Well, there needs to be some proof of work, something that is hard to do at scale but easy for individuals.
To that degree, Bitcoin has failed, because massive SHA256 crunching is now easy to do at scale and hard for individuals.
More varied challenges, like BOINC, or PoW that is bandwidth, connectivity, latency, or disk-space based, will provide a lot more value to the community and make it easier for individuals to contribute. I eagerly await the day that one of these alternatives becomes mainstream.
Alternatives are good but.... well, disk-space based would push up the price of hard drives. Bandwidth connectivity and latency could again be owned by big players...
I don't know. What I do know is that in a centralised crypto-currency system you don't need any of this as the issuing authority merely signs the transactions and we're away. I hope that some bright spark comes up with a way to make a decentralised one almost as simple...
To that degree, Bitcoin has failed, because massive SHA256 crunching is now easy to do at scale and hard for individuals.
More varied challenges, like BOINC, or PoW that is bandwidth, connectivity, latency, or disk-space based, will provide a lot more value to the community and make it easier for individuals to contribute. I eagerly await the day that one of these alternatives becomes mainstream.