ScienceCoin #~

The ScienceCoin Project - A Distributed Computing Alt Coin With A Purpose

http://www.sciencecoin.org

Copyright (c) 2013 ScienceCoin Developers

#~

What is ScienceCoin?

The intent of the ScienceCoin project is to create a distributed computing alt coin with a purpose. As of May, 2013 - there have been many "different" Bitcoin clones/alt-coins released, and while some of them have been true forks from Bitcoin and appear to be beneficial to the community, most are now being released with one or two edits to the Bitcoin code with the assumed intent of:

1. Releasing them as soon as possible, and with the least amount of effort.

2. Pre-mining them, and using the resulting hoard of coins as trading avenues for Bitcoin, and other true alt-coins.

The aim of the ScienceCoin project is different. As thus, there will be much work required before ScienceCoin can be released.

ScienceCoin will be 100% free and open source and will follow all applicable guidelines established (as of 5/3/2013)

[here] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

and

[here] http://opensource.org/docs/osd

#~

Initial ScienceCoin Project Goals:

1. By helping to further Science (knowledge), the main goal of ScienceCoin is simply to better the world!

2. ScienceCoin will use the exceptional processing power and "always on" benefits of alt-coin mining to provide distributed computing solutions to Universities and *reputable scientific research facilities across the world.

• Reputable == Should be determined by the ScienceCoin community.

3. ScienceCoin will be directly tied to the value of Bitcoin. The ScienceCoin client will be created to devote 1/4 of the hosts processing power toward generating ScienceCoins and 3/4 will be reserved for distributed computing processes on the network. [* A valid case has been made to change this to 100% of the processing power - and use a different logic to provide a reward to miners - perhaps a system similar to PPC. ] The value of 1 ScienceCoin should be the equal to 0.02 Bitcoins and will be generated every 12 hours. The number of ScienceCoins generated every 12 hours will be determined by the amount of Bitcoins that would be generated by the hashing power (1/4) of the ScienceCoin network at that time vs. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Generation_Calculator. The value of ScienceCoin will be in its rarity!

4. Mining incentive. Apart from generating ScienceCoins, miners will also receive 95% percent of the Bitcoin fees that are paid to the network for distributed computing rental periods. The other 5% will be reserved for paying developers, to provide discounts to nonprofit organizations, other initiatives required to better ScienceCoin.

5. ScienceCoin should be run as a P2P client, modified/optimized to allow for seamless distributed computing.

6. ScienceCoin should have special value to Universities. The cost of renting the network should be [TBD] % less when using ScienceCoin. This should give Universities an incentive to accept ScienceCoin for things like books, supplies, even tuition. A miner with enough ScienceCoins could pay for their entire education!

#~

Possible additional features:

1. Require all clients to utilize Tor. (This could also fork to a separate project, e.g. TorCoin.) While it's often noted how much hashing power the Bitcoin network provides, one of the other potential benefits that is often overlooked is the "always on and connected to the network" requirement in order to mine in any fashion. By playing to this benefit, ScienceCoin could require all clients to connect through Tor and while doing so, also increase the overall security, strength and speed of Tor.