Mining cryptocurrency is super fun. But did you know there are coins out there where "mining" means using your computer's power to help find cures for diseases, advance scientific research, and even search for extraterrestrial life?

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For me, the best part of crypto is mining. I'll even mine at a loss if there's something cool about the coin I'm mining. But what often bugs me is that I'm using a huge amount of my (admittedly modest) computing power to do the same calculations over and over and over. In my early mining days, I always wondered: what if I could help secure the blockchain and do something that's useful beyond the crypto world?

I quickly found out that other people were thinking the same thing. Pretty soon after I got involved with crypto, I saw some posts on crypto forums talking about using grid computing technology like Folding@Home as Proof-of-Work for some kind of coin. CureCoin and FoldingCoin were a couple of early attempts at that, and they did pretty well.

A few years later, the technology has improved a lot. Nobody (as far as I know) has cracked the problem of actually securing a blockchain with grid computing, but a lot of coin developers have gotten really good at rewarding users for "mining" by helping with research into cancer, cures for diseases, and all kinds of scientific and mathematical research.

Here are a few that I mine today.

Gridcoin

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If you want a lot of options about what kind of research you can contribute to, Gridcoin is for you. Based on the University of California at Berkeley's BOINC technology, the Gridcoin blockchain will reward you for lending your computing power to over a dozen different projects.

With Gridcoin, you can help cure cancer, find cures for other diseases, participate in mathematical research, and understand the universe. You can see a full list of current and past projects on the Gridcoin Stats site.

The only problem with Gridcoin is that setting it up is pretty technical. You can solo mine on the Gridcoin blockchain, but you'll need some pretty good computer skills to do it. An easier way to earn Gridcoin for your compute cycles is to pool mine over at GRCPool. Check their "Getting Started" menu for some tutorials, and if you're still not sure what to do, googling "Gridcoin" will get you a lot of information.

Your reward, of course, is Gridcoins. Gridcoins aren't worth a lot of money individually, but they add up pretty quickly. Once you have a certain amount, you can also stake them to earn even more. Not a bad deal.

Boid

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Boid is a very innovative project that aims to take the ideas behind Gridcoin and make them both accessible and fun. Like Gridcoin, Boid rewards you for making your computer available to grid computing projects. For now, the only project available is WorldCommunityGrid, a project seeking cures for deadly diseases, but the intent is for others to follow.

Where Gridcoin is highly technical, Boid is user friendly. You can install the Boid client on your computer in just a few minutes, and be up and running and earning BOID tokens right away. There's plenty of help on the site if you need it, and the developers frequent a Telegram chat that you can also access directly from the web site. Everyone (in my experience) is friendly and super helpful.

Boid also has some fun community features, like leaderboards, teams, and even competitions and prizes. In addition to "mining" with WorldCommunityGrid, you can earn BOID tokens by inviting new users; you get 5% of the earnings of every new user you refer. (And those new users keep all their own earnings as well.)

Your reward for your computing time is BOID tokens, which are tokens on the EOS blockchain. You can start earning BOID as soon as you start mining, but you'll need to create an EOS wallet, which costs a few dollars, to receive payouts. But, not to worry, you can use your pending BOID to create your wallet, if you'd like.

Banano

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It's a research coin! It's a memecoin! No, it's both! Banano is a coin that's reminiscent of Dogecoin, and its goal is to bring together the fun community of the memecoins with blockchain games and other fun stuff. There are a few different ways to earn Banano, but contributing to medical research computing is by far the most lucrative.

Like Boid, Banano wants to make the process of setting up a research client and linking it to your account as easy and seamless as possible. You'll find detailed instructions over at https://banano.how/ on setting up Folding@Home and linking it to your Banano wallet (on the web or on Mobile).

Banano has a great dev team, and probably has the most sophisticated tech of all the research coins. Everything is friendly and fun, and you'll totally forget that you're researching cancer while you're socializing, playing games, and participating in contests.

Honorable Mention: Obyte (formerly Byteball)

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Okay, so Obyte isn't really a research coin. It's actually a pretty ambitious blockchain project, complete with a dApp platform, meant to compete with Ethereum and other similar projects. But, one of the many ways you can earn Bytes--the Obyte currency--is to link your account to WorldCommunityGrid.

In terms of user-friendliness, Obyte falls somewhere between Gridcoin and Boid. If you can interact with chatbots (both in the Obyte wallet and on Telegram), you're most of the way to setting things up. But you're still going to have to install some software yourself, and link everything up. Since grid computing isn't Obyte's focus, there's not a ton of help, but it's there.

Obyte is cool because there are a lot of ways to earn some fairly serious airdrops, in addition to "mining" with grid computing. Check out their site for more info.

PRO TIP: Google Obyte's old name, Byteball, if you need help setting things up. Everything works the same way; they just rebranded.

PRO TIP #2: One way to earn some Obyte is to link your Steem account!

There you have it.

If you're like me, and you'd like to know that some of that electricity you pay for is going to a good cause, while still earning some crypto, these coins are what I recommend.

Do you know of any other resarch coins? Or want more details? Let me know in the comments!