[Cryptography] Neural net hash algo

[Nick Miller]

One advantage of using GPUs and (probably) FPGAs for mining is they can be
re-purposed to do things unrelated to the cryptocurrency space. GPUs can
also be used by gamers and anyone who needs a lot of computing power. And
FPGAs can be reprogrammed to do almost any specialized computing task.


ASIC machines could also theoretically be repurposed to perform another
task besides mining as long as the other task used the same algorithm they
were originally designed for. For example bitcoin ASICs could potentially
be repurposed to perform other tasks that require the SHA256 algorithm or
similar mathematics. There is not a huge amount of people who want to
perform SHA256 really fast, thus there is not a huge secondary market for
bitcoin ASICs. This could cause waste in the future because if there is no
secondary market and mining becomes unprofitable for any reason, these
ASICs turn into paperweights.

To avoid paperweights being created coins should be using a cryptographic
hash algorithm that has some kind of secondary demand. Wondering if a way
to do this is by using a neural net as a cryptographic hash algorithm
instead of something like SHA256. The ASICs created to mine this neural net
algorithm could then be repurposed to do tasks related to artificial
intelligence.


This way miners could sell their specialized hardware to AI people and vice
versa.

There has already been some preliminary research into using neural networks
as hash algorithms, see the links below.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0707/0707.4032.pdf

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d6d0/caf56398db9679690506af5eff387e743220.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_cryptography
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