How Cryptocurrency Mining Could Help Archive Society's Important Data

The latest one comes from a research team that wants to use a cryptocurrency network to store archival data.

Led by Andrew Miller, a computer science PhD student at the University of Maryland, the team proposes that we use storage, rather than CPU cycles, to secure a cryptocurrency network - providing a useful way to back up our public data in the process.

Instead of burning through proof of work which has no intrinsic value beyond the network, Miller and his team want miners to store pieces of a large archive of data that society would like to see preserved - the Library of Congress, perhaps.

Miners still have to prove that they have solved a mathematical problem, but the problem needn't get more difficult as more miners joined the network.

Thus, all miners must be storing a piece of the archived data to participate by mining permacoin.

There's another smart aspect to permacoin known as 'erasure coding', which increases the size of a file slightly, padding it with extra data.

"The main advantage of permacoin isn't just the amount of data being stored, it's the diverse and decentralized way in which it's stored," he said.

Whatever the underlying technology is called, it could be a good way to solve some of the more pressing problems facing organizations with large data stores - especially those who are operating on a non-profit basis.

"The public data in the World Wide Web and elsewhere is growing rapidly, and the cost of hard drives is not falling as fast, so the overall cost of archiving the published works is growing. While it is still manageable, it is something that sustained funding can help insure long lasting and up-to-date collections."

Storing data while mining digital coins is.