Cryptocurrency system using body activity data(patentscope.wipo.int)
patentscope.wipo.int
Cryptocurrency system using body activity data
https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&_cid=P20-K97WA4-38682-1
48 comments
Useful proof of work is not the basis for a cryptocurrency, it is the basis for... useful work. The inventors apparently don’t understand the economic principles behind commodity money.
But this might find a fertile ground at those proponents of an universal basic income. So anyone doing exercise "good" for his/her health will be rewarded, perhaps the intrinsic value here is the saved indirect cost of healthcare.
If payments are conditioned on the completion of assigned tasks then it's not UBI. The beneficiaries still have to choose to participate and actually do the work, so it's really just another job.
This is not a "crypto currency system". It's a business method patent for shilling people with crypto when you do something.
The idea of "gamifying" physical actions has been around for a long long time, most notably Foursquare and Fitbit. These guys are just taking that concept and saying "we'll give you crypto instead".
I don't think this is patentable. It's too obvious. Even if it were to be patented, it can't be enforced for anything more than patent trolling.
The idea of "gamifying" physical actions has been around for a long long time, most notably Foursquare and Fitbit. These guys are just taking that concept and saying "we'll give you crypto instead".
I don't think this is patentable. It's too obvious. Even if it were to be patented, it can't be enforced for anything more than patent trolling.
> The tasks include, for example, but not limited to, watching or listening information (e g. advertisement)
Drink verification can to continue.
Drink verification can to continue.
So, is it too early to think about how to block this technology?
A while ago I had this idea for a "cryptocurrency" in which the proof of work would be a detailed image of a small part of the sky at a specific time of the year.
This in turn would be verified by telescopes watching larger patches of the sky, so obviously having a less detailed image of that specific piece, but enough to determine if the detailed image is believable.
This in turn would be verified by telescopes watching larger patches of the sky, so obviously having a less detailed image of that specific piece, but enough to determine if the detailed image is believable.
How hard would it be to take that less detailed image of that specific piece from the verification telescope, and turn it into a believable fake of the proof of work picture?
I Imagine there to be more than one telescope and the picture would have to fool all of them.
Very possible and the reason I'm here commenting on HN and not having my ICO done in 2018.
Very possible and the reason I'm here commenting on HN and not having my ICO done in 2018.
Proof-of-Work alternatives that could distinguish between a human and spoofing attempts is an important problem.
This patent is about this problem but it does not put forward a solution. It's probably an attempt for patent trolling in the unlikely case that a feasible genius solution would be found.
This patent is about this problem but it does not put forward a solution. It's probably an attempt for patent trolling in the unlikely case that a feasible genius solution would be found.
There’s already a “genius” solution: fiat currency which can be printed in infinite quantity for virtually zero cost. But, if you don’t like the downsides of fiat then you’re stuck with proof-of-work.
Sounds similar to the fictional tech used in a black mirror episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits
Will this require a chip to be inserted in such a body?
Also, couldn't this be misused to pressure people to do what that controlling system wants them to do?
Also, couldn't this be misused to pressure people to do what that controlling system wants them to do?
This looks like it's supposed to be a Bitcoin-like system that sends newly-printed crypto-tokens to users who exercise.
How does the blockchain know who exercised? The user's FatBat device tells a server that the user exercised. The server tells the blockchain who the newly printed tokens go to.
There are some big trust problems:
- Trust the user not to attach their FatBat to a drill to trick its sensors into thinking the user's exercising.
- Trust the user not to hack the FatBat device (physically controlled by the user) so the device lies about how much the user exercises.
- Trust the communication channel between the server and the FatBat can't be proxied or intercepted.
- Trust the server doesn't lie to the money-printing part of the blockchain about who exercised, or how much they exercised.
How does the blockchain know who exercised? The user's FatBat device tells a server that the user exercised. The server tells the blockchain who the newly printed tokens go to.
There are some big trust problems:
- Trust the user not to attach their FatBat to a drill to trick its sensors into thinking the user's exercising.
- Trust the user not to hack the FatBat device (physically controlled by the user) so the device lies about how much the user exercises.
- Trust the communication channel between the server and the FatBat can't be proxied or intercepted.
- Trust the server doesn't lie to the money-printing part of the blockchain about who exercised, or how much they exercised.
