8 ms·

Gridcoin: Rewarding Scientific Distributed Computing

134 points by trueduke 9y ago

comicjk 9y ago
I like GRC a lot. I think proof-of-stake is much more efficient than proof-of-work, because it doesn't require massive ongoing calculations in perpetuity. I like the idea of giving out the coins for doing useful calculations, rather than for burning cycles. My criticisms: it's pretty easy for a user to set up BOINC and start contributing, but not so easy to integrate it with GRC and start collecting gridcoin. Their client software needs a usability overhaul. Also, the selection of projects by BOINC seems somewhat arbitrary - I'm not sure how one gets into their good graces, since I couldn't find public standards or an application process.
tw1010 9y ago
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 decade or so.
- anonymous5133 9y ago
  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.
cprayingmantis 9y ago
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.
- comicjk 9y ago
  The projects SONM and Golem are trying to do what you describe. Their plan is to use the Ethereum blockchain to sell miners' computing power in units of their coins, thus giving the coins practical value. Neither one is ready enough to buy from yet.
  - cprayingmantis 9y ago
    Thanks for passing the info along I'll be sure to check them out.
  - knowledgepowers 9y ago
    Another: sparc.network
- westurner 9y ago
  > Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations. https://curecoin.net 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. """
- iak8god 9y ago
  > 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.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    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.
Kattywumpus 9y ago
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, discovering new drugs to treat dangerous diseases, understanding the human genome, researching dark matter, and so on. That's GridCoin. And yet today Bitcoin is worth $14,484 and GridCoin is worth 12 cents.
- AndrewBissell 9y ago
  > pointless busywork just to secure the blockchain Well if it's securing the blockchain it can't be that pointless. Some good arguments here for why "useless" proof-of-work is actually quite useful: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/
- grubles 9y ago
  Primecoin (sign: Ψ; code: XPM) is a peer-to-peer open source cryptocurrency that implements a unique scientific computing proof-of-work system. Primecoin's proof-of-work system searches for chains of prime numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin
  - taberiand 9y ago
    Is or was? My (admittedly brief) look into this suggests it's dead or dying
    - alexcnwy 9y ago
      It's up 105% this week so someone thinks it's still alive.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Primecoin is dead - go to their website and click on "Forums". Or find the network node explorer online.
whyenot 9y ago
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 coins often use checkpoints which mean they are not truly decentralized. The "Proof of Research" seems gimmicky to me, and maybe I'm a cynic, but my impression of Gridcoin has always been that it is just another attempt to cash in and doesn't do anything particularly useful. PrimeCoin is another example from the same time period.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  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.
iandanforth 9y ago
Folding coin appears to be another in this genre. http://foldingcoin.net/ http://foldingcoin.net/
AgentME 9y ago
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.
Proven 9y ago
Folding Coin does it simpler and InO better
woah 9y ago
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't actually "mining" in the Bitcoin sense. IIRC, the coins are issued based on a centralized determination (by the involved scientific organizations?) of whether the work you are doing is useful. Every time I see this on HN, there are a lot of people who are excited because they think that this is somehow "a useful proof of work", or an alternative to proof of work. It doesn't actually have anything to do with proof of work. Maybe the idea of paying people for scientific computing with newly-created crypto coins is a worthy innovation, but I suspect that much of the interest around this based around people who are confused about what proof of work is.
SubiculumCode 9y ago
I thought of this idea a couple of weeks ago. Make the mining aspect useful work (e.g. solve folding proteins). I am glad someone is doing this. An excellent idea.
- rebuilder 9y ago
  But how do you do it without centralizing coin issuance?
  - SubiculumCode 9y ago
    I overstated. I just had the thought that it would be nice if coin issuance would depend on some type of useful work (e.g. protein folding), and was glad to see that others who know a whole lot more about how cryptocurrency works, have created schemes to do just that. I have no idea on how to do it without centralizing coin issuance.
    - rebuilder 9y ago
      Unfortunately, no-one seems to know how to do it. It is a pretty hard problem: issuance tied to proof of work works because the solutions it generates are unique but machine verifiable. Unfortunately, problems with solutions that fulfill that requirement tend not to be very useful in and of themselves. Edit: this is well beyond my expertise, perhaps someone with a better understanding of information theory can prove the above statement wrong. In that case, I hope they go out and build a crypto of their own!
Tomminn 9y ago
I think anyone who looks at bitcoin thinks "what we need is a proof-of-work scheme with positive externalities". But when you look at the actual constraints of the proof-of-work-- unpredictable, unsolved problems with automatic difficulty adjustment-- you realize implementing this idea in a decentralized manner will take almost as big a breakthrough as Satoshi himself made.

