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The blockchain mechanism made popular by Bitcoin will help to diminish one of the major unjustices of our daily life. How often have you waited in the shortest queue at the checkout (or check-in) counter only to watch the other queues advance in high speed. How often have you waited at your restaurant
table while other guests who came in definitely after you are served before you could even order. How often have you witnessed the person who came in last in the doctor's waiting room to be summoned first into her office. No more.
Imagine an smartphone app which is connected via WiFi to the operational center of the queue in which you are waiting. It notices the time of your arrival and starts working on a proof of work much like the one at work in the blockchain. The result is fed back to the blockchain so that you can prove you have been waiting that long already. Your total waiting time gets added up, and you will advance in the queue according to the time waited not only on the premises, but on all other participating locations as well.
The blockchain makes the system resistant against tampering. You cannot use massive computing power outside the WiFi ranges of the participating offices because the system resets when the connection breaks.
So the next time when you wait for an hour to get new license plates for your car, don't fret, but calm down knowing that on your next visit to the dentist your tooth will be drilled into before you could even say "Good morning" or "My tooth hurts."
[I hate to say it, but this idea is pure genius.]
[[Anyone to suggest a better category is most welcome.]]
Request for someone to make a blockchain-based event ticket system
https://np.reddit.c...ng_system_based_on/
Posted yesterday. Somewhat related. [notexactly, Mar 31 2016]
[link]
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But the reason we can't have this nice thing is because
two days later someone will roll out a cloud service that
does the waiting for you. Companies will drop pi sized
waiting devices in strategic areas and mine the queues
even when you are not there physically. |
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I admit that this is one of the more half-baked aspects of the idea, but I'm sure it can be fixed. E.g. change the protocol so that your proof-of-work needs confirmation from other participants in the same queue. |
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Still, in the implausible case that the flaw cannot be fixed there will be at least a market price for places in all sorts of queues. |
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The solution will boil down to "proof of physical
presence". That is tough to solve without under-skin chip
implants |
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So you can't wait in line if you don't have a smartphone or
tablet, or if its battery dies? |
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And, depending on the methods chosen to map the
blockchain actions to the resulting physical queue behavior,
how long you
have to wait in line could be dependent on how powerful
your
phone's CPU or GPU is? |
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And, to do a 51% attack, a smartphone can presumably be
programmed to
communicate over both Wi-Fi and the cell network
simultaneously, to transmit the work to and receive the
proof from a more powerful computer located elsewhere. Or
just stick a powerful laptop or even a mining rig in your
backpack. |
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I suggest managing a physically amorphous queue using
computer vision. In fact, I might post that. There's no reason for this to be
decentralized (in the presently considered applications, anyway). |
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@notexactly: Yes, the idea is only applicable for smartphone users. The others will be happy to wait. |
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Yes, a 51% percent attack with high-powered engines is possible, as it is with bitcoin. Still, no one yet seems to have done it - it is probably too expensive. |
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Yes, there is a reason for this to be decentralized, which is the trust in a peer-to-peer system rather than in a centralized system where waiting queue places would soon be hacked into and sold on the black market and at the back door of the North Korean embassy. |
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But please do post your alternative idea. I already secured my place in the commenting queue. |
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// Yes, the idea is only applicable for smartphone users.
The others will be happy to wait. // |
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Until there comes a time when no smartphone users are
waiting for service? |
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// Still, no one yet seems to have done it - it is probably
too expensive. // |
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For a currency, yes. This has a much smaller network, if I
understand it correctly, consisting of just those people
currently waiting in line. That makes the threshold for
51% much lower. |
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Other thoughts: The difficulty should probably be set
pretty low (depending on service frequency), so that
there are several blocks added per person in the queue.
There should also be some kind of way to incentivize or
enforce mining, such as having to mine to maintain your
place in the queue. (That wouldn't be as simple as it
sounds, though, because you can only prove that you're
mining by mining a block successfully; there's no evidence
you did any work on other blocks.) |
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