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.]]
-- Toto Anders, Mar 27 2016

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]

Nice +

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.
-- ixnaum, Mar 28 2016


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.

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.
-- Toto Anders, Mar 28 2016


The solution will boil down to "proof of physical presence". That is tough to solve without under-skin chip implants
-- ixnaum, Mar 28 2016


So you can't wait in line if you don't have a smartphone or tablet, or if its battery dies?

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?

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.

[-]

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).
-- notexactly, Mar 30 2016


@notexactly: Yes, the idea is only applicable for smartphone users. The others will be happy to wait.

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.

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.

But please do post your alternative idea. I already secured my place in the commenting queue.
-- Toto Anders, Mar 31 2016


// Yes, the idea is only applicable for smartphone users. The others will be happy to wait. //

Until there comes a time when no smartphone users are waiting for service?

// Still, no one yet seems to have done it - it is probably too expensive. //

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.

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.)
-- notexactly, Apr 01 2016



random, halfbakery