Quote from: Molitor on February 11, 2014, 02:38:03 AM

Quote from: rarebitproject on February 11, 2014, 02:09:01 AM

Are there any cryptocoin protocols that permanently remove the processing power advantage in mining in a mathematically verifiable way, so that specialized equipment can never be developed to game the algorithms? Perhaps a genetic algo that evolves?

Thwarting botnets and other parallel processing attacks seems difficult if you rely on processors to do the work. What about requiring a human to participate in the work? Maybe image recognition work that computers currently can't do like solving capchas?

I would rather jump off the roof headfirst onto a thumbtack than solve captchas.

Capchas are annoying, a more rigorous approach is needed. But it may only be necessary to require that a capcha be solved to connect to the network (with the connection being dropped after some number of hours to require re-connection). Farms and botnets might be thwarted that way.

Processing power advantage is real problem for cryptocoins. It is why bitcoin is heading toward mining monopolies, making the dreaded 51% attack possible. As mining becomes more difficult, fewer and fewer people can afford the equipment to succeed at it. And pools just confer processing power advantage to the central authorities that manage them.