6 ms·

Anectdata: I set up an old computer with this in 2009, but a few months later I heard about this thing called cryptocurrency mining... EDIT: The article notes

Anectdata: I set up an old computer with this in 2009, but a few months later I heard about this thing called cryptocurrency mining... EDIT: The article notes that they are reaching a point of diminishing returns with the distributed nature of the SETI@HOME tasks, but I can't help wondering if things like crypto had an impact on participation with this and other @HOME-style academic projects[0]. [0]: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Vaanir 7y ago
I was in a similar boat to you, except I set up my new i7 rig (at the time) for SETI@HOME because I couldn't get mining to work properly, or it kept crashing! Remnants of my attempts are at home on my PC somewhere, there are no wallets from my searches of my drives :-(.
Scoundreller 7y ago
How did that do for you?
rolltiide 7y ago
Were you able to keep the wallet files well into the next decade? It was fraught with disaster back then, I read about a lot of regret.
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I had the opposite problem. Knowing the importance of offsite backups I had the brilliant idea of backing up my wallet.dat on Dropbox without any additional encryption. My bitcoin were only worth a few bucks, who'd bother stealing them, right? Years later, I saw that BTC had gone up in price a few orders of magnitude so I tried to load my wallet.dat and cash out. Except when I opened my wallet file, the balance was zeroed out. Oops: https://www.troyhunt.com/the-dropbox-hack-is-real/ https://www.troyhunt.com/the-dropbox-hack-is-real/
  - orf 7y ago
    Did you ever end up tracking where and when the coins went?
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      I looked at the wallet address, which looked liked it was used to slurp up BTC from a number of different sources. Didn't bother tracing it any further than that because I was so disgusted with myself for losing (potentially) thousands of dollars. Good news is that I signed up for Coinbase when they were giving out 0.1 BTC signup bonuses, so I still got to ride the wave with that. Made me feel better about writing off the BTC I mined the hard way on my Macbook Pro— better to think of it as an expensive way to learn about the importance of good passwords and 2 factor authentication :)
  - wolco 7y ago
    So someone internally stole them at dropbox? Did you have it shared with the public?
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      Nah, my guess is that whoever hacked Dropbox (or someone who bought the info from the person who hacked it) had a script to brute force passwords, then log into accounts and scan for wallet.dat files.
slg 7y ago
I'm not an expert in either this or cryptocurrency, but it always seemed like these two would be a good marriage of technologies rather than having crypto mining rigs waste resources on unproductive proof of work algorithms. Does anyone know why that wasn't feasible or didn't catch on?
- sjburt 7y ago
  Proof of work relies on computations that are hard to do but easy to check that someone has done. The entire network has to check someone's proposed result. There are very few computations that have sufficient asymmetry to the degree needed to make bitcoin work, and the types of things that SETI@home needs don't fit that bill.
  - sprash 7y ago
    The projects Primecoin and Riecoin are digital currencies that try to provide proof of work algorithms with (somewhat) scientific value.
    - Forbo 7y ago
      There's GridCoin, as well, which utilizes BOINC for work units.
      - tech_man7 7y ago
        Golem (www.golem.network) is building a general-purpose distributed computation platform where people who need compute power pay using cryptocurrency. And developers can build software to run on it (and get paid when it's used).
        Forbo 7y ago
        I vouched for your comment, as it's factually correct near as I can tell. I've been interested in the project, especially since Joanna Rutkowska joined them.

Vaanir 7y ago

I was in a similar boat to you, except I set up my new i7 rig (at the time) for SETI@HOME because I couldn't get mining to work properly, or it kept crashing! Remnants of my attempts are at home on my PC somewhere, there are no wallets from my searches of my drives :-(.

Scoundreller 7y ago

How did that do for you?

rolltiide 7y ago

Were you able to keep the wallet files well into the next decade? It was fraught with disaster back then, I read about a lot of regret.

Rebelgecko 7y ago
I had the opposite problem. Knowing the importance of offsite backups I had the brilliant idea of backing up my wallet.dat on Dropbox without any additional encryption. My bitcoin were only worth a few bucks, who'd bother stealing them, right? Years later, I saw that BTC had gone up in price a few orders of magnitude so I tried to load my wallet.dat and cash out. Except when I opened my wallet file, the balance was zeroed out. Oops: https://www.troyhunt.com/the-dropbox-hack-is-real/ https://www.troyhunt.com/the-dropbox-hack-is-real/
- orf 7y ago
  Did you ever end up tracking where and when the coins went?
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    I looked at the wallet address, which looked liked it was used to slurp up BTC from a number of different sources. Didn't bother tracing it any further than that because I was so disgusted with myself for losing (potentially) thousands of dollars. Good news is that I signed up for Coinbase when they were giving out 0.1 BTC signup bonuses, so I still got to ride the wave with that. Made me feel better about writing off the BTC I mined the hard way on my Macbook Pro— better to think of it as an expensive way to learn about the importance of good passwords and 2 factor authentication :)
- wolco 7y ago
  So someone internally stole them at dropbox? Did you have it shared with the public?
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    Nah, my guess is that whoever hacked Dropbox (or someone who bought the info from the person who hacked it) had a script to brute force passwords, then log into accounts and scan for wallet.dat files.

slg 7y ago

I'm not an expert in either this or cryptocurrency, but it always seemed like these two would be a good marriage of technologies rather than having crypto mining rigs waste resources on unproductive proof of work algorithms. Does anyone know why that wasn't feasible or didn't catch on?

sjburt 7y ago
Proof of work relies on computations that are hard to do but easy to check that someone has done. The entire network has to check someone's proposed result. There are very few computations that have sufficient asymmetry to the degree needed to make bitcoin work, and the types of things that SETI@home needs don't fit that bill.
- sprash 7y ago
  The projects Primecoin and Riecoin are digital currencies that try to provide proof of work algorithms with (somewhat) scientific value.
  - Forbo 7y ago
    There's GridCoin, as well, which utilizes BOINC for work units.
    - tech_man7 7y ago
      Golem (www.golem.network) is building a general-purpose distributed computation platform where people who need compute power pay using cryptocurrency. And developers can build software to run on it (and get paid when it's used).
      - Forbo 7y ago
        I vouched for your comment, as it's factually correct near as I can tell. I've been interested in the project, especially since Joanna Rutkowska joined them.