Mine for Citizen Science!

I just read an interesting article on CCN (here) about Gridcoin and FoldingCoin and their use for good purpose.

Gridcoin is an open source cryptocurrency (Ticker: GRC) which securely rewards volunteer computing performed upon the BOINC platform in a decentralized manner on top of proof of stake (1). On the other hand FoldingCoin is a rewards program that distributes tokens called FLDC to participants of the global Folding@home network (2).

Both cryptocurrencies have different approaches to a common important goal which is to harnass the available PC computing power around the world to support science. This as opposed to Bitcoin, which is dedicated to a single computational task with no further purpose other than to handle transactions and secure the network itself.

In the opinion of the article author "FoldingCoin is more innovative and sustainable, because it uses the real Bitcoin blockchain instead of relying on yet another me-too altcoin with an uncertain future. I hope both projects will find a committed audience and bring citizen science forward."

Although FoldingCoin is considered to be more innovative and sustainable, I would think Gridcoin's future to be bright as well with the support of its community and the ongoing developments of the platform together with the variety of whitelisted projects. Time will tell.

(1) Gridcoin
(2) FoldingCoin

Thanks for reading. Follow me for more BOINC & Gridcoin related articles.

The "me-too altcoin " criticism is bizarre. The entire point of Gridcoin was to avoid Bitcoin's electricity waste, and to do that you absolutely require your own blockchain that uses a mechanism other than proof-of-work. In that sense, Gridcoin is far more innovative than another me-too token on an existing wasteful proof-of-work blockchain.:P

I'm not well read up on the exact mechanics of FOLDING@HOME, but if it's based on the Bitcoin POW blockchain I would say that it's a wastefull and much less innovative chain.

As Gridcoin uses POS to consume less power for chain maintenance and more for actual real research it also supports a wast number of different projects.

It's good with alternatives and some healthy competition, but in my opinion, Gridcoin is superior to all other research coins.

Foldingcoin is based on “Proof of Fold” concept using Folding@home to verify contributed computational power instead of SHA256. This means the calculations are beneficical to science as well. I can't comment on the waste in maintaining the actual blockchain but I would think this to be of lower impact.

The actual Foldingcoin whitepaper can be found here.

Thank you for the swift reply 😎

CNN

or CCN?

I found another interesting article on that site.

We should suggest GMO Internet to mine Gridcoin instead of wasting energy. Anybody knows how to contact them?

Corrected, thank you @hotbit.

Even if GMO is using all energy needs from renewables (e.g. establishing the mining activities in Iceland), it is still a waist of computing power. Unfortunately they will just focus on Bitcoin as the crypto to mine.