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RE: Some thoughts regarding a Proof of Research Blockchain by core developer TheCharlatan

in #gridcoin6 years ago (edited)

I agree pretty strongly with TheCharlatan's central points, I've been thinking about this subject for a while. PoR is a nice notion, but I don't think it meshes well with BOINC because BOINC was never built with the kind of security concerns in mind that are needed for a reliable blockchain. Our current fundamental process of rewarding BOINC work on top of a PoS blockchain really strikes the right basic balance between a secure blockchain that is needed for Gridcoin to be a viable cryptocurrency and the kind incentive we want to provide for people to volunteer their computing capacity towards BOINC scientific endeavors. The efforts of developers are better spent trying to do those two processes as well and fairly as possible, rather than attempting to blend them in a way which is all but assured to sacrifice blockchain security.

As a community, when doing outreach/marketing and especially when comparing to other cryptos, we should be careful to be forthright about how the project is actually functioning and is likely to continue to function. Using PoR (even though it sounds nice) as a description of the project at present is muddy at best and possibly outright dishonest.

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I agree with both points. I think our time could be best spent focusing on improving the already proven novelty and utility of Gridcoin - Minting a currency based on work done for external entities. There are plenty of issues to work on.

  • New users need to get their ERR without being forced into a pool
  • Stats gathering needs to be decentralized and made to scale
  • Superblocks need to be prepared for expansion outside of solely BOINC (not any time soon, but we need to start thinking about it)
  • Account verification (beacons) need to be improved

Not to mention that we still have some base processes to work out:

  • Poll parameters
  • Voting weight
  • Treasury creation
  • Treasury distribution
  • Development path consensus

These are off the top of my head so there could be more, or some of these could already be solved and it's just late and I'm not thinking straight = ).

The question I ask myself is:

While PoR is an amazing concept that may become reality in the future, why attempt to invent something that we don't immediately need -- a new blockchain security mechanism -- when we have so much else to do?

Who knows. Maybe by working on one of these more straight forward tasks, a solution to the PoR issues raised here will come to light.


With regards to marketing, I think that any resource that wants to be seen as an official source of information should not use the term "Proof of Research." We do not currently use PoR as a protocol and even if we vote to explore its development further, it is not likely that we will use it again for some time.

Also, removal of the boinc team requirement and mobile wallets etc.

Consider that it may not be cryptographically feasible to create a proof of research unless we have a custom made boinc project that was intended just for this purpose.

removal of team req 100%

I agree with your premise here ..

"SCIENTIA HUMANA LIBERTAS"

boinc
Courtesy of @joshoeah

I think it was called Proof of BOINC back in the day, so perhaps we should simply go back to that

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=627086.0

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