Why Gridcoin Should Embrace SPARC "Competition"
If you've been hanging around the Gridcoin SubReddit page recently, you probably noticed a very intriguing post titled:
"Start Collecting Ethereum Tokens for BOINC Work"
The original poster is from a new company called "King's Distributed Systems," and they are launching an ICO for a distributed computing system similar to what Golem is pursuing. During their Alpha phase, they will be using BOINC as a platform and paying BOINC crunchers who sign up for their Alpha with their token (called SPARC) which trades on the Ethereum blockchain. This token is awarded on top of any Gridcoin a cruncher may already be earning. The King's Distributed System team claims to be also getting involved in BOINC development, and have the support of some people within BOINC who are happy to see the platform marketed by this project.
That's all the information I'm wanting to share about them in this article, because I'm not really here to discuss SPARC, really.
How are Gridcoiners supposed to feel about someone else offering payment to BOINCers in CryptoCurrency?
You'll notice I put the word "competition" in quotes in the title of this post. That's because this can only be loosely interpreted as competition since collecting SPARC tokens for your BOINC work has exactly zero impact on your ability to collect Gridcoin.
It is competition to Gridcoin, insomuch as Gridcoin gains at least some of its value in the total amount of computational power available on the Gridcoin network. Keep in mind, SPARC's whitepaper suggests that potentially as soon as Q1 of 2018 they hope to have their own distributed computing platform available. If you choose to collect SPARC in addition to Gridcoin while they are on the BOINC network, you will theoretically have a decision to make in Q1 of 2018 as to whether or not you want to follow SPARC to their own platform and leave Gridcoin, or if you'd rather stay with BOINC and Gridcoin.
Even then, the vast majority of Gridcoiners are doing this (at an opportunity cost of more lucrative coins they could be mining) to support science. I would argue the number of people crunching for BOINC who will want to leave BOINC to contribute to commercial distributed computing will be very, very small. If you were interested in profit-seeking, odds are you'd be mining a different coin right now.
With all that said, the existence of SPARC has ruffled quite a few feathers. To be honest, as someone who has invested heavily in Gridcoin over the last couple months.... I like that. I'm sorry if that comes off as offensive, but having another CryptoCurrency/CryptoAsset setting up shop right across the street is potentially a very good thing.
If I have one complaint about Gridcoin, it is that...
I'm reluctant to even offer this up for fear of how it will be taken, but my biggest concern with Gridcoin is that I feel as though we operate based on the assumption that we are in competition with nobody. A lack of competition tends to create a Laissez-Fair atmosphere. We have such an awesome community, but we struggle in acting with any sense of urgency. Regardless of your opinion about King's Distributed Computing as a company, or whether you reject my belief that their existence is good for us, we need to act with a greater sense of urgency.
The cryptocurrency market is a giant pie, and we have no idea if or how much bigger that pie will get. What we do know for sure is that there are over 800 cryptocoins competing for their share of the existing pie. Gridcoin is a decentralized coin, which means it's governed by everyone who holds the coin. We need to move forward with the reality that we're competing with 800+ other coins. If we sit back, or if we innovate too slowly, we will always steadily lose ground.
A great example is the recent whitelist polls. We had some issues with the blockchain that resulted in peoples' magnitudes (a factor in voting weight) being temporarily inflated or deflated based on which projects they were crunching and whether or not those projects were included in the current SuperBlock. Most of the whitelist polls resulted in an ~80% consensus, yet we still have members of our community who want to spend another two weeks re-listing the polls before we take any action.
Guys..... that's nonsense! The majority of your voting weight is based on your coin ownership. The temporary magnitude issues had minimal impact on these polls. We don't need another two weeks to confirm that Leiden Classical should be removed from the whitelist because they are no longer accepting new registrations. To be honest, we should be moving toward a future where basic issues like that don't even require a whitelist vote.
