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Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

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Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#131

Post by roboticmind »

noxer wrote: post #115
roboticmind wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit it's not great right now, but I don't know if I understand what you view as a use case? If using it to get things of value with it is not a use case, then what coin or currency has any use case? Everything is a transfer of value even beyond just currencies be it paid in time or other things > Reward paid in, let me guess, more coins. self fueling like most other coins. Thats not a real usecase It's also wo…

Maybe I should have said a "unique use case" and also one that out-competes other similar systems. Buying stuff with the coin may be an use case but this coin is in no way better than the thousands others for doing just that. Its very much end of the line for acceptance and thus this use case is not really valid.

Ah that makes more sense

I see using it a currency backed by scientific work is already something that makes using it unique and can make people interested in accepting it and use it. I see that you don't view it the same way, but that's okay too

As well, here's one thing that may or may not usecase per se, but it is something a that's different from most cryptos in use of the coin itself. It's nice feature that only a one or maybe a handful other coins [1] called sidestaking. With it you can send any % of your staking rewards to other addresses in the coinbase transaction. So you could for instance use it to donate to BOINC projects that accept Gridcoin every time you stake (and people already do that). Or you could send it to a friend when you stake or anyone really. You can send to multiple addresses every time you stake with different % for each (up to 6 before it has to cycle through them on each stake) to. On the flip side, accepting Gridcoin means you can also accept sidestakes (at least for things like donations)

[1] Pinkcoin is the only other one I know of and could find (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTuM69Lgd5o). Looking it up just brings me mostly to Gridcoin stuff

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#132

Post by stonesweep »

roboticmind wrote: post #113
stonesweep wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In it's heyday during 2018 it got up to 15-17 cents (USD), but by the end of 2018 it was at 1/2 cent and by the end of 2019 it was at 1/10 cent. It's been delisted from most of the major exchanges and pulled from wallet apps like Coinomi; your observations above are correct, you need to have coin to make coin and you cannot make coin quickly without throwing a lot of hardware at it. You must use their wallet, which i…

It's worth noting that a lot of work (4500+ hours in ten months of development and testing[1]) has been put into a massive rewrite of the wallet in 5.0.0. The wallet is a lot more stable than it was when you last used it, the GUI is much better, tons of old crappy code was removed, thing are more secure in general, etc. There's also much better testing of releases now too [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gridcoin/comment…

That's fantastic to hear - while I have your ear, as a WCG cruncher I did not want to (be forced to) join Team Gridcoin in order for the work to be counted. Along with above work, has the WCG requirement to join Team Gridcoin been lifted (design altered to another method) now/as well? Teams are 50% of the fun in WCG, so the requirements for a specific team membership are unwelcome.

I was also really wanting manual reward claim (the current staking method is a lottery), I think that's still in progress reading the other comments - if I'm crunching for coin, being subject to a lottery method of when I'll get "paid" is a non starter, I want to claim my work coins when I want. The sheer fact that users with large coin are encouraged to split their stakes to increase their lottery chances of winning the stake are just crap, it's heavily biased towards HODLers and people who got in around 2016 and have a million coins - basically, the coin poor are penalized, newcomers have no hope in this staking scheme. I've always thought it was a little ponzi-scheme-like to be honest.

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#133

Post by roboticmind »

stonesweep wrote: post #132
roboticmind wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that a lot of work (4500+ hours in ten months of development and testing[1]) has been put into a massive rewrite of the wallet in 5.0.0. The wallet is a lot more stable than it was when you last used it, the GUI is much better, tons of old crappy code was removed, thing are more secure in general, etc. There's also much better testing of releases now too [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/gridcoin/comment…

That's fantastic to hear - while I have your ear, as a WCG cruncher I did not want to (be forced to) join Team Gridcoin in order for the work to be counted. Along with above work, has the WCG requirement to join Team Gridcoin been lifted (design altered to another method) now/as well? Teams are 50% of the fun in WCG, so the requirements for a specific team membership are unwelcome. I was also really wanting manual re…

That's correct that the requirement to be on team Gridcoin was removed in 5.0.0. You can now earn Gridcoin from any BOINC team.

The manual rewards claim is still in the works although there's now some more specific plans in mind [1] for it than there were in the past. It's on the roadmap somewhere

[1] See this message from Jim Owens (one of the core developers) about some of what he's thinking https://discord.com/channels/211637812968161280/338020950714.... I would normally quote this instead of making you have to join a Discord, but it's rather lengthy and part of a discussion

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#134

Post by stonesweep »

roboticmind wrote: post #133
stonesweep wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fantastic to hear - while I have your ear, as a WCG cruncher I did not want to (be forced to) join Team Gridcoin in order for the work to be counted. Along with above work, has the WCG requirement to join Team Gridcoin been lifted (design altered to another method) now/as well? Teams are 50% of the fun in WCG, so the requirements for a specific team membership are unwelcome. I was also really wanting manual re…

That's correct that the requirement to be on team Gridcoin was removed in 5.0.0. You can now earn Gridcoin from any BOINC team. The manual rewards claim is still in the works although there's now some more specific plans in mind [1] for it than there were in the past. It's on the roadmap somewhere [1] See this message from Jim Owens (one of the core developers) about some of what he's thinking https://discord.com/cha…

Thanks for the update, progress! I'll dig into the last bit more, I don't Discord but I'm sure it's over on reddit or that other place people blog for coin (it's been a minute since last I was in this game). Much appreciated.

