Gridcoin: More PC-Power For Science. More Crypto For You.
This coin contributes to scientific research and simultaneously lets you earn cryptocurrency.
In the 90s, personal computers became sufficiently powerful to carry out computations which support scientists and researchers in their search for answers to scientific inquiry. With numbers of owners of personal computers constantly increasing, the idea soon emerged to make use of unused computational powers to help researchers complete their calculations. The term ‘Distributed computing’ emerged, which is used when multiple computers located in different geographical locations communicate and collaboratively solve tasks while being connected through the internet.
Distributed computing has advanced so much that many of us use it on daily basis. For example, peer-to-peer file sharing applications (such as BitTorrent), as well as online multiplayer games use this technology. It is also thanks to distributed computing that allows blockchains and cryptocurrencies to exist in the first place.
Where things come full circle will be the topic of today’s article: Gridcoin, a cryptocurrency where distributed computing supports scientific research.
Gridcoin is a blockchain-based distributed computing network powered by the idle processing potential of existing hardware. Access to this network is free for those with data to process, while participants of the network are incentivized with cryptocurrency minted by the Gridcoin protocol.
How does it work?
Gridcoin (GRC) is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain, which means that you must stake Gridcoins to start mining new coins. A PoS blockchain determines who gets to mine the next block by performing a coin flip. The more coins you stake, the higher your odds to be picked to mine the next block and get the reward (newly mined GRCs). Gridcoin blockchain is built around supporting BOINC, which is the distributed computing platform. However, if one is not interested in contributing to any of the research projects, they can become Gridcoin miners for the interest in the coin and to increase the blockchain’s decentralization and security. For supporting the research and the decentralization, miners get rewarded in 2 ways: there are block rewards for participating in the blockchain and there are rewards for contributing to research. The process of contributing to research is labelled ‘crunching.’
The different options for participating in the Gridcoin blockchain
- Solo crunching: You volunteer the unused computational power of your own personal computer(s) or other computing hardware (your smartphone, for example) to one or more research topics. Being solo cruncher grants you a reward for the amount of work your computer completes, plus the mining reward if you won the mining coin flip. To be a solo cruncher you need to stake 5000 GRC.
- Pool crunching: If you don’t have 5000 GRC, then you can join a mining pool. The pool will be staking GRC on your behalf and you can earn rewards based on how much computational power you contribute to the pool.
- Non-cruncher: If you do not have spare computational power on your computer, but you still want to support Gridcoin’s noble cause of advancing research, you can opt to be a non-cruncher and help improve the blockchain’s security by making it more decentralized.
In this article, I will illustrate how you can join a pool crunching.
How to join a pool crunching?
These are the steps to join grcpool which is one of the 2 pools for Gridcoin:
1. Go to https://www.grcpool.com/ and click on ‘sign up’
2. After clicking, you will be taken to the sign-in page. Here you will need to fill in your details (and don’t worry about 2FA Token yet — you can set it up later if you want).
3. Now you have access to the main page of your account. Starting out, the amount of ‘Hosts’ you will have is 0, since no computers are currently linked to your account.
4. Go to https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and click on “Download BOINC”. This is an application that will help to link your Grid-coin account to the research projects.
5. Download BOINC + VirtualBox. I recommend choosing the BOINC-version that includes VirtualBox as it gives you a wider choice of research projects you can contribute to.
6. Once the file is downloaded, install it as you do with other applications.
7. When the installation is finished and BOINC is launched, a ‘Choose a project’ window will pop-up. Here, click on ‘Cancel’, then confirm ‘Yes’ on the next pop-up window.
8. In BOINC manager, click on the ‘Tools’ in the head of the window, then select the option ‘Use account manager’.
9. In the ‘Choose an account manager’ window, type www.grcpool.com in the “Account manager URL” text box, then click ‘Next’.
10. BOINC will then set up a connection to be able to communicate with grcpool.
11. When prompted, enter the username and password that you chose in Step 2, then click Next.
12. Once the connection is established, click ‘Finish’.
13. Return to www.grcpool.com. You should now have 1 host (if it still shows 0, please refresh the page).
14. Click on ‘My Hosts’, then click on your computer’s name.
15. From the drop-down menu, choose which research projects you would like to contribute to. Then click the green ‘add’ button.
16. In the ‘Resource Share’-box, enter the percentage of the available computational power you would like to contribute to each project. If you choose 100 for all the projects, then the computational power will be distributed equally between the projects. When you are finished, click on ‘save project settings’
17. Return to the BOINC manager and click on “Tools” then select “Synchronize with grcpool.com”.
18. Once synchronization is complete, click “Finish”.
19. To see more details regarding the projects, go to ‘Advanced View’: you can do so by first clicking on ‘View’, then selecting ‘Advanced view’.
20. You might need to synchronize a second time for the communication between the pool and your BOINC manager to align (see Step 17)
21. Click on ‘Project Web Page’ then ‘Home page’.
22. Navigate the homepage of the project to find the best settings for participating, such as if it is better to use either GPU or CPU computational power. Then go to your profile on grcpool.com and update your preference for each project in accordance with the instructions from the owner(s) of the project.
23. In the BOINC manager click on ‘Options’ then ‘Computing preferences’, then select the setting you prefer.
24. Done! Now your computer is contributing to completing research projects and your account will start accumulating GRC as a reward.
25. You can install BOINC on as many computers as you prefer. You will have to repeat the steps from step 4) onwards for each new device you add.
If you prefer a video tutorial, an accessible one can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm2E6pQ-Ifw&ab_channel=Gridcoin
To withdraw your GRC-coins to your wallet, you will have to install and set-up your Gridcoin wallet following this video tutorial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws4BUte-2b8&t=0s&ab_channel=Gridcoin
