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The Epistemic Standard Economy is an economic model valued in the "proof of work" earned through distributed computing networks resulting in the discovery of new scientific knowledge - archived within Big Data Objects.

Participants (individuals or teams) contribute their Mobile Devices, Personal Computers, or Leased Cloud Computing Time, to publicly Distributed Computing Projects, and Grid Computing Projects:
 * BOINC
 * Stanford University's Folding at Home
 * World Community Grid
 * List of all public distributed computing projects

Participants (individuals or teams) are subsequently compensated via digital cryptocurrency (based on the Bitcoin protocol or similar security model):
 * CureCoin
 * Folding Coin
 * Gridcoin
 * Primecoin

Universities and Institutes leveraging DCN projects are legally bound to sell patents based on the resulting research per the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 (US only) to private industry. They are not obligated to compensate DCN participants who, up until 2014, participated purely philanthropically. For this reason, a Secondary Crypto-Currency Market was created as Proof of Work (PoW) for this valuable Research Data.

Participation creates a Peer to Peer (P2P), Secondary Market with digital currency used for commerce outside the Fiat-based Macroeconomic model:


 * The Epistemic Standard Economy is less susceptible to inflation (in fact it is deflationary by nature)
 * Broad public adoption creates a demand for the currency, thereby increasing network activity and competition through increased difficulty
 * Matching difficulty is introduced by Distributed Computing Projects themselves, as they adjust for increased computational capacity due to Moore's law


 * Higher competition levels yield higher computational output of the network:
 * Dramatically increasing the amount of research data produced on behalf of participating Universities, and Institutes
 * Individuals are curtailed from "cornering the market" through difficulty induced by broad public participation
 * Participants utilize off-the-shelf CPU and GPU hardware, making the model universally viable (anyone with a computer can participate at some tier)
 * Unlike Bitcoin mining, there are no commercially available ASICs for Distributed Computing (as of the writing of this article)


 * Optimally, the activity generates revenue covering participant's equipment and electricity costs, along with a residual income stream
 * Residual income can be used for:
 * Participant's living expenses
 * Investments
 * Donating to other charitable causes

Revenue enhances participation in a transparent economic network, valued entirely in Proof of Work on Scientific Big Data Objects


 * Supercomputers are no match for well managed DCNs Return on Investment
 * Cost of DCN projects are distributed across thousands to millions of individuals and organizations
 * Estimated costs to DCN participants equal less than 50% of the equivalent in leased Super-computing time
 * Fewer Single Points of Failure, time sharing or maintenance induced down time
 * Systems are less prone to geo-political and power grid instability
 * DCNs are the worlds fastest computing entities (over 40 PetaFLOPS of computing power generated daily by Folding@Home alone)
 * With the computational power of the modern Smartphones (est 800 million Android phones as of 2014 ) 2 million Android phones, merely 0.25% of all Android phones, can generate 40 PetaFLOPS of computational power thus nearly doubling the output of Folding@Home as of Jan 14, 2015.

Valuation of the Digital Currency is Determined By:


 * Value to Humanity (perhaps the most subjective factor, but driven entirely by the invisible hand of the market)
 * Difficulty of Work (usually measured in GigaFLOPS and governed by Moore's law and the Laws of Science)
 * Impact on Environment (Thermal Design Power required (TDP))

Investment Details:


 * Investors purchase and trade Epistemic Currency based on Project's Value to Humanity:
 * Individual Project track-record of releasing practical, relevant, and periodic Published Papers
 * Relevance to current healthcare events, such as the latest Cancer Research news or epidemics similar to the Ebola Outbreak of 2014
 * Project's ability to predict or prevent natural disasters, as in the cases of Weather Modeling, Earthquake Prediction, or Asteroid Impact Avoidance.
 * Project's ability to solve future quandaries using yet undeveloped applied science (like Nanotechnology, or Alternative Energy from LENR)

Epistemic Currencies, like Curecoin and Gridcoin, has the potentially to transcend speculation:
 * While adhering to Moore's Law, their Proof of Work is largely independent of the Bitcoin protocol.
 * Participation is broadly inclusive (from individual mobile devices in the developing world, to organizations leveraging cloud services)
 * DCN point-award systems have existed since the year 2000, nine years longer than "bitcoin" or the Bitcoin protocol.
 * However, the Bitcoin protocol is crucial to the abstracted layers of secure monetization, competition, and scarcity.

Means of Commerce and Exchange:


 * Epistemic Currency can be used for commerce within the currency's network - using a Bitcoin protocol or similar security model.
 * Epistemic Currency can be traded by means of a Digital currency exchanger, either for other types of Cryptocurrency, or for Fiat-based currency

Risks to the Value of the Network:


 * Debates over Philanthropy vs Monetization
 * Need-to-know risks include the same precautions required by most cryptocurrency offerings
 * The value of an Epistemic Currency can be drastically altered by a leap of technology outside the norm predicted by Moore's law
 * Although unlikely, some Distributed Computing Problems could be resolved using next generation Quantum computers, or other revelations leveraging evolutionary information and neural networks.
 * Any advancements will surely open new challenges for Distributed Computing, and are NOT likely to diminish the work already completed, or affect the backlog of tasks designed for CPU and GPU technology of the time

Why Epistemic Standard?:

For further reading on "Epistemic" arguments, see Plato and Socrates on the "The Value of Knowledge"...