About a month ago it came to light that some developers were making money by using their customers' phones to mine cryptocurrencies:
http://mashable.com/2014/03/27/android-app-bitcoin-malware/<p>While this approach is clearly a lot more efficient at alienating users than at producing actual revenue, due to the low performance of mobile CPUs, this article made me wonder whether creating a mobile-only cryptocurrency has ever been attempted and if not - why is it a bad idea?
I'm not an expert on CPU architecture, but could a protocol be developed that would make the mining process only accessible to mobile processors (ARM)? Or would the only way to accept a device for mining be to provide it with the necessary software via a controlled app store?
Such a cryptocurrency would greatly reduce the effect of mining farms on the network and would therefore make it a lot more compelling for individual users to user their devices for mining (at night, while charging, etc.). It would also create opportunities to develop mobile payments, app monetisation, etc.<p>What are your thoughts?
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Ask HN: Design a Cryptocurrency that Could Only Be Mined by Phones / Tablets? | Heykuki News