The closest thing I have seen to this is motocoin, where the proof of work is represented by a procedurally generated game the user must win to mine the coin: https://motocoin-dev.github.io/motocoin-site/Motocoin.pdf
Long dead now, though.
Long dead now, though.
Here's lazy and cynical me makes a guess what it is reading just the title. It's a grabby data mining platform that hoards medical data and gives Stanley nickels in return. Something like Fitbit, but with crypto currency buzzwords.
Incentivising exercise behaviour / data submission to insurers?
"[0002] Several cryptocurrencies exist. Among these, the most well known is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency. Most blockchain-based cryptocurrency is decentralized in the sense that it has no central point of control. However, blockchain-based cryptocurrency can also be implemented in a centralized system having a central point of control over the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is one of the examples of blockchain-based cryptocurrency. It is described in a 2008 article by Satoshi Nakamoto, named“Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer"
I'm speechless.
I'm speechless.
Why are you speechless? Your comment invites no conversation and provokes no deliberation. Please expand on it.
Because “centralized cryptocurrency” is an oxymoron
It's not an oxymoron. The first ever cryptocurrency was a centralized cryptocurrency. While the centralized aspect was the reason why it failed, the old systems from decades ago were indeed cryptocurrencies. Look up David Chaum.
That is not true, cryptocurrencies do not necessarily have to be decentralised.
Although I suppose that depends on your definition, but then you would be disqualifying something like XRP from being a cryptocurrency. Which people generally agree is.
Although I suppose that depends on your definition, but then you would be disqualifying something like XRP from being a cryptocurrency. Which people generally agree is.
Yes it's an oxymoron. EOT
Seems easy to game.
If the human activity involves doing something reCaptcha-/mechanical turk-esque then that's likely the point: incentivising development of systems that game this would likely result in novel AI models/tech
How would you turn that into a proof of work system, if the answer is already known beforehand?
why yes, we simply have to go back to slavery
This is a digital currency not a cryptocurrency.
Revelations 13:17 So that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Patent number is: 060606
Thats a funny coincidence.
Patent number is: 060606
Thats a funny coincidence.
Did Microsoft really file this or is it some kind of 4chan prank? Embedded microchips monitoring brain wave activity and releasing rewards for viewing advertisements (one of the many examples from the document). These seems too “out there.”
I really hope this is fake.
I really hope this is fake.
> I really hope this is fake.
This is not fake.
This is not fake.
My jaw dropped as soon as I saw this submission. As a Christian who has recently gotten into crypto, I thought it might be Ripple / XRP that would fullfil this prophesy.
It looks like it will be Microsoft. Feeling some serious chills!
It looks like it will be Microsoft. Feeling some serious chills!
wow! I'd looked over the patent number and it seems things are coming together quite quickly.
From the patent details section it appears a hardware based mechanism which senses body activity and transmits data back to a device is included in the scope of this invention:
>For example, a brain wave or body heat emitted from the user when the user performs the task provided by an information or service provider, such as viewing advertisement or using certain internet services, can be used in the mining process. Instead of massive computation work required by some conventional cryptocurrency systems, data generated based on the body activity of the user can be a proof-of-work...
>A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. A cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify whether or not the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions...
> Sensor 140 may include, for example, but not limited to, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners or sensors, electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensors, heart rate monitors, thermal sensors, optical sensors, radio frequency (RF) sensors, ultrasonic sensors, cameras, or any other sensor or scanner that can measure or sense body activity or scan human body...
>Accordingly, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Furthermore, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable medium(s) having computer readable program code embodied thereon...
The patent disclosures above seems to scope in integrations with some technology that's been a focus of Microsoft Research & MIT. Notably, an invention that was funded by Gates Foundation for medical data-storage on humans which is a "new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, [that] can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone." [1] The primary application they talk about for this in the press release below is vaccinations, which seems to what many feel will be required to overcome the ongoing pandemic threat.
Interestingly, another program funded by Gates Foundation and Microsoft Research [2] is id2020.org, which aims to provide everyone digital certificates [3] for digital identity tracking based on blockchain technology. Id2020 seems to be the only organization that's in place to 'standardize' digital certificates globally as countries move toward adopting digital certificates as a mechanism normal life [4] [5]
[1] http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
[2] https://id2020.org/alliance#partners
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...
