U.S. Patent 11184446 was awarded to Micron Technology, Inc. on November 23, 2021 and is entitled “Methods and apparatus for incentivizing participation in fog networks.” The first named inventor is Fa-Long Luo of San Jose, CA. The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

Methods and apparatus for incentivizing device participation within a distributed network. In one exemplary embodiment, devices of a fog network may provide for example, computational, storage, and/or network resources in exchange for fungible tokens. In one such variant, the user contributions are recorded in a blockchain data structure, thereby enabling users to be compensated for their contributions of resources to the network at a later time. Unlike traditional networking techniques which often rely on centralized networks directing and/or commandeering user equipment for network bandwidth, the various aspects of the present disclosure are directed to ensuring that crediting and debiting of participation can be performed at the edge of the network (within the fog) without requiring authentication or trust exchanges. More directly, various aspects of the present disclosure are directed to verification and/or validation of work performed by peer devices. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on December 05, 2018  as U.S. Patent Application 16/211029 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 11184446. The primary examiner was Yves Dalencourt.

Micron Technology, Inc., who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 30704 total granted patents in the United States as of the date of this article. This blockchain patent has been cited 0 times by other U.S. patents according to our law firm research, and can be considered an innovative patent in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

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