Cryptocurrencies are not only “electronic money”, but also other useful features
“Rabbits are not only valuable fur ...”
Last year, the buzz around cryptocurrencies has not ceased: exchanges are growing by leaps and bounds, large services for working with electronic currency are opening (and closing ), both shops and payment systems, discussions are underway in the US Senate. And all this against the background of jumping courses and general hysteria about prices and the possibility of quick enrichment.
At the moment, we see that cryptocurrency is still a “thing in itself”: computing power is used exclusively for generating hashes by various algorithms. There are many different variations on the topic “Algorithm for CPU only”, “Algorithm to a large extent for ASICs”, various algorithms for automatically adjusting network complexity, etc. But in essence this is a variation on the same topic: computing power go exclusively to the generation of new coins.
I must say that there have been attempts to change the current situation. Primecoins work with prime numbers, the CureCoin project is also in testing , with the goal of generating coins at least in parallel and working with protein folding , as a maximum - adding other @ home projects to the algorithm of work. Undoubtedly, this is a big step forward for cryptocurrencies as a means of scientific research. In this case, people who want to receive some kind of reward for using their capacities can also contribute to science.
But such calculations are just one of the possibilities of a decentralized cryptocurrency network. Two great ideas came up at bitcointalk.org two days ago., especially relevant in the light of the latest news about censorship on the Internet, the closure of torrent trackers, etc. One of the participants at bitcointalk decided: why not store some arbitrary information in the file of the blockchain that can be attached to the network transaction, and then get it from this file at any time? Judge for yourself: a simple bash script will save all the magnet links of a large torrent tracker in a file that will be copied multiple times to a huge number of network nodes. Moreover, any person can save such information, and it is impossible to delete it at someone’s whim. It is possible to do very interesting things on the basis of such a storage, and such content can no longer be deleted - while at least one network node is running, the content will be available. True, the size of one "attachment" cannot exceed 128 KB,
In fairness, it is worth noting that similar functionality has already been introduced in Namecoin. However, Namecoin contained certain rules for stored information, i.e. the stored data could be “incorrect”, and in the case of Datacoin, all information is stored as BLOBs, which removes any format restrictions.
It turns out that this cryptocurrency scheme is unique: the currency itself is at the same time both a product (a place in a decentralized storage) and a means of calculation (you can exchange it for another cryptocurrency or “regular money” / fiat).
It is worth noting the disadvantages of this approach. Firstly, increasing the size of a blockchain file can go up to 500 GB per year. However, with current hard drives, 500 GB is not so much (of course, when it comes to SSDs), and the very idea of currency implies rewards for providing its free space for general use. Secondly, the forum notes that no one is stopping attackers from adding prohibited content to the repository. It is rather difficult to object, but my opinion is based on the fact that it is impossible to equate a certain file (chain of blocks), from which with the help of a number of special programs one can extract something forbidden, to the usual archive of "forbidden pictures". With the same success, you can write a program that extracts a certain sequence of bytes from standard Windows files, and writes these bytes to the 1.jpg file,such a comic book. Well, the third minus, in my opinion, is the fact that you can simply “spam” the repository with unnecessary information. However, as far as I know, existing functionality is being updated to avoid such a problem.
I would like to hear your opinions on the future of such a concept. At the moment, Datacoin is the only cryptocurrency with a similar “applied” purpose, and this once again shows that such projects can serve not only for the benefit of their own wallets, but also for the benefit of other people.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this development, all information is gathered exclusively from bitcointalk.org.
PS Someone wrote on the forum: “Imagine a Snowden archive that is backed up on the computers of millions of users!” Especially considering the fact that the cryptocurrency mechanism allows them to work through Tor \ I2P - really, imagine this scenario!
UPD: some interesting ideas from the forum about using such a repository. I’ll clarify: to save N kilobytes of data in a blockchain, you need to pay a small network tax, which is very reasonable.
1. Storage of encrypted information (including personal) in the form of "public key - encrypted information", there is already a simple script for encoding / decoding files in this way. Such information can be not only a “memo”, but also some data with a critical time of the first appearance on the network. For example, if it is necessary to prove the authorship of a scientific discovery, it will be possible to indicate: here is the database of hashes, here is my information about the discovery, here is the time of its storage. It is impossible to edit and fake data, therefore, this can serve as evidence.
By the way, this way you can store, for example, the same encrypted bitcoin wallet, and it cannot be accidentally deleted from the googledrive account. A sort of analogue of a bank cell.
2. In the future, it is likely to use such a database as auxiliary storage for “anonymous twitter”: you do not need to go through the registration procedure in such a “twitter”, you do not need to “shine” your personal data and so on, you just need to send a transaction with data in a certain format , and they will appear on the site. Naturally, in this case it will be possible to limit the data size for messages such as those made in the original twitter.
3. to be continued ...