Simple Route to Gridcoin Solo Researching (Mining)

You have just started your adventure with BOINC and Gridcoin. You have no spare money to conduct your research solo, but you want to. How to get there? Below is a simple route leading you to solo crunching.

Introduction - minting mechanism

GRC rewards are based on:

1. interest (currently ~1.5% a year)
2. scientific research done (currently ~27 000 GRC per day)

Research reward calculation is based on the amount of computer work done on scientific projects running on BOINC platform and included in the pool of approved projects (whitelist). To receive the reward it is necessary to create a new block in the blockchain. To be able to create a block it is necessary to hold some GRC in the wallet (the process is called staking). More GRC you hold, higher is the chance to create a new block.

Mind that we are not simply mining coins, but we are researching. solving and crunching scientific problems!

You need at least two or three thousand coins to be able to stake (and receive a reward) within a reasonable time window (one – two weeks). This is a problem for new researchers, as as of January 2018 the cost of 2000 GRC is around $350. Not everybody has this amount of money or wants to spend them on GRC. Even if the money is not a problem, exchanging them for GRC might be difficult.

Solution – step one

Good news is that you may start with zero GRC. To do so just join grcpool. The pool is a type of a community account – even if none of the members can stake daily or weekly as an individual, together you have enough resources to reliably stake daily. You can move to solo from the pool at a later date.

Pool vs Solo

What are pros and cons of each solution?

Equals:

• scientific research you do is equally valuable
• you earn quite the same research based GRC rewards

Pool advantages:

• you don’t need any GRC to start
• easier to set up and start

Solo advantages:

• you can crunch problems under your own name (or nickname); check your individual standings; have a chance to be recognized if your computer solves a particular problem, like finding a new pulsar or big prime numeber
• you can vote in Gridcoin polls and have an influence on what projects are whitelisted, what developments to be implemented – you can take part in general Gricoin Network governance
• you can earn interest, although in most cases it is currently quite negligible (interest is just 1.5% per year, while daily GRC exchange rate can swing more than 10%)
• last but not least, you help to keep Gridcoin blockchain decentralized, working and safe

Solution – step two - moving to solo

If you don’t care about solo advantages, you can stay in the pool. If you would rather move to solo, here is a simple route to do so.

Steem and steemit.com are a great gateway to blockchain tech and cryptocurrency. You can bypass banks and banktransfers.

1. Sign up to steemit

2. Write an article

Mind that one good and original article might earn you more than 1000 rubbish posts. So focus and write something you will be proud of!

You will be rewarded for good content. At the moment it is not difficult to earn 10 or more Steem or SBD (Steem Based Dollars) and each is currently worth over 5 USD. At the moment I can tip you steem tokens worth around 10 GRC, and there are community members far more generous than me! It means you can earn 100 GRC or more for one article.

1. Exchange some of your earned SBD on blocktrades.us into a coin supported on flyp.me; acquired coin exchange into GRC on flyp.me and send into your gridcoin wallet (maybe an easier route is available at the time of your reading) .

2. The rest of the Steem / SBD change into Steem Power (powering up) to be able to upvote good content and to diversify your investment (when powering up check if it’s worth to change SBD to Steem first).

Writing

You can write something Gridcoin related. If you’re looking to engage more in Gridcoin Network – there are numerous projects in development.

• If you’re a programmer, you can join dev team (and earn GRC directly from the Foundation, too!)
• You can help with development of gridcoin.us and gridcoin.science websites
• You can join whitepaper team
• You can join marketing team
• You can write a tutorial
• You can research how to optimize a BOINC computer
• You can design some graphics
• You can show how to oil paint a pulsar
• You can show how to hand made a sweater with gridcoin logo
• You can bake a hexagonal gridcoin themed cake - and send me a slice :) … or at least share a photo and a recipe!

You can also write something not related to Gridcoin – a fiction story, about your hobby or work. The most important thing is to have fun. Write for yourself, not for money. Money is the side effect.

Did you know? There is Gridcoin Community Classroom! Join, learn, make friends!

You can also tune in to Gridcoin – BOINC podcast.

Resources:
gridcoin.us
gridcoin.science

Researching in the Pool:

Steemit payouts:
How Steemit Payouts Work - A Beginners Guide

Hardware and optimizations:
Hardware and Project Selection Part 2 - GPU Projects

Gridcoin GPU mining (6): Obtaining the maximum performance out of your GPUs

I Just Wanna BOINC! -- Part 3: Alternative Single Board Computers