Devcoin is outstanding, I support it fully, but the distribution really is limited. It is more like a club or clique coin, a way to show support but not practical as a currency in the long term.

It does not need to be a 'solveable' PoW. When for example two or more people compete in a game they are matching human qualities against human qualities. A 'game' context would also solve the language issue since anyone could mine without knowing a specific language.

In general terms I will admit that you are a developer and I am not so I can't answer very well your points. But in this instance it is a fresh enough concept that the limitations you might see could be solved simply by starting from scratch. The only things to be taken for granted are 1) an electronic currency 2) mineable only by individuals 3) without regard for the level of tech they can afford etc.

A person should prevent it from being a gambling currency, in other words some purpose and skill should be involved. Aside from that it isall developer issues and problems to figure out how it could be done. Out of my depth ha ha.

Looked at the wiki for Amazon Mechanical Turk and am fascinated by it enough to look into it more later.

I am not a dev nor anything else but just an observer who thinks it is obvious that human mining is the next big step.

Also my resources are near zero in every category so although I support the concept fully someone with abilities and resources will have to do it. I think it is good to discuss this kind of thing publicly since maybe someone else will read and get a useful idea but I mention it here because bitfreak or some other dev might do something with it. If you and bitfreak discussed the issue some good might result.

Although I am not a dev or coin person etc I do know enough of other things to respect the potential of 'human mining' and also to understand in some way the long term impact of that step once it is taken. It certainly goes past bitcoin.

I'm sorry it wasn't clear what is meant by human mineable.

It means a person performs a task on the computer that cannot be performed by bots. It would be cutting the edge of artificial intelligence to keep the coin a step ahead of automators.

1 person sits at a computer.

It could be a 15 thousand dollar computer in Seattle, a 600 rupee used tablet in Delhi, a smartphone perhaps.

They mine manually for x hours and reliably get about y coins. Some people will get y +10%. Some will get y minus 10%. But they all get roughly the same regardless what they can afford.

Will you and I mine these coins? Of course not. The people will be making like 0.1 usd per day. Grunt work.

Will it be a successful algorithm? It is about 100% sure that the first truly human mineable coin will get more publicity than any altcoin since bitcoin. Equally obvious the algorithm will progress similarly to bitcoin. First local game currencies like huc. Next a coin with more progressive intent but still primitive. Then a coin like primecoin that uses the labor, human in this case, more productively then simply running in circles.

The challenge is to develop the coin in a way that stays ahead of automators and to anticipate the effect the coin might eventually have on local economies, i.e., anticipate problems that might arise.

A person could then ask what step would folllow that in altcoins.

Aside from anonymity features there is no more certain way to guarantee the success of a coin than human mining. It is a sort of holy grail, impossible to find right now, since coins are stuck at the moment on catering to miners.

The first coin that is truly human mineable / 1 man hour on a cheap computer in Lima Peru equals the same mining capacity as 1 man hour on an nsa supercomputer / will be in the top 5 in market cap weeks after it begins.

A lot of things make human mining difficult but it is probably the next truly big step in altcoins.

Although the quality of anc's zerocoin remains to be seen, I agree strongly with the suggestion that coins need to start moving in the direction of consolidating and working to make longer term projects. With dozens of new coins arriving every day the only ones that will last are the ones that can eat other coins, or work with them.

The ideal coin right now in my opinion a mix of xcn with an anonymous coin like anc and a human mined coin like huc.

The first coin to be truly human mined will jump ahead of all other coins quickly. HUC is the closest to that.
Anonymity is extremely important to some people in some places but for a coin to succeed long term the anonymity must be optional. Most people will reject mandatory anonymity.

If a few people are going to remove the 'human mineable' aspect of the coin by promoting bots then the coin will not exist in a year.

More and more it looks like some are trying to create a short term advantage for themselves, make it so they can mine huge numbers with bots and so on, which destroys the coin in the long term.



If the coin is just a ruse for a few people to make money off investors, a short term project to pretend it is human mined when it mostly is not, then please be clear about it.

Can a person use bots to mine on multiple machines?

In other words is the 'human mineable' part just a scam to lure naive people in?

 People sense that many governments / politicians are going to fight the new economy, and people think this or that kind of anonymity will be useful http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7168919 but who knows.

Ultimately it will be like every abrupt change in society, the smart vs the rich, or the stupid vs the poor.

I am a strong supporter of optional anonymity because that feature will be important in many countries if altcoins are going to have political power, but looking at the work of bitfreak and any others working with him/her it looks like they are ahead of the curve enough that a feature like that will not arrive too late.

Also as you say it might be that some person can add an open source tweak, like a mixer and/or a utility that routes the connection through a tor like service.

Just saw this post and looked at bitfreak's history and decided I'm too paranoid. This coin and its creator look pretty clean. In fact it does look like the best coin I've seen so far. Add some kind of optional anonymity feature and it would pass litecoin in marketcap by next week.

So far it looks like one of the best altcoins but a word of caution.

The fact that the block explorer has been down for some time, and that there is only one block explorer, should give pause.

When there is only one explorer the person who runs it runs the coin.

When there is no explorer a person is being asked to trust too much.