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Cryptocurrency - Why not sell/rent processing power?

A

AltCapwn

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Hello guys,

I heard, a long time ago, that Ethereum planned to become a cryptocurrency that would be based on a system that sells or rents processing power to companies that needs to run simulation or whatever (a bit like folding@home). Each time your finish an instruction, it gives you a unit of ethereum that has X value depending of the cost of the current market for these sort of process.

I'm kind of surprise that it still doesn't exist right now (it maybe exist, I don't really know :P). I mean, there's so much processing power that is wasted for "hashing" useless blockchain (useless in the sense that it doesn't give anything for anyone, except money for those who mine them), why not use it for the better good of everyone?

The value would depends of what the market can offer at this time (alot of private companies offer to rent their infrastructure or supercomputer for ALOT of money to run those kind of tasks) and I'm sure that if it helps a team of reseachers to proof their work or if it helps to advance science, it would make that cryptocurrency worth more.

What do you think of that? It would be a currency that is less based on speculation and I'm sure everyone would give it a much better point of view.

I'm starting a market study to see if it's possible, what would be the challenge, would it be profitable, etc...

Give me your thoughts :)

PS: sorry for my not so perfect english

Cheers!
 
The way it's going, just to get to a website, you might be asked "To continue to the requested page, we want to use your unused processing power. Click here to let us mine, else fuck off."
 
It already exists in several coin forms, gridcoin being one example I am aware of. They aren't mined as often because they aren't as profitable, but they do exist.
 
But that's how all cryptocurrencies work, except in case of solo mining those rewards are distributed randomly. Pool mining just takes advantage of larger number of people having a higher chance of getting a block reward, and then splits it between all miners according to the amount of work they did for this block.

And if you mean completing non-mining related workloads, then there are some that do exactly that: Sia does this for distributed storage along with regular mining, gridcoin is basically a reward system for BOINC.

I've tried Sia's storage and it's unbelievably fast and responsive. I'm surprised it didn't take off faster on it's own... Maxed out my UL/DL bandwidth no problem (100/100Mbps), which is way faster than Dropbox or google drive in my area.
 
Any website implementing a miner is on my blacklist and won't ever get off it. Even if you have ten disclaimers and fourteen warnings/confirmation boxes.

Its a wasteful practice that needs to die, the only basis for this is GREED.
 
What you want to do is called BIONC
Vayra86 said:
Any website implementing a miner is on my blacklist and won't ever get off it. Even if you have ten disclaimers and fourteen warnings/confirmation boxes.

Its a wasteful practice that needs to die, the only basis for this is GREED.
Click to expand...
I sure enjoy my vacation and this greed, and my mom is enjoying a newer car with that greed also. Its not called greed, its called surviving.
 
What about, say, Netflix, getting in on it..."mine or pay."....?
 
1freedude said:
What about, say, Netflix, getting in on it..."mine or pay.
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They would probably not wish to antagonize their customer ( or future) Base
 
Sorry, practicality cannot beat artificial speculation. It's market versus science right now.
 
yotano211 said:
What you want to do is called BIONC

I sure enjoy my vacation and this greed, and my mom is enjoying a newer car with that greed also. Its not called greed, its called surviving.
Click to expand...

Vacation and new car doesn't fall into the 'surviving' category in my book. But I guess we have different standards. Regardless, if survival is based on something as volatile as this, there are other, far more fundamental issues to take care of.
 
Vayra86 said:
Vacation and new car doesn't fall into the 'surviving' category in my book. But I guess we have different standards. Regardless, if survival is based on something as volatile as this, there are other, far more fundamental issues to take care of.
Click to expand...
Its called living and enjoying life.
 
Vayra86 said:
Any website implementing a miner is on my blacklist and won't ever get off it. Even if you have ten disclaimers and fourteen warnings/confirmation boxes.

Its a wasteful practice that needs to die, the only basis for this is GREED.
Click to expand...

What does this even have to do with the subject?

Oh, I get it. Its got crypto in the title so it's a free ticket for offtopic criticism.
 
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R-T-B said:
What does this even have to do with the subject?

Oh, I get it. Its got crypto in the title so it's a free ticket for offtopic criticism.
Click to expand...

What it has to do with the subject? Surely you're not that dense...

Trying to justify a bad practice with a good one you do alongside it is really quite bad taste and misleading. Look at the energy footprint that comes with this territory today, and look at the ways people are manipulated or how the masses fall for that quick buck. When you add compensation to something such as this, you basically corrupt the very principles that drive these projects. Especially when that compensation is a speculative item.

The only reason these ideas exist today is because people see profit margins, not because of ethics. The means has become the purpose...