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#135

Post by proto-n »

Robotbeat wrote: post #39
proto-n wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution has to depend on the proposed block, so that a solution is not reusable for the next block

The solution is also announced in cleartext, so you can check against previous solutions.

Ok, not being usable for the next block is not enough. It must not be usable for any other block. Competing chains, forks, other miners stealing your rewards, etc. Has to depend on the hash of the previous block, and also the transaction where you send the reward to yourself (-> even if someone else "steals it", you get the reward so it doesn't matter).

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#136

Post by deeeeplearning »

jl2718 wrote: post #95
deeeeplearning wrote: post #70

Not to be that guy but did anyone read the 2 sentence wiki? "Gridcoin attempts to address and ease the environmental energy impact of cryptocurrency mining through its proof-of-research and proof-of-stake protocols" Feels like a quarter of the comments are complaining about PoW ...

Because it doesn’t ‘address’ any of that. It’ vanilla PoS. Still a good idea for other reasons.

So what's the point of complaining about PoW as if Gridcoin used that when literally 1 of the 2 sentences in the wiki says it uses PoS?

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#137

Post by knocte »

roboticmind wrote: post #128
knocte wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each BOINC project that is rewarded has its stats looked up by a system of oracles and each node verifies that the oracles match up For cryptocurrency noobs: the word "oracle" while seeming to be a buzzword that tries to provide some technical legitimacy, actually means "a node with authority", which basically goes against the whole point of cryptocurrency (decentralization). Move on, nothing to see here. Disappoin…

I'd agree that it is more centralized than I'd like, but it doesn't defeat the whole point. Gridcoin has a different purpose than most cryptocurrencies. It rewards science and is more decentralized than most coins that try similar goals [1]. I'd also note that the oracles have less direct power over the coin than you might think. See one of the comments I made about it earlier [2] The alternative was previously flood…

Sorry I can't buy the idea. Once you have some oracle, you have more centralization than a properly decentralized currency. And then you end up with the worst of both worlds: as expensive and slow as a cryptocurrency, and as trust-dependent/weak as a centralized system (weak in the sense that there's a single point of failure and a single entity that you must trust).

Anything that can only be done with some degree of centralization should just use a PostgreSQL database instead, no point in using a blockchain.

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#138

Post by roboticmind »

knocte wrote: post #137
roboticmind wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree that it is more centralized than I'd like, but it doesn't defeat the whole point. Gridcoin has a different purpose than most cryptocurrencies. It rewards science and is more decentralized than most coins that try similar goals [1]. I'd also note that the oracles have less direct power over the coin than you might think. See one of the comments I made about it earlier [2] The alternative was previously flood…

Sorry I can't buy the idea. Once you have some oracle, you have more centralization than a properly decentralized currency. And then you end up with the worst of both worlds: as expensive and slow as a cryptocurrency, and as trust-dependent/weak as a centralized system (weak in the sense that there's a single point of failure and a single entity that you must trust). Anything that can only be done with some degree of…

> Once you have some oracle...

> ...single entity that you must trust...

It's not a single oracle. There are currently 6 that independently run and gather the same stats. The wallet compares each of those independent oracle's data to each other and makes sure it matches. There will almost certainly be more oracles in the futures

> Anything that can only be done with some degree of centralization should just use a PostgreSQL database instead, no point in using a blockchain.

You get more resiliency in running it through a blockchain. You would go from oracles having to coordinate in a tricky way to manipulate stuff to now being able to having a database where they could somewhat easily directly change balances, stop things from running, ect.

A blockchain has some degree of centralization. For instance, how the very first peers found in blockchains is fairly centralized and relies on a lot of hardcoded nodes or servers. Now you can also seek out some connection too manually if you really want to, but most* have decided not to do that and accepted the trade off. Everything has a degree of centralization. It's not an all or nothing proposition. It is where you want to move on the balance of completely centralization to decentralized

* Partly because many aren't aware of this, but it still applies to those that are aware too

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#139

Post by normalocity »

This seems like a great way to get fools to trade something valuable (the electricity they pay for to run arbitrary computation) for something worthless (a new crypto currency).

If you think of electricity as fuel for computers, similar to fuel for a semi, then this scheme seems analogous to an attempt to get truck drivers to drive your stuff to it's destination at their upfront cost in exchange for an IOU that has no backing.

Re: Gridcoin: An open-source cryptocurrency that rewards volunteer computing

#140

Post by knocte »

roboticmind wrote: post #138
knocte wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I can't buy the idea. Once you have some oracle, you have more centralization than a properly decentralized currency. And then you end up with the worst of both worlds: as expensive and slow as a cryptocurrency, and as trust-dependent/weak as a centralized system (weak in the sense that there's a single point of failure and a single entity that you must trust). Anything that can only be done with some degree of…

> Once you have some oracle... > ...single entity that you must trust... It's not a single oracle. There are currently 6 that independently run and gather the same stats. The wallet compares each of those independent oracle's data to each other and makes sure it matches. There will almost certainly be more oracles in the futures > Anything that can only be done with some degree of centralization should just use a Pos…

> It's not a single oracle.

I didn't say "single". I'm out of this convo.

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