[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/29/germany-will-iss...
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/immunity-passp...
From the patent details section it appears a hardware based mechanism which senses body activity and transmits data back to a device is included in the scope of this invention:
>For example, a brain wave or body heat emitted from the user when the user performs the task provided by an information or service provider, such as viewing advertisement or using certain internet services, can be used in the mining process. Instead of massive computation work required by some conventional cryptocurrency systems, data generated based on the body activity of the user can be a proof-of-work...
>A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. A cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify whether or not the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions...
> Sensor 140 may include, for example, but not limited to, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners or sensors, electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensors, heart rate monitors, thermal sensors, optical sensors, radio frequency (RF) sensors, ultrasonic sensors, cameras, or any other sensor or scanner that can measure or sense body activity or scan human body...
>Accordingly, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Furthermore, aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of a computer program product embodied in one or more computer readable medium(s) having computer readable program code embodied thereon...
The patent disclosures above seems to scope in integrations with some technology that's been a focus of Microsoft Research & MIT. Notably, an invention that was funded by Gates Foundation for medical data-storage on humans which is a "new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, [that] can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone." [1] The primary application they talk about for this in the press release below is vaccinations, which seems to what many feel will be required to overcome the ongoing pandemic threat.
Interestingly, another program funded by Gates Foundation and Microsoft Research [2] is id2020.org, which aims to provide everyone digital certificates [3] for digital identity tracking based on blockchain technology. Id2020 seems to be the only organization that's in place to 'standardize' digital certificates globally as countries move toward adopting digital certificates as a mechanism normal life [4] [5]
[1] http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
[2] https://id2020.org/alliance#partners
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...
[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/29/germany-will-iss...
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/03/immunity-passp...
Now with the perfect opportunity to roll out global vaccinations! Everyone gets a chip, everyone gets an ID number, and the globalist NWO power transition is complete!
I brought this up in another thread and got flagged.
It makes me think about how 21st century slavery would look. You may not own property. The only way you get to live is constant work. Everything is rented. Everyone lives paycheck to paycheck. This would sort of jive well with a return to the Egyptian and Babylonian systems that the Abrahamic faiths were rebelling against.
I read the bible cover to cover and a huge theme in it is private property. That's one of the major differences in the Abrahamic faiths is that people can own property and the king cannot take property without adequate compensation and the king cannot take one's wife. In the Egyptian and Babylonian systems, anyone higher up on totem pole can do absolutely anything they want to anyone lower on the totem pole.
It makes me think about how 21st century slavery would look. You may not own property. The only way you get to live is constant work. Everything is rented. Everyone lives paycheck to paycheck. This would sort of jive well with a return to the Egyptian and Babylonian systems that the Abrahamic faiths were rebelling against.
I read the bible cover to cover and a huge theme in it is private property. That's one of the major differences in the Abrahamic faiths is that people can own property and the king cannot take property without adequate compensation and the king cannot take one's wife. In the Egyptian and Babylonian systems, anyone higher up on totem pole can do absolutely anything they want to anyone lower on the totem pole.
Slavery is more rampant now than during the Atlantic slave trade times of yore.
The International Labour Organization[5] estimates that, by their definitions, over 40 million people are in some form of slavery today. 24.9 million people are in forced labor, of whom 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million persons in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million persons in forced labor imposed by state authorities. 15.4 million people are in forced marriage.
I’ve pondered a design like this before—something to replace birth certificates.
Birth certificates are kind of problematic, in that each legal person gets certain rights, and so if you can trick the state into thinking you are multiple legal people (through e.g. identity fraud) then you get a multiple of the rights of regular people—you can vote in elections multiple times, for example; or in states with “negative tax” like Alaska, you can claim the tax credit multiple times. Of course, you can also use N birth certificates to pass through any KYC system N times, to create N entities in said system, against the system’s wishes.
The problem with birth certificates is that they’re a single assertion about a single instantaneous event: they just say “this person was born.” It’s very easy to forge a new one, or to steal+repurpose someone else’s (especially if they’re dead and this fact has never been recorded), because a birth certificate only needs to be “verified” once, at point of issuance.