Let's not forget that the whole distributed network research thing already exists and can be freely accessed by everyone, yet somehow you don't see everyone chipping in. Contrary to mining; all of a sudden, the most tech-averse people find ways to put processing power to use to make money. Now... take a quick guess at what'll happen when you combine the two. Soon, its not mining but 'research' killing the supply of parts worldwide, because everyone can make money with it by pushing a button. And the vast majority doesn't give a rat's behind about what that research is or what it's for.
 
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That's something SETI could use apparently : https://www.techspot.com/news/73291-cryptocurrency-mining-interfering-search-alien-life.html

It's not for science, but microsoft is using Bitcoin and ETH for it's own stuff : https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpe...stems-built-on-bitcoin-and-other-blockchains/
There is also golem which can be used for 3D rendering, scientific calculation... it's based on ETH : https://golem.network/
Right now it's not suppoted by any major (Maya, 3Dsmax, Arnold, Renderman, Vray, Redshift) 3D/rendering software, but the idea is honorable, it's cheaper than online renderfarm.

But if you think about it, all of this can only work because the network is motivated by profit. Goodwill based idea will quickly hit their limit. Unicef is trying something like that for 2 month, where they ask people to mine ETH with their sofwtare. Right now there is only been 835 miners, with 33 curently active. I think it's fair to assume that most people are not really motivated to lose 2 month of profit to help some strangers. That's just human nature. Even with it's bad reputation, the ETH pool of minergate is 14 time faster than unicef's.

We can criticize all we want but without profit for the party giving it's processing power, blockchain will never reach it full potential. Yes it's having a bad effect on the gpu market, the energy conssumption, but seeing how things are right now there is only two things that can happen : the world adapt, more foundry are being made so that Nvidia and AMD can actually supply both mining gpu and gaming gpu, the developement of efficient energy is getting more aggresive, so that we don't shorthen the 1000 years that is roughly left to human civilisation.
Or nothing change and we will keep having fight between miners and gamers, and we will accelerate humanity extinction.

I actually don't think that there are a lot of usefull stuff that don't have an ugly side...crypto is just like petrol, or nuclear energy.
 
Vayra86 said:
What it has to do with the subject? Surely you're not that dense...

Trying to justify a bad practice with a good one you do alongside it is really quite bad taste and misleading. Look at the energy footprint that comes with this territory today, and look at the ways people are manipulated or how the masses fall for that quick buck. When you add compensation to something such as this, you basically corrupt the very principles that drive these projects. Especially when that compensation is a speculative item.

The only reason these ideas exist today is because people see profit margins, not because of ethics. The means has become the purpose...

Let's not forget that the whole distributed network research thing already exists and can be freely accessed by everyone, yet somehow you don't see everyone chipping in. Contrary to mining; all of a sudden, the most tech-averse people find ways to put processing power to use to make money. Now... take a quick guess at what'll happen when you combine the two. Soon, its not mining but 'research' killing the supply of parts worldwide, because everyone can make money with it by pushing a button. And the vast majority doesn't give a rat's behind about what that research is or what it's for.
Click to expand...

Maybe you or another anti-miner/anti-crypto person can answer me this:

Let's put aside the whole GPU shortage thing for now. Let's assume GPUs for everybody at normal prices, just to move that out of the way. Okay, so miners, big (taking orders by the pallet) and small (guys like me with 2 video cards) are still gobbling up GPUs and sucking down power to run them, in order to make money. How is this any different from any other business endeavor? If the biggest miner decided to take those profits and say... build a small plastics factory. He builds a building and stuffs it full of let's say 10 presses. He then has to buy molds for those presses, raw material, tons of electric power to run them, loads of oil, hydraulic fluid... see where I'm going with this? In both cases, lots of money is spent, lots of money is made, the earth is struck (raw materials to build the cards, or the plastic factory), pollution is created (emissions at the gpu factory, pollution from the plastic factory, carbon footprint etc). The only real difference is the product. The miner produces cryptocurrency, which unquestionably holds value to those interested in it. The plastic guy makes totes and laundry baskets and what have you, of course, with value to those who buy those products.

TL;DR I honestly think people are just butthurt that video cards cost more now, without considering the fact that literally any other business also directly and/or indirectly consumes resources the same as mining does. If you want truly green business, pay the Amish in chickens or something for them to make you some furniture. Just don't be a vegan or complain that the Amish are damaging the environment by cutting down the trees to make the furniture using axes that had to have been made in some way that also consumes resources and produces emissions.
 
Vayra86 said:
Trying to justify a bad practice with a good one you do alongside it is really quite bad taste and misleading.
Click to expand...

That's not what we're discussing? We are discussing replacing the PoW with BOINC work or similar, not doing it "alongside" anything. It would simply reward you with a currency. If you feel that's bad that's one thing, but you just went on a generic off-topic anti crypto rant, and failed to clarify that.