Let's talk about the team requirement. We recently voted against lifting the team requirement, which is really ultimately more of an outdated technical limitation than a philosophical discussion. Now, what's about to happen is we have a different Crypto coming to BOINC without a team requirement. So all the benefit we were hoping to have by being able to advertise our coin to team administrators, discuss on BOINC forums, etc.... another coin is going to be able to get out in front of those audiences before us. While, again, we should be able to capture the same audience if/when we lift the team requirement, it's unfortunate that as a 4-year old coin we weren't the first to be able to offer crypto-payments to BOINCers regardless of team affiliation.
SPARC is Pretty Critical of Gridcoin in their Whitepaper, but not Unfair
I'm actually a bit disappointed that the KDS/SPARC team chose to paint Gridcoin in such a negative light and feature it in their whitepaper, but objectively I can't say that they're being unfair with their criticism. Up until just yesterday, Gridcoin has never had paid developers (note: it seems clear with their $25 million market cap comment about Gridcoin that this whitepaper was written a solid month ago) and because of that fact, development has indeed likely been slow. Most other coins have paid developers. Our own developers will freely admit that donating limited free time with no compensation makes every project and every task take longer.
My best advice to those of us who don't like that criticism, though, is to double-down on your efforts to move Gridcoin forward. If the idea of SPARC working in the BOINC space bothers you, use that to help us forge ahead. Start polls to help us make decisions. Write Steemit articles to help get the word out about GRC. Participate in some of our Slack channels on topics such as branding, public relations, copyrighting, etc and help push those efforts toward real-world action.
The world is a big free market, friends. SPARC has just as much right to be here as we do, so we can't control that. What we can control is our efforts to move Gridcoin forward and make it more nimble and more cognizant of the competition that surrounds us. Lots of really awesome things are happening right now with Gridcoin and if we continue to support those things, we will dominate this space and be set up for future success.
Gridcoin vs. iEx/Golem/SONM/(now SPARC)
SPARC is identical to GOLEM, iEx, and SONM.
I don't think anyone I have spoken to dislikes competition.
So, why don't we engage iEx, Golem, SONM, or SPARC? There are no products. There is nothing to talk about. The only difference we know of is the structure by which we fund the computing, BOINC vs. PaytoPlay.
Present a product, a prototype, an actual plan, something to talk about. Until then, you are seeking to take advantage of our community.
EDIT ADD:
When someone says they "have access to some people".... anyone can say that at any time. They probably know the rosetta project leader or something.
The big difference is SPARC explicitly claims to be aiming to run MATLAB, Comsol and Blender. I do not know about Blender, but the first two pieces of software are incredibly expensive and require core-based licensing. This means if you want to spread your job to double the machines, you need double the licences. Further, any research done in this software needs a special research licence, which is even more expensive.
Unless they have 1000s of licences or an agreement with e.g. Mathworks who publishes MATLAB, this is 100% illegal.
Doesn't sound like they've researched it that thoroughly..
Exactly. It sounds like they picked an ongoing desire from the research community, then grabbed the closest thing that already exists, and promised to bridge the gap.
There is no evidence I can find of any progress towards that though... If they are really capable of doing it, they would only need to present a single working distributed CPU model for MATLAB and they would have money thrown at them. They could even sell such load leveling software to every university. I assume nothing has actually been done yet, mainly because it cannot be done without the blessing of Mathworks.
As @jringo points out none of these "competors" have any products or platforms live yet. They are pure speculations and token sales. They have a theory while Gridcoin has a real viable platform running.
Gridcoin is a free to use, based on voluntary work. We reward projects users on their behalf, no cost for "renters". All our "competitors" want the cost to be handled by the renters.
SPARC openly admits in our reddit forum that their whitepaper is outdated and invalid, right on the beginning of their token sale! That's insane.
I don't think anyone dislikes some competition, I mean we have another 500,000+ users on the BOINC platform that can join any day to compete.
