There are a few of these type of things, e.g. RNDR token (https://rendertoken.com) and rent a flop (https://rentaflop.com) in rendering, and golem (https://www.golem.network) and sonm (https://sonm.com/) in the "general purpose computing on the blockchain". - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

SONM (SNM #409 CoinGecko 111M$ Mcap) - https://sonm.com/ - With SONM, users have access to general-purpose computing services of a cloud-like nature, including IaaS and PaaS with hosts around the world that can contribute computing power as part of the SONM marketplace. - Sonm provides cloud services based on distributed customer level hardware including PCs, mining equipment, and servers. You... Source: over 2 years ago

>I think, in the next years, we will see more and more of these useful proofs cropping up. And people will understand the value they're "storing", no pun intended. You could be right, but the first time something like this was discussed was around 2010 [1], and here we are 12 years later, still waiting for widespread implementation of a "useful" proof of work. [1] https://primecoin.io/ was the first result of that. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago

One of the first I heard of was Primecoin [0], which still seems to be going along steadily. They've actually uncovered a number of world records [1] looking for Cunningham Chains. [0] https://primecoin.io/ [1] https://primes.zone/#records. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago

A: Maybe -- here are two attempts to do what you suggest: https://www.cs.umd.edu/\~elaine/docs/permacoin.pdf http://primecoin.io/. Source: almost 3 years ago

The closest we've come to what you might call "useful" proof of work is Primecoin, which searched for chains of prime numbers, to the delight of some mathematicians. But it's pretty much a dead coin now. There are also some coins that appear to have solved it, such as SolarCoin, but look closer and you'll find that they are completely centralised. That's not a trade-off Bitcoin can make. Source: about 3 years ago