You also still did not explain how bringing crypto mining websites into this was at all on topic.
 
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R-T-B said:
You also still did not explain how bringing crypto mining websites into this was at all on topic.
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That was me. I trying to express "selling mining time" to enjoy a website.
 
R-T-B said:
That's not what we're discussing? We are discussing replacing the PoW with BOINC work or similar, not doing it "alongside" anything. It would simply reward you with a currency. If you feel that's bad that's one thing, but you just went on a generic off-topic anti crypto rant, and failed to clarify that.

You also still did not explain how bringing crypto mining websites into this was at all on topic.
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Apology accepted - and you're right, I did shoot into rant mode with regards to websites implementing miners, but the relation IS there..

Proof of work right now is the very concept of mining. The experience today is that this proof of work is the primary damaging factor in terms of crypto's value/stability and in terms of promoting the advantages that crypto currencies can bring. At the same time, if mining hadn't existed alongside Bitcoin, we probably would have already forgotten about it entirely - because why invest all this effort into something that just replaces what you already had, and, frankly, works fine for most people.

You see proof of all this today: people don't mine out of ideology or an idea that crypto is going to benefit them long term as a currency. They mine on the basis of easy money. When Bitcoin started and its value was low? Most of those people stated they supported the ideals that crypto served - decentralized, non-regulated currency that is trustworthy and provides tangible advantages over fiat.

Now, do the math: what'll happen when you replace the proof of work with a 'proof of work called research'... nothing changes. People still effectively mine and speculate, volatility will be the same, but now they can defend themselves with 'but look I'm doing what's good for the world'... This can go only two directions: woefully out of control (when the rewards are great), or into fast decline (when the reward isn't worthwhile / ROI goes down sharply).

So. Its simply a bad idea, that will never work, if you want to support good causes, there are LOTS of ways to do it today. If you only want to support good causes when you get paid handsomely for it... its called a business model and its a really stinkin' bad one.

Ultimately, the website miner comment comes around again because IF you implement such a method for proof of work, websites will sell it as 'look we're doing real good work, and so are you by visiting us' when in fact, everyone's only in it for the money, and the bottom line is no different from what it is today.

hat said:
Maybe you or another anti-miner/anti-crypto person can answer me this:

Let's put aside the whole GPU shortage thing for now. Let's assume GPUs for everybody at normal prices, just to move that out of the way. Okay, so miners, big (taking orders by the pallet) and small (guys like me with 2 video cards) are still gobbling up GPUs and sucking down power to run them, in order to make money. How is this any different from any other business endeavor? If the biggest miner decided to take those profits and say... build a small plastics factory. He builds a building and stuffs it full of let's say 10 presses. He then has to buy molds for those presses, raw material, tons of electric power to run them, loads of oil, hydraulic fluid... see where I'm going with this? In both cases, lots of money is spent, lots of money is made, the earth is struck (raw materials to build the cards, or the plastic factory), pollution is created (emissions at the gpu factory, pollution from the plastic factory, carbon footprint etc). The only real difference is the product. The miner produces cryptocurrency, which unquestionably holds value to those interested in it. The plastic guy makes totes and laundry baskets and what have you, of course, with value to those who buy those products.

TL;DR I honestly think people are just butthurt that video cards cost more now, without considering the fact that literally any other business also directly and/or indirectly consumes resources the same as mining does. If you want truly green business, pay the Amish in chickens or something for them to make you some furniture. Just don't be a vegan or complain that the Amish are damaging the environment by cutting down the trees to make the furniture using axes that had to have been made in some way that also consumes resources and produces emissions.
Click to expand...

The difference is ethics. There are businesses, most of them actually, that contribute to society in some way. Mining however does not. It only contributes to personal gain, and is damaging to society for everyone who doesn't partake - and not only that - it also damages the very thing you're mining in terms of its credibility and usefulness in the future. Mining is basically putting the axe on the roots of the very thing it creates. Its a perfect irony. As far as pollution goes: same as energy production; its a BIG pie with lots of little parts and mining is that one part that really benefits no one in the long term but does damage everyone in the great scale of things.

Mining creates nothing, its wasting energy on solving a math problem that does not exist.

I could give rat's ass about GPU pricing, that market will stabilize in the end, there is really ZERO personal interest for me here and you will notice me in other topics saying people are overreacting when it comes to high component prices. Both when Nvidia upped the ante with Pascal AND when mining added another premium on top.
 
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Boatvan said:
Good point, everyone should crunch on WCG instead. :D
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I don't know why one can't do both, ala gridcoin or similar. It would solve the "it does nothing good!" problem.

I also don't really get why people think they have the right to tell others, or worse yet, judge others for what they do with their computing resources. That just strikes me as silly.
 
Honestly, the various negative impacts of crypto is a great idea for a thread. Make it.
 
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