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PoW isn't necessarily bad, if the work can be made useful.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

I vaguely remember hearing about some coin proposing a Folding@home concept. Does anyone know of any novel Po(useful)W coins?

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The ideal proof of work algorithm should serve no other useful purpose besides enabling disparate actors to provably sacrifice resources foreign-to-the-system. Anything the PoW algo does which is useful above and beyond provable sacrifice increases the incentive for PoW miners to attack the network.

For example, if you could either use your GPU to mine $COIN for $10/day or to mine $ANTICOIN for $1/day, you could attack $COIN in full knowledge that your GPUs would still earn $1/day of $ANTICOIN afterwards.

There is grid coin using BOINC instead of folding@home. There is also primecoin (from the inventor of PoS) that searches for prime numbers. Don't know if either are still active.

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