An alternative scheme would be to have some device that’s constantly doing life-logging of your biometrics (like what’s discussed here), where each segment of unique biometric data the device records translates to one “token” that can be put into any given proof-of-life account.
Such devices wouldn’t have to be constantly uploading data to the cloud; they’d just be recording it and storing it. It’d be up to you to present these devices for data-collection and collation, just like it’s up to you to present your birth certificate.
The key difference with such a system, would be that if you just put on two devices, you’re not mining proof-of-life at double the rate, because the data segment collected by the two devices wouldn’t be unique between them—you’d only be able to earn one token per real human being per period, no matter how much machine-power you devoted to doing so. When the data from the two devices was collated, it’d be clear that there’s duplicate biometric period data, and so you wouldn’t earn a token for said duplicate data.
It wouldn’t matter how you split up and rearranged the tokens generated by the devices. You could hold all your tokens in one “identity”, or split them up across multiple “identities.” But, if you split the tokens up, then each split identity would only have 1/N of the proof strength of the identity of someone who puts all their tokens in one basket.
With such a system, you could literally just have each token a person can present translate to a vote, such that everyone who’s been alive for N periods gets N votes, as long as they can proof-of-life all N periods. (This would, of course, bias toward older people; but you can instead normalize the voting power of each token by dividing by the person’s age. How to prove age? Record the “genesis” token of each device through a trusted timestamping system—i.e. activate each device online. Then the person’s legal age would be the timestamp on the oldest genesis token they can prove ownership of, by proving ownership of the private key that was used to sign the genesis-certificate-request.)
I enjoy the fact that, other than the “trusted timestamping of genesis tokens” part, this system has roughly nothing to do with a shared ledger or “blockchain”; each device can just keep its own independent private log, and the only time those logs leave the device is when the person themselves commands the devices to export them. It’d also be up to you to wear or not wear a life-logging device. But, of course, in avoiding having your life logged, you’d be losing out on tokens for the periods you didn’t log, and so depriving yourself of the things tokens translate into (voting power; federal tax-credit hours; state-public-healthcare-benefit time-spent-as-a-state-resident-proof hours; immigration time-spent-living-in-the-country-proof hours; etc.)
...and of course this is a weird and dystopian invasion of privacy. Attaching ankle bracelets to babies to ensure they get appropriately credited for their own infancy sounds like something out of Black Mirror. I never said it wasn’t. It’s a neat technical solution to a specific problem—not necessarily a good idea ;)
Birth certificates are kind of problematic, in that each legal person gets certain rights, and so if you can trick the state into thinking you are multiple legal people (through e.g. identity fraud) then you get a multiple of the rights of regular people—you can vote in elections multiple times, for example; or in states with “negative tax” like Alaska, you can claim the tax credit multiple times. Of course, you can also use N birth certificates to pass through any KYC system N times, to create N entities in said system, against the system’s wishes.
The problem with birth certificates is that they’re a single assertion about a single instantaneous event: they just say “this person was born.” It’s very easy to forge a new one, or to steal+repurpose someone else’s (especially if they’re dead and this fact has never been recorded), because a birth certificate only needs to be “verified” once, at point of issuance.
An alternative scheme would be to have some device that’s constantly doing life-logging of your biometrics (like what’s discussed here), where each segment of unique biometric data the device records translates to one “token” that can be put into any given proof-of-life account.
Such devices wouldn’t have to be constantly uploading data to the cloud; they’d just be recording it and storing it. It’d be up to you to present these devices for data-collection and collation, just like it’s up to you to present your birth certificate.
The key difference with such a system, would be that if you just put on two devices, you’re not mining proof-of-life at double the rate, because the data segment collected by the two devices wouldn’t be unique between them—you’d only be able to earn one token per real human being per period, no matter how much machine-power you devoted to doing so. When the data from the two devices was collated, it’d be clear that there’s duplicate biometric period data, and so you wouldn’t earn a token for said duplicate data.
It wouldn’t matter how you split up and rearranged the tokens generated by the devices. You could hold all your tokens in one “identity”, or split them up across multiple “identities.” But, if you split the tokens up, then each split identity would only have 1/N of the proof strength of the identity of someone who puts all their tokens in one basket.