Development is not slow but very much alive and there are going to be paid developers soon enough. The SPARC team has done a very poor job on collecting their facts.
Additionally:
I would never join a project that keeps track of their users by posts on a forum. They have a centralized way if collecting stats and distributes tokens.
As always, I appreciate your input SC.
I agree that there are many differences between Gridcoin and SPARC. That's the main reason I encourage people to just take their existence at face value and focus on our own project as opposed to putting too much effort into belittling theirs. They're going to spend some time in the same BOINC space as us, ultimately with the exact same short-term goal which is to compensate people for BOINC crunching.
I don't believe the "slow development" comment was meant as a jab so much as stating a reality that goes along with not having paid developers. Rob's compensation proposal going into effect is going to make a huge difference in this area.
But does this permit them to spend time in our Gridcoin space.
The information they're sharing on our Subreddit is relevant to Gridcoiners, so yes.
I think there is a responsibility to keep something so clearly not ready for launch out of this space.
I'm not concerned about other projects "visiting" our space and don't think anyone should feel threatened about it.
What I AM concerned about is the fact that they have:
If anyone think they should be given a go I think it's only fair to point out these flaws. I'm just saying that they feel very sketchy at the moment, but I hope to be proved wrong.
I wish a fair playing field for everyone and hope this isn't some scheme to lure people of their BOINC credentials.
I would advice anyone that tries them to be aware and NOT us the the same credentials as they do elsewhere. I hope my concerns are unjust
The world has gone ICO crazy over the past year, and to me this sounds no different. Sure, give us 1000 ETH, and maybe next year we'll have something for you. Big gamble.
But more than that, I think it's a mistake to get distracted by other projects. Gridcoin needs to worry about two things. First, making Gridcoin solid and scalable. Second, burying the hatchet with BOINCers, and bringing them into the fold. Hell, I'd love it if we could pull in the folding@home community as well, even if it means having to do a ton of coding to make it all work.
(Stepping on my soapbox for a minute)...I might be in the minority, but honestly all I want to do is support pure science, which is woefully lacking in the world, and specifically in the US. If other coins want to support "commercial computing", let them have it. No company is going to offer SETI@home, because there's no profit in it. No company is going to want me to find mega-prime numbers for them, just for the sake of finding them. I like doing weird project like these, and going the commercial route ruins all that. (soapbox rant mode off.)
TL;DR stay focused on the things was can control, which is GRC technology and our relationships/outreach with the general scientific community. The rest will take care of itself.
Gridcoin has been trying to reach out to other BOINC members. But due to the requirements of team connection there has been some rough talk against Gridcoin by their part, calling the project team poachers. We would more than anything have everyone using Gridcoin I think. There is no hatch, just some rough talk about teams from other BIINCers.
glad to hear we're mostly hatchet-free. :) and yeah, if I had a team I had been with for months/years, and some snot-nosed upstart "coin" team started enticing my members away, I can imagine not being super stoked about it. truth is, I don't like seeing Gridcoin at the top of all these project lists. I'd rather see all sorts of teams vying for first place. Hell, I'd even love to start my own team of just myself, give it a crazy name and compete against other teams. With all of us earning GRC as simply a side-effect. I hope we can make that happen!
I think once we get to number one in BOINCstats, we can then relax and let the team dissipate, we will have shown all we need to show, and got plenty of attention
Im fine with competition, but a scammy looking ICO launched on someone elses blockchain isnt genuine competition in my eyes.
Gridcoin is built from the ground up, it has its own blockchain and although it might be a bit slower to steer the ship, we arent just passengers on someone elses ship.
The strengths of Gridcoin will win out in the end, versus all these tokens that just took a short cut, I suspect for get rich quick reasons.
However I do agree Gridcoin should not be complacent, these fundamental differences should be made as widely known as possible.
I read a lot about the slack chat, but whenever I click a link, I am denied access. I think I would have to be invited to join the chat, is that right?
Join via the signup page, disregard the error.
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