone that wants to move their pow coin into a bts asset.  Of course I don't think this scheme should be required for anyone.  I think it would be cool to have the option though.

Oh, I think it would be cool, too.  My point was that it sounds like the majority of the effort required to make that happen would be designing a specialized client that does some specialized (and useful) work...and I imagine any 3rd party could create that.  Actually, it seems like the developers of any existing POW coin could convert their current client to perform useful work instead of wasteful work, and then reward participants with shares of their UIA on the Bitshares DEX.  Hmmm.  Are we onto something here?

[puppies]

We've already created a platform where other coins can avoid the wasteful work and lower their security costs by migrating onto the Bitshares DEX.  At that point they are free to do whatever they please with the savings.  They can pass the savings on to their users in the form of lower fees.  They can lower their dilution rate.  Or some combination thereof.  I suppose they could also divert some of currently wasteful spending to useful work instead.  Is there anything that would prevent them from doing that right now?

No there is nothing preventing them from doing this.  The only reason I even thought of this is because I was talking to someone that wants to move their pow coin into a bts asset.  Of course I don't think this scheme should be required for anyone.  I think it would be cool to have the option though.

[tbone]

We've already created a platform where other coins can avoid the wasteful work and lower their security costs by migrating onto the Bitshares DEX.  At that point they are free to do whatever they please with the savings.  They can pass the savings on to their users in the form of lower fees.  They can lower their dilution rate.  Or some combination thereof.  I suppose they could also divert some of currently wasteful spending to useful work instead.  Is there anything that would prevent them from doing that right now?

[puppies]

I hadn't seen that gridcoin had already combined boinc with pos. 

But yes, I think that we could create our own assets, and or get the framework in place that allows current pow coins to move onto bitshares and to retain thier pow mechanism but to switch it to a more useful protocol.

[Pheonike]

So you want implement a Bitshares version of Gridcoin/BOINC.

[puppies]

What if there was a way to use the massive resources used to secure proof of work coins to help solve the worlds problems?  As you probably know you cannot secure a proof of work coin with something like protein folding.  In order to secure a coin the work that is done needs to be unpredictable.  If only there were a better way.

What if we simulated a pow coin on the BitShares network, and generated new coins based upon users solving computation problems that actually serve a greater purpose than securing a network?  Since we don't require pow to secure our network we could reward miners for helping any number of distributed computation programs.  Here is wikipedias list of distributed computation projects.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects  We could launch a coin for each or any of these projects.

I just thought of this today, and wanted to get some input on it.  Does anyone have any experience with any of these distributed computing projects?  Any ideas on how we could have users prove not only that they are contributing, but also how much they are contributing.  How do we take something like this http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userstats and have people prove that they are contributing.  It could be as simple as a script that runs on the asset issuers node and issues assets once a day, or as involved as a smart contract that issues a special type of asset automatically.  We could require that they run a full node, thus increasing the network resilience, or let them report their proof of work through a light client.

If we can convince one of these big projects that we could help get them users, they might be willing to help us integrate. 

Does anyone else think this could be a major coup for bitshares or am I deluding myself?

There is already curecoin but it looks like they are attempting to merge sha256 with fold at home, we have no need for pow for security so we could go further and have all computation going towards a distributed computing project.
https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=25254&start=30
https://www.curecoin.net/

What do you think?