In the future we will mine cryptocurrency by dancing

MIT students have invented a way to mine cryptocurrency by playing the classic arcade game Dance Dance Revolution.

Agnes Cameron and Callie Retzepi originally created the DDR mat, which mines cryptocurrency on the private Ethereum blockchain, for a party. Using these mats, combined into a large "carpet," hundreds of dancers collectively mined approximately 10,000 blocks - files that store information about cryptocurrency transactions and which are linked into a private blockchain.

Blockchains typically use complex cryptographic problems that force computers to prove the amount of work done to confirm transactions. However, this private blockchain is making people dance instead. This initiative could help solve some environmental problems, as well as benefit people leading a sedentary lifestyle.

“We've had a lot of conversations as a group about the possible future of this project,” Cameron said. "We were thinking about the fact that when robots take over all the jobs, what will people do all day long? How to create value? Maybe we just need to dance."

Talking to Sky News reporters, Agnes Cameron also spoke about cryptocurrencies: "There is a lot of pessimism around cryptocurrencies at the moment - some of it for good reason - but in some communities there is an idea that blockchain will solve all people's problems. Blockchain is indeed an interesting application used for very specific cases, but we see mostly unfounded hype around it and attempts to use it in apparently inappropriate ways.”

Callie Retzepi said: “Our goal was just to make a game, and it's kind of fun to see it being taken literally.”.

So why is it being taken literally? Perhaps the students' background in engineering and compelling presentation made a simple game into a much more meaningful product.

“At this point, dance as such is not necessary in our network,” Cameron said.. "There's nothing stopping you from just pressing arrows on your computer keyboard, however, if we want to create an 'artificial scarcity' system that actually relies on dancing, then we need to use a strength meter in the mat panels or some other way to confirm that someone actually danced. It sounds stupid, but it's not a bad suggestion. All currency systems require some form of scarcity to work, and with cryptocurrencies, that scarcity needs to be imposed artificially. Otherwise, anyone a person will be able to claim that he owns a million bitcoins.”

According to https://news.sky.com