Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

reverse, which is not the structure of

traditional scientific computing

problems.125 There are some

cryptocurrency projects trying to make

blockchain mining scientifically useful

—for example, Primecoin, for which

miners are required to find long chains

of prime numbers (Cunningham chains

and bi-twin chains) instead of SHA256

hashes (the random guesses of a specific

number issued by mining software

programs based on given general

parameters). 126 There is an opportunity

for greater progress in this area to

reformulate supercomputing and desktop

grid computing problems, which have

been organized mainly in a massively

parallel fashion, into a mining-

compatible format to take advantage of

otherwise wasted computing cycles. 127

Gridcoin, if not solving the problem of

using otherwise wasted mining cycles, at

least tries to align incentives by

encouraging miners to also contribute

computing cycles: miners are

compensated at a much higher rate (5

GRC versus a maximum of 150 GRC)

for mining a currency block when also

contributing computing cycles. A typical

complaint about blockchain technology

is the wastefulness of mining, both in

terms of unused computing cycles and

electricity consumption. The media

presents estimates of power

consumption such as “the Eiffel Tower

could stay lit for 260 years with the

energy used to mine Bitcoins since

2009, ”128 and that in 2013 Bitcoin

mining was consuming about 982

megawatt hours a day (enough to power

31,000 homes in the United States, or

half a Large Hadron Collider),129 at a

cost of $15 million a day. 130 However,

the comparison metric is unclear; should

these figures be regarded as a little or a

lot (and what are the direct economic

benefits of the Eiffel Tower and the

LHC, for that matter)? Bitcoin

proponents counter that the blockchain

model is vastly cheaper when you

consider the fully loaded cost of the

current financial system, which includes

the entire infrastructure of physical plant

bank branch offices and personnel. They

point out that the cost to deliver $100

via the blockchain is much cheaper than

traditional methods. Still, there is

concern over how Bitcoin could

eliminate its wasteful consumption of

electricity for mining while continuing to

maintain the blockchain, and 3.0

innovations could be expected. One

response is cryptocurrencies that are

apparently more energy efficient, such as

Mintcoin.

Community Supercomputing

SETI@home and Folding@home are

community supercomputing projects in

the sense that a community of individual

volunteers contributes the raw resource

of computing cycles; they are not

involved in setting the research agenda.

A more empowered model of community

supercomputing would be using the

resource-allocation mechanism of the

blockchain to allow noninstitutional

researchers access to supercomputing

time for their own projects of interest. In

a model like Kickstarter, individuals

could list projects requiring

supercomputing time and find other

project collaborators and funders,

soliciting and rewarding activities with

appcoin or sitecoin. An early project in

this area, Zennet, has been announced

which may allow community users to

specify their own supercomputing

projects and access shared desktop grid

resources via a blockchain structure.

Citizen science data analysis projects

are under way and were perhaps

initially demonstrated in the example of

mass collaboration on open data sets in

the book Wikinomics (2008). 131 The

difference is in liberty extending: now

using the blockchain means that these

kinds of citizen science projects can be

deployed at much larger scale—in fact,

the largest scale—at a tier at which (per

resource constraints) citizen scientists

do not currently have access.

Wikinomics and other examples have

documented the scientifically valid

contributions of citizen science as a

channel. 132 Projects such

as DIYweathermodeling, for example,

could have the benefit of getting citizen

scientists involved in contributing

evidence to large-scale issues like the

climate change debate.

Global Public Health: Bitcoin

for Contagious Disease Relief

Another application of blockchain health

is in global public health, for the

efficient, immediate, targeted delivery of

aid funds for supplies in the case of

crises like Ebola and other contagious

disease breakouts. 133 Traditional banking

flows hamper the immediacy of aid

delivery in crisis situations, as opposed

to Bitcoin, which can be delivered

immediately to specific publicly

auditable trackable addresses.

Individual peer-to-peer aid as well as

institutional aid could be contributed via

Bitcoin. In emerging markets (often with

cellphone penetration or 70 percent or

higher) there are a number of SMS

Bitcoin wallets and delivery

mechanisms, such as 37Coins134 and

Coinapult, and projects such as

Kipochi135 that are integrated with commonly used mobile finance

platforms like M-Pesa (in Kenya, for

example, 31 percent of the GDP is spent

through mobile phones136). Apps could

be built on infectious disease tracking

sites like Healthmap and FluTrackers to include Bitcoin donation functionality or