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Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

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Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#11

Post by westurner »

cprayingmantis wrote: post #4

In all honesty this is what I've been waiting for in terms of a useful cryptocurrency. Now if we could only decentralize the control of what projects the processing goes towards with smart contracts then we could have a coin with more actual utility. Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

> Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

https://curecoin.net

""" CureCoin Reaches #1 Ranking on Folding@home

As of the afternoon of August 29, 2017 (Eastern Time), the Curecoin Team 224497 earned the world's #1 rank on Stanford's Folding@home - a protein folding simulation Distributed Computing Network (DCN). In a little over 3 years, the team (including our merge-folding partners at Foldingcoin) collectively produced 160 billion points worth of molecular computations to support research in the areas of cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, Infectious Disease as well as helping scientists uncover new molecular dynamics through groundbreaking computational techniques. """

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#12

Post by iak8god »

cprayingmantis wrote: post #4

In all honesty this is what I've been waiting for in terms of a useful cryptocurrency. Now if we could only decentralize the control of what projects the processing goes towards with smart contracts then we could have a coin with more actual utility. Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

> Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

Unfortunatly BTC mining now runs almost entirely on ASICs that can't be used to compute anything but SHA-256.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#13

Post by anigbrowl »

whyenot wrote: post #10

Gridcoin dates back to 2013, and is one of a large number of "altcoins" that was released during Bitcoin's last price surge and bubble of media attention. It uses proof of stake, which greatly decreases the computing power needed to secure the block chain -- am approach used by many other alt coins. There have been a lot of criticisms of PoS over the years, including here at HN. The most prominent being that PoS coin…

On the plus side BOINC has credibility as a scientific computing platform so at least the incentives line up as opposed to the purely speculative aspect of many other altcoins.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#14

Post by anigbrowl »

iak8god wrote: post #12
cprayingmantis wrote: post #4

In all honesty this is what I've been waiting for in terms of a useful cryptocurrency. Now if we could only decentralize the control of what projects the processing goes towards with smart contracts then we could have a coin with more actual utility. Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations.

> Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations. Unfortunatly BTC mining now runs almost entirely on ASICs that can't be used to compute anything but SHA-256.

Imagine and equivalent amount of computer power in an alternative future. I mean, you're right, and this limitation is a flaw in bitcoin, but you've also missed the point.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#15

Post by iak8god »

anigbrowl wrote: post #14
iak8god wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations. Unfortunatly BTC mining now runs almost entirely on ASICs that can't be used to compute anything but SHA-256.

Imagine and equivalent amount of computer power in an alternative future. I mean, you're right, and this limitation is a flaw in bitcoin, but you've also missed the point.

No, I'm imagining, and I'm sure we'll get there eventually, but BTC has a lot of inertia at present.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#16

Post by ktta »

Kattywumpus wrote: post #6

I've never understood why GridCoin hasn't caught on yet. One of the chief complaints about Bitcoin is the utter wastefulness of its hashing mechanisms, with hundreds of times more computing power than the top 256 supercomputers combined devoted to pointless busywork just to secure the blockchain. Imagine if you could have an equally secure cryptocurrency where all that computing power was diverted to curing cancer, d…

I can't say why it hasn't caught on yet, but in my opinion, it is fragile, at least when compared to other coins.

Here the reward one gets purely depends on the score they get on specific BOINC projects, which can be seen as a single point of failure. So if someone is able to fudge their BOINC scores, they're able to create Gridcoins that they shouldn't get.

While other coins aren't as resourceful as this, I feel their network's security is backed by (atleast seemingly) air-tight cryptography. Not to say that Gridcoin is insecure currently, but the centralization with BOINC shows it doesn't have a bright future.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#17

Post by anonymous5133 »

tw1010 wrote: post #3

Woah, things are really happening in the intersection of engineering and money. I was sceptical a few years ago, but now that quite a number of applications using technology in the blockchain/bitcoin world are appearing, does it really seem like all this is likely to stay. Maybe the things we see popping up today won't remain permanently, but I can't imagine that it won't lead to something really cool within a half d…

Like everything, not all of it will stay but the stuff that does still will become something equivalent to a google or facebook in significance.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#19

Post by ashleyn »

Kattywumpus wrote: post #6

I've never understood why GridCoin hasn't caught on yet. One of the chief complaints about Bitcoin is the utter wastefulness of its hashing mechanisms, with hundreds of times more computing power than the top 256 supercomputers combined devoted to pointless busywork just to secure the blockchain. Imagine if you could have an equally secure cryptocurrency where all that computing power was diverted to curing cancer, d…

* GridCoin offers comparatively low payout for the electricity required; you're not making money, you're just getting a discount on a research donation.

* GridCoin is highly inflationary and there's no inbuilt means of curtailing the supply.

Re: Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

#20

Post by AgentME »

If Gridcoin gets popular, then it would be worth it to create a very optimized algorithm for something that looks kinda like protein folding (or weather simulation or any vaguely interesting sciency problem; it doesn't need to actually be useful), create a project based around using volunteer computer time to compute the same problem (with a much less optimized algorithm than yours), and then spend millions on PR and/or bribes to try to get the project to be included into BOINC/Gridcoin. Once it's included on Gridcoin, buy a lot of cloud instances to run your optimized algorithm, and mine tons of Gridcoin that you immediately sell. Maybe keep a PR person on payroll to put out media releases about how useful the data generated by the project is, so that way Gridcoin doesn't ever remove your project. Maybe make some donations to some universities to get a bunch of professors to say nice things about it too. You're literally printing money, so you can afford it.

In other words, I think the necessary centralization of a project like Gridcoin is a large exploitable flaw.

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