Re:MIT's Bitcoin-Inspired 'Enigma' Lets Computers Mine Encry...
by faizshah on Tuesday June 30, 2015 @11:05PM
(#9809855)
I'm not a big fan of cryptocurrencies, especially the blockchain, but if they did one thing they started up the conversation in government of how distributed electronic currencies should be regulated. So I think more experimental things like what I described should show up in the near future. :)
One of my friends informed me that the idea of currencies backed by computing power has existed for a long time in science fiction so perhaps we'll see these specific kinds of systems soon.
You are correct about using stored work to pay for other compute being interesting. I believe this is actually the nature of reality, not just some new fangled thing we're getting around to 'inventing'. I will note this is an opinion of a futurist, so it is what it is.
At the least, compute federation is enabled with cryptocurrencies. They give you a way to pay for use (payments), identify with them (identity managment) and a way to standardize the use of the compute (immutable data structures).