134 points by trueduke 9y ago

I like GRC a lot. I think proof-of-stake is much more efficient than proof-of-work, because it doesn't require massive ongoing calculations in perpetuity. I like the idea of giving out the coins for doing useful calculations, rather than for burning cycles. My criticisms: it's pretty easy for a user to set up BOINC and start contributing, but not so easy to integrate it with GRC and start collecting gridcoin. Their client software needs a usability overhaul. Also, the selection of projects by BOINC seems somewhat arbitrary - I'm not sure how one gets into their good graces, since I couldn't find public standards or an application process.

tw1010 9y ago

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 decade or so.

anonymous5133 9y ago
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.

cprayingmantis 9y ago

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.

comicjk 9y ago
The projects SONM and Golem are trying to do what you describe. Their plan is to use the Ethereum blockchain to sell miners' computing power in units of their coins, thus giving the coins practical value. Neither one is ready enough to buy from yet.
- cprayingmantis 9y ago
  Thanks for passing the info along I'll be sure to check them out.
- knowledgepowers 9y ago
  Another: sparc.network
westurner 9y ago
> Imagine the hash rate of the BTC network going towards some useful calculations. https://curecoin.net 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. """
iak8god 9y ago
> 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.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  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.

Kattywumpus 9y ago

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, discovering new drugs to treat dangerous diseases, understanding the human genome, researching dark matter, and so on. That's GridCoin. And yet today Bitcoin is worth $14,484 and GridCoin is worth 12 cents.

AndrewBissell 9y ago
> pointless busywork just to secure the blockchain Well if it's securing the blockchain it can't be that pointless. Some good arguments here for why "useless" proof-of-work is actually quite useful: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/
grubles 9y ago
Primecoin (sign: Ψ; code: XPM) is a peer-to-peer open source cryptocurrency that implements a unique scientific computing proof-of-work system. Primecoin's proof-of-work system searches for chains of prime numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin
- taberiand 9y ago
  Is or was? My (admittedly brief) look into this suggests it's dead or dying
  - alexcnwy 9y ago
    It's up 105% this week so someone thinks it's still alive.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  Primecoin is dead - go to their website and click on "Forums". Or find the network node explorer online.

whyenot 9y ago

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 coins often use checkpoints which mean they are not truly decentralized. The "Proof of Research" seems gimmicky to me, and maybe I'm a cynic, but my impression of Gridcoin has always been that it is just another attempt to cash in and doesn't do anything particularly useful. PrimeCoin is another example from the same time period.

anigbrowl 9y ago
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.

iandanforth 9y ago

Folding coin appears to be another in this genre. http://foldingcoin.net/ http://foldingcoin.net/

AgentME 9y ago

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.

Proven 9y ago

Folding Coin does it simpler and InO better

woah 9y ago

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't actually "mining" in the Bitcoin sense. IIRC, the coins are issued based on a centralized determination (by the involved scientific organizations?) of whether the work you are doing is useful. Every time I see this on HN, there are a lot of people who are excited because they think that this is somehow "a useful proof of work", or an alternative to proof of work. It doesn't actually have anything to do with proof of work. Maybe the idea of paying people for scientific computing with newly-created crypto coins is a worthy innovation, but I suspect that much of the interest around this based around people who are confused about what proof of work is.

SubiculumCode 9y ago

I thought of this idea a couple of weeks ago. Make the mining aspect useful work (e.g. solve folding proteins). I am glad someone is doing this. An excellent idea.

rebuilder 9y ago
But how do you do it without centralizing coin issuance?
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  I overstated. I just had the thought that it would be nice if coin issuance would depend on some type of useful work (e.g. protein folding), and was glad to see that others who know a whole lot more about how cryptocurrency works, have created schemes to do just that. I have no idea on how to do it without centralizing coin issuance.
  - rebuilder 9y ago
    Unfortunately, no-one seems to know how to do it. It is a pretty hard problem: issuance tied to proof of work works because the solutions it generates are unique but machine verifiable. Unfortunately, problems with solutions that fulfill that requirement tend not to be very useful in and of themselves. Edit: this is well beyond my expertise, perhaps someone with a better understanding of information theory can prove the above statement wrong. In that case, I hope they go out and build a crypto of their own!

Tomminn 9y ago

I think anyone who looks at bitcoin thinks "what we need is a proof-of-work scheme with positive externalities". But when you look at the actual constraints of the proof-of-work-- unpredictable, unsolved problems with automatic difficulty adjustment-- you realize implementing this idea in a decentralized manner will take almost as big a breakthrough as Satoshi himself made.