What is Permacoin


What is Permacoin?

We all know that Bitcoin is regarded by most people as the first truly and widely successful system of electronic cash, independent of any authorizing and regulatory reserve bank. There’s now a new kid on the block: Permacoin.

Permacoin is regarded as a more sustainable alternative to the traditionally used Bitcoin. It was developed by Andrew Miller, Jonathan Katz and Elaine Shi (Maryland University); Ari Juels (Cornell Tech); and Bryan Parno (Microsoft Research). Permacoin is meant to address an overriding concern (held by many in the financial industry) that when Bitcoins are mined it wastes digital resources.

Permacoin offers a solution: it distributes the storing of archived data so that it’s available when needed at a later stage. With Permacoin, a client needs to invest in both a computer resource and in the storing of the valuable data. Stored data becomes public archival data. This creates real value, because data distribution isn’t centralised and therefore remains secure against threats.