Re: Public Keys and Proof of Work

On 3 April 2013 18:00, Roman Evstifeev <someuniquename@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Melvin Carvalho
> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is a concept that has become popular lately in cryto (particularly
> > crypto currencies) which is called proof of work.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system
> >
> > The principle behind it is that you can use cryptography to make your
> public
> > key 'special' in some predefined way, in order to prove that it was a
> very
> > hard key to create.
> >
> > These special keys are considered valuable (indeed in cryto currencies
> you
> > can be rewarded financially for creating one)
> >
> > However the original idea of proof of work was an anti spam measure.
> >
> > I wonder if were start using proof of work public keys linked to
> identity on
> > the web, what possible formats could we use ... perhaps 6-10 leading 1's?
>
> What for? What is the usecase?
>

It's like passing a captcha ... the person on the other side can have a
little more confidence that you are not a throw away identity.  ie it is a
reputation vector.