With such a system, you could literally just have each token a person can present translate to a vote, such that everyone who’s been alive for N periods gets N votes, as long as they can proof-of-life all N periods. (This would, of course, bias toward older people; but you can instead normalize the voting power of each token by dividing by the person’s age. How to prove age? Record the “genesis” token of each device through a trusted timestamping system—i.e. activate each device online. Then the person’s legal age would be the timestamp on the oldest genesis token they can prove ownership of, by proving ownership of the private key that was used to sign the genesis-certificate-request.)
I enjoy the fact that, other than the “trusted timestamping of genesis tokens” part, this system has roughly nothing to do with a shared ledger or “blockchain”; each device can just keep its own independent private log, and the only time those logs leave the device is when the person themselves commands the devices to export them. It’d also be up to you to wear or not wear a life-logging device. But, of course, in avoiding having your life logged, you’d be losing out on tokens for the periods you didn’t log, and so depriving yourself of the things tokens translate into (voting power; federal tax-credit hours; state-public-healthcare-benefit time-spent-as-a-state-resident-proof hours; immigration time-spent-living-in-the-country-proof hours; etc.)
...and of course this is a weird and dystopian invasion of privacy. Attaching ankle bracelets to babies to ensure they get appropriately credited for their own infancy sounds like something out of Black Mirror. I never said it wasn’t. It’s a neat technical solution to a specific problem—not necessarily a good idea ;)
It is a shame the cryptocurrency phenomenon has been and gone, with just these quirky stories popping up now and again.
Imagine if the hype was in full swing now. Blockchain technology would be delivering us from the global lockdown, probably making early adopters rich along the way. HN would be full of stories about how blockchain startups would be solving the pandemic. People stuck at home could be playing the crypto markets 24/7 earning themselves vast imaginary fortunes that would 'pay' for the vaccines to be 'developed'.
Imagine if the hype was in full swing now. Blockchain technology would be delivering us from the global lockdown, probably making early adopters rich along the way. HN would be full of stories about how blockchain startups would be solving the pandemic. People stuck at home could be playing the crypto markets 24/7 earning themselves vast imaginary fortunes that would 'pay' for the vaccines to be 'developed'.
How exactly would blockchain solve a medical problem? It's not like blockchain has died. All major currencies are alive and so are the speculators. What is stopping cryptocurrencies from solving something which they could solve in there "full swing" days?
That’s the joke, I presume.
Anything's better than today's proof-of-waste cryptocurrencies.
Since we’re talking about gamifying physical actions to produce a currency, I’ve always wondered if there was a way to gamify sexual activity such that you can influence human breeding for collective societal goals. Might be interesting to combine the idea of such currency with dating networks as well to see what happens.
Great idea, just have to wait for China to try it out
IMO this doesn’t require a government to roll it out. Any sufficiently motivated organization can attempt to influence human reproduction through social applications, even simple dating apps today play a role in reshaping demographics of couples.
We just need apps to implement some truly innovative gamification features, for instance imagine getting points for meeting with a person in real life and spending as much time as possible with them. Points can be assigned on a variety of attributes that a developer wishes to select for.
We just need apps to implement some truly innovative gamification features, for instance imagine getting points for meeting with a person in real life and spending as much time as possible with them. Points can be assigned on a variety of attributes that a developer wishes to select for.
[deleted]
Here as far as I can tell it's just some centralized system monitoring user/guinea pig activity and issuing some token currency based on an unspecified algorithm. I mean isn't that effectively equivalent to store cards that reward you with store credit when you purchase certain products? Or videogame editors who give coupons to elected Steam users based on their previous purchases? Or credit card rewards?
> [...]verifying, by a cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user, if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system; and awarding, by the cryptocurrency system, cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.
I can't continue this comment because the sound of the bullshit alarm blaring in the background is starting to get deafening. Excuse me, I meant cryptobullshit cryptoalarm cryptoblaring.
There have been many attempts at making a useful proof of work for cryptocurrency systems, the problem is that it's not enough for the proof to require work, it also needs to be trivially and "objectively" verifiable by any user of the system and it needs to reference the transaction data somehow to avoid reusing old proofs. If you get rid of these constraints I don't understand how you can claim that it's a cryptocurrency system or even that there is any novel aspect to it.