Are there any cryptocurrencies with no mining beyond participation?

I mean something where just participation in the decentralized network gives you coins somehow and you cannot do anything beyond (excluding more participation, of course, by having multiple PCs and IPs, for example) to increase the rate of achieving those coins. At the moment I have completely no motivation to leave my bitcoin or litecoin client on, because it doesn't gives me anything back for using me as a node in this network of hardcore miners. I'd rather find some ways to use it occasionally only when I need to do some transactions (few times a month, for example). I'm newbie in this topic, but doesn't this harm the network, when lot of people become using it this way?

aemxdp

Posted 2014-02-18T17:29:45.043

Reputation: 141

Are you referring to Proof-of-Stake schemes such as used with Peercoin?

– Greg Hewgill – 2014-02-18T17:36:00.140

@GregHewgill, thanks, I didn't know about PoS schemes. That's interesting, but it would be even better to not have benefit of holding large amount of coins. Something like Proof-of-Work where "work" is being connected to network and doing some transactions, calculations and verifications, but not having possibility to invest more computing power to get more profit. – aemxdp – 2014-02-18T18:31:58.023

@Gracchus Mining signatures? Pardon my ignorance, what is that? Can you provide links to white-papers or the like? – Joe Pineda – 2014-04-27T11:25:47.127

Answers

On Bitcoin and Red Balloons suggests a method to incentivize network nodes, however no cryptocurrency implements it.

Meni Rosenfeld

Posted 2014-02-18T17:29:45.043

Reputation: 18 542

Cuckoo Cycle is close. It is a memory-hard proof of work system - substituting random memory access for CPU power.

Terrence Brannon

Posted 2014-02-18T17:29:45.043

Reputation: 383

The up and coming Safecoin will reward users for donating their bandwith and harddrive space, so they'd be "mining" by just leaving their computers on and connected, being compensated in safecoins.

To a lesser extent, the way forging in NXT works you also need to leave your computer turned on and connected the whole time so as to be taken into account for the raffle of who generates the next coin, though that doesn't ensure you'll receive any NXTcoins: since it's a 100% Proof-of-Stake coin the more coins you have the higher your probabilities of forging the next block.

Joe Pineda

Posted 2014-02-18T17:29:45.043

Reputation: 2 040