🌍 Would it be possible to do this?.. 🤔🤔 [cure cancer with smart contracts]

Create a smart contract.

(None of this Ethereum/EOS/whatever garbage. You don't need a native token to have a smart contract. Forget about that. I'm not talking about that. Just, a smart contract.)

The contract asks, "who will discover the most meaningful thing towards curing cancer between now and 20 years from now?" (Or something like that. Or whatever time period.)

And then whoever wants to be a contestant attempts to cure cancer.

Money sent to the smart contract is, in effect, a donation towards curing cancer.

Whoever wins gets the money.

How to determine the winner is tricky.

Perhaps every unit sent to the smart contract gets a vote.

And then the worry is that someone sends enough money to control the vote, and takes the money for themselves even tho they weren't curing cancer.

Of course this is a reasonable concern, but I'm not sure it's the serious flaw that it may at first feel like.

Addressing this concern:

• When you try to buy the pot, you always run the risk of sending money and not controlling the vote, and thus losing your money. You won't be the only person who thinks to go after it, and you don't know what other whales can be looming or how much money will be sent to vote for real researchers. So it might balance in a way where trying to buy the pot is -EV (meaning, not a profitable thing to do) for all who attempt it. Or in other words, the pressure of money being sent within the spirit of the contract is enough to make it a losing game for everyone else.

• It doesn't need to be impossible for someone to buy it. It's okay if they succeed sometimes. If they buy it, the research and the discoveries still happened. When players throw their hat in the ring, they know a lot of things are up to chance anyways. Someone succeeding at buying it is just one of the ways it might play out. (And there will be other times where the attempts at buying it come up short and researchers get a fatter prize because of the attempts.) What matters is that curing cancer is theoretically rewarded and you help your odds by being better at it.

• It's easier to buy the pot when there's less money sent, which will have some loose correlation to people not discovering anything that great. When there are great discoveries, there's more motivation to donate and the landscape gets worse for pot stealers.

• There are probably some specific ways to make it tougher for pot stealers, like hide how much has been donated for a few months or years or whatever delay period. Or lower the value of a vote as time passes.

• Blockchains like Bitcoin are traceable, and if it's a high amount of money and scrutiny it may be difficult to buy the pot and remain anonymous. And to be a buyer you'd need to be rich in the first place, which usually means your reputation has value or potential value.

Obviously cancer research is just one example. There can be smart contracts for other kinds of research, for being the best at getting water to a place that needs it, the best poem this month, the best documentary about beavers, the best photos of Mars, the world leader who did the most to reduce war.

And of course it doesn't necessarily have to be winner take all. Whatever the language and terms of the contract are (however good it's written) would dictate how much money gets sent there and if people try to win it.

It bugs me when I see people with good intentions donate to the cookie cutter charities.

Where there's no incentive for them to actually be good at it.

The incentive and focus is more about branding and image. So they almost necessarily have to be mediocre and necessarily can't have a hyper-focus or deep inspiration for hitting all the notes of their mission.

I'd rather just keep my money or give it directly to people who need help.

It bugs me that there exists no way to donate to things like cancer research or world hunger without it feeling like lighting money on fire.

But with smart contracts there might be.