Skip to content

Can’t mine? Run a Bitcoin full node + GIMPS to find Mersenne Primes (there’s a $3000-reward but that shouldn’t be the prime reason).

  • 2 min read
  • Latest

What Is A Full Node?

A full node is a program that fully validates transactions and blocks. Almost all full nodes also help the network by accepting transactions and blocks from other full nodes, validating those transactions and blocks, and then relaying them to further full nodes.

Why you should run a Bitcoin full node is a no brainer, so onto GIMPS: the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. Among plenty of good reasons, the following one resonates with Bitcoin.

Why participate in GIMPS?

  • People collect rare and beautiful items.

Mersenne primes, which are usually the largest known primes, are both rare and beautiful. Since Euclid initiated the search for and study of Mersennes approximately 300 BC, very few have been found. Just 51 in all of human history – that is rare!

But they are also beautiful. Mathematics, like all fields of study, has a its own notion of beauty. What qualities are perceived as beautiful in mathematics? Mathematicians look for proofs that are short, concise, clear, and if possible that combine previous disparate concepts or teach you something new. Mersennes have one of the simplest possible forms for primes, 2P-1. The proof of their primality has an elegant simplicity (to a mathematician). Mersennes are beautiful and have some surprising applications.

Surprisingly, Ben Delo, the co-founder of BitMEX, is also looking for Mersenne Primes: https://www.mersenne.org/report_top_teams_ll/, https://www.mersenne.org/report_top_500_ll/. He's or they've only been at it for a few months and already surpassed everyone at Lucas-Lehmer first primality testing.

Anyway, I hope some of you will join me in this quest of finding Mersenne Primes while running their Bitcoin full node. Don't just post memes and hope the price will go up, do something about it. Support the network or contribute code; the price will follow the value of the network.

Bitcoin—Vires in Numeris.

submitted by /u/Priem19
[link] [comments]