Primecoin - pros, cons and verdict.

One of the things that has generated the most buzz around cryptocurrencies in the tech community is their potential alternate uses. A distributed verification system is certainly a revolutionary way to manage money, but these types of networks have the potential to do much more than enable transactions. Primecoin offers one such alternate application: A cryptocurrency that, in addition to functioning as a form of money, uses the processing power of its users to conduct mathematical research. Since Primecoin is a fairly novel currency, its retail acceptance is very low, but using it could grant significant benefits to the scientific community.

Like many cryptocurrencies, Primecoin uses a proof-of-work system. In order to win the right to verify the next block of transactions, users are constantly competing to solve incredibly difficult math problems first. Whichever computer is able to crack the code first gets a few coins as a reward and then writes the next few lines of the public ledger. Where Primecoin differs is in the specific math problems it asks users to solve. Instead of using an arbitrarily difficult cryptography problem, Primecoin asks users to find special prime number chains called Cunningham chains, which are of particular interest to the scientific and mathematical community. These chains are very difficult to discover and would normally require researchers to buy time on a costly dedicated server in order to generate. Finding these chains can have far-reaching implications for physics and other disciplines.

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