Impact of GDPR on World Community Grid
World Community Grid (WCG) is a computing grid which uses Internet-connected computers to perform research in various projects. It is co-ordinated by IBM and uses BOINC to exchange work-units and results with participating computers.
Since GDPR has come into effect on May 25th, it is not allowed to extract user information anonymously from the WCG website. This means that stats websites (like BOINCStats) but also Gridcoin can’t receive this information anymore. As a result, Gridcoin was forced to greylist the project until all legal and technical aspects are resolved because user information is required to calculate earnings for performed work.
This made me wonder whether it had any impact on the science output of WCG now the competition element (the stats) and the earnings for Gridcoin have disappeared. Fortunately you can still extract the daily team credits & results from the website, which gave me the opportunity to test whether the output has declined since 25-May.
In the four charts below, you will find the daily credits and results for WCG and team Gridcoin. I took a period of three months, two months before and one month after the implementation date, to better assess any trends.
(Data source: World Community Grid website)
Analysing the charts above, I could draw the following conclusions:
- The overall output has not been affected (or only marginally) by the implementation of GDPR.
- Without the ability to compare teams or users, the competition effect doesn’t seem to be important to participate in the project.
- The output for team Gridcoin has declined by 30% since 25-May, which shows that GRC earnings are a driver to participate in the project. On the other hand it doesn’t have an impact on the overall scientific output of WCG.
So lets see when the user information is available again but at least until now WCG and its scientific endeavours aren’t affected yet (which is really positive).
Thanks for reading. Follow me for more BOINC & Gridcoin related articles.
Image source: (1) Header image, (2) Gridcoin logo, (3) BOINC logo, (4) all charts by @parejan
It's a pitty that WCG decided to be such sensitive to GDPR.
There's no personal data behind the score someone gets on a research project... I'm sorry, but what WCG is doing, and other marginal projects, is so damm wrong! My hope was that they will get serious hit by their decision, but it looks that I'm also wrong.
I participate in several projects and tailor which ones I'm running to the circumstances (which hardware it's on, etc.). I have suspended WCG work on all of my devices until this is resolved. However, I'm still crunching Rosetta@home, Milkyway@home, and seti@home. I hadn't done any milkyway@home work for quite a while but added it back in after suspending WCG and einstein for the time being. One user (in most cases) isn't going to make a huge difference in the stats though :).
Thanks for sharing @darth-azrael. I only have one laptop available so don't have too much computing power to support multiple projects but in the end each system counts!
It's funny, just yesterday I was asking myself why no one had compiled this data yet and was planning to start gathering it myself. Thanks for the great data as always @parejan!
Thanks @barton26. Although the output of team Gridcoin has declined, I'm really pleased to see WCG is still going strong.
I'm sure that you and the development team will resolve the technical issues and @neuralminer et al. will bring the legal aspects together so that WCG will be whitelisted again soon.
Unfortunately we can't make much progress on the development front with WCG until they finalize their legal document. It's been "pending" for weeks now :(
it's a (temporary) disadvantage to a normally sound plan.
So not changing anything to my crunchy habits :-)
WCG is a great project to support so you still have a sound plan! :-)
I'll be sticking with WCG there are some projects which I join and leave for grc earning purposes but I believe what WCG is doing is worthwhile anyway. I kind of get why people might move away if they're just computing WCG because the can earn money. The only reason WCG has reacted like this is because is IBM and they have something to lose if they get done through GDPR, what they're doing us ultimately right though. I'm sure they'll come up with a solution that fits and keeps data safe.,
100% agree with you comments @fooforever