Gridcoin Tutorial: Solo Mining; A guide trough magnitude, neural network and beacons

Chances are that if you've come to Gridcoin you probably already have some understanding about digital currency and how most of it works. Or maybe you have no previous knowledge, but even if you have no clue at all, this tutorial will help you understand the concept of the Gridcoin Network.

Please note that Magnitude, Distributed Proof of Research, Beacons and other terms here do not apply to you if you mine through a pool, read our tutorial on pool mining. This work is done by the pool and your reward is sent to you from the pool.

If you wish to start mining solo, please be aware that it requires a small amount of coins to get started. About 50-100 coins are good for start. The reason for this can be found in the guide.

However, please continue reading if you want to know more about the inner workings of Gridcoin.

The Basics

Gridcoin, as many digital currencies, generates a number of coins produced every day that are for rewarding all those that uphold the network. The network for Gridcoin is held up in two ways. First is Proof of Stake (PoS) and second is Distributed Proof of Research (DPoR). Proof of Stake is not something we will go into in this tutorial. We will on the other hand look on Distributed Proof of Research and why there is no Proof of Work as coins like Bitcoin has.

The Projects of BOINC

Gridcoin is, as said, rewarding for running projects on the BOINC network. But this does not mean you can run any of the many projects. There is a whitelist that current contains 31 different projects, ranging from searching for alien signals to mapping the human genome and mathematical equations. These are the Projects that are verified and trusted. This is done because anyone can start a Project and no one wants a project that is unfair and easy to cheat.

When you do work on BOINC, the projects will give you a credit for your work. The amount is set by the Project and has nothing to do with Gridcoin, but it is used to compare you with all other Gridcoin users. When you have computed work over time you build up a score called RAC, Recent Average Credit. This is the score you and everyone else are compared with.

Whitelisted Projects

Note: A requirement for being compared to others is that you have joined team Gridcoin on the specific project. Without doing so we have no way of knowing how much work you do!

Setting up the client for Solo Mining

If you already haven’t done this before, or have been doing pool mining, there are a few things that you need to attend to before you can advertise yourself on the network.

You have to specify the e-mail address you have used on your BOINC project; this have to be the same on all projects. The wallet will ask you for this on the first start, but you can also do so in the gridcoinresearch.conf file by adding a line like this;

[email protected]

If you did not install BOINC in the default directories you are also required to define these with the following two lines in the same configuration file, with the appropriate paths. These are examples on how it could look like, you should replace with your setup;

Windows (double backslashes are required on windows)

boincdatadir=D:\\ProgramData\\BOINC\\
boincappdir=D:\\Program Files\\BOINC\\

Linux

boincdatadir=/var/lib/boinc-client

or

boincdatadir=/var/lib/boinc

Video Tutorial on installing BOINC and Gridcoin

This video will show you in more detail on how to install BOINC and the Gridcoin wallet. It will also show you a few ways of gaining your initial Gridcoins.
!(Video Tutorial)[

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The Beacon, tell us of your existence on the network!

When you join the network for the first time you need to announce yourself. Your client will send a beacon to the network with your BOINC id, called Cross Platform ID (CPID). A requirement is that you have joined the team Gridcoin on your project. You can also NOT have multiple CPID. Either use an Account Manager or make sure to use the same e-mail address on every project you sign up to. The beacon costs a small amount of coins, currently 0.001, and is automatically advertised every 6 months.

About once every day the network does a consensus on how much work everyone has done throughout the period since the last consensus was done, this is called that the network does a superblock. This is also when all clients are told about new users joining in. After the network has been announced of your presence you will start to collect a magnitude!

Investor	Researcher

Note: You can force your wallet to send this beacon. If the wallet can find the installed BOINC client you will see a CPID in the wallet (see images abow). If you don’t wish to wait you can go to Help -> Debug -> Console and type the command “execute advertisebeacon”.

The Neural Network

When anyone does work the credits are summarized in files available for download from the projects. This is what all Gridcoin wallets use for their consensus that we talked about preciously. This data is quite large, and can take some time to download. Once you have advertised your presence with the beacon your wallet will start to download these files. Once done your wallet are fully integrated to the network.

Note: You can force your wallet to sync with the network with going to Debug -> Console and type the command “execute syncdpor2”.

The Magnitude

Since you can run several different types of project on BOINC, and every project has different ways of giving credit for this, Magnitude is a way of summarizing a number for your combined work. Magnitude is divided equal based on how much work that is done in one project. A simple example can be something like this

Project	RAC	Total RAC	Magnitude	Total Magnitude
SETI@Home	19207	192070	36	36
World Community Grid	14066	140660	36	72

As you can see, the Magnitude reward is equal, even if the RAC is not. This is because both are equal to 1% of the total work which is equal to a magnitude of 36.

Note: You can easily see how much Magnitude you have by looking on the main window of the wallet, or by going to Help -> Debug -> Console and type "list rsa". This command gives you all kinds of information, including Magnitude and the current reward per Magnitude

Your Current Research Reward

When everything is now in place, your BOINC projects are running and the wallet is synced up on the network we can start to earn rewards for our job. This is where we translate Magnitude too actual Gridcoin currency. Every month there is a supply of 1 440 000 GRC generated in rewards for users. These rewards are distributed every time the network generates a superblock, that is roughly every 24 hours. Depending on how much has been rewarded previously the reward per Magnitude are adjusted over time. At the time of writing 1 Magnitude equals 0.2 GRC.

The network will keep track of your earnings, this is called Current Research Reward. Every time your wallet finds a new block on the network (Proof of Stake) your wallet will collect this reward. Finding a new block on the network depends on how many coins you have, so the more coins you have the easier your wallet have to stake a new block. As a researcher your chances are higher than someone that does not do research.

Note: Currently you will have to claim your Current Research Reward within 6 months. This is not a problem if you either run your client during the day even if you have as little as just a few hundred coins. As said, the more you have the easier it will be to stake.

Wrapping up

I hope you enjoy reading our tutorials, please upvote them on steemit if you enjoy them.
If this is just your very first steps into a new and very exiting crypto coin, there are many places you can go for discussing and reading about it.

IRC: freenode.net #gridcoin and #gridcoin-help
Gridcoin Forum
Right here on Steemit
Gridcoin Webpage
Reddit

Other Tutorials:
Gridcoin Tutorial: Get started with the Pool

I also want to shout out to @officialfuzzy with #beyondbitcoin for doing a great show. Gridcoin is making appearance on his show from time to time so please check them out and vote us in if you are around.

Please be aware that typos may happen and will be corrected on mentions