RE: Brainstorming Gridcoinstats Ideas Thread [25 SBD in Bounty]
I've chatted with you a bit about this, but I think the best thing GridcoinStats could add that it doesn't have already is a mining profitability calculator for each project. It has been done before (Katieee had one that used to work) and IMO it's just a huge source of ambiguity in Gridcoin right now that we don't have a great way to estimate mining profitability.
I would recommend something where the user could input their anticipated RAC (would require them to do a little bit of research on the top builds in the project so estimate where they would land) and then we could have a simple script that would spit out an estimated Magnitude at that RAC and daily GRC.
I remember Katieee's calculator would use CPID, which is also possible. But I question the utility of calculating it off of CPID because if you're already crunching the project, you already know what your RAC is, no? I wasn't around when that calculator was actually functioning unfortunately. Was it able to look at what you were doing for one project and estimate how well you would do on another? That would be ideal, but I can't think of a way to do that.
While a mining profitability calculator would be nice, I see very little value in having a calculator go from RAC --> GRC/day. The difficulty is reaching a good estimate for RAC in the first place.
The other big problem with basing the calculator off the hardware of other miners is that:
I am 100% for a mining calculator, but I have not found a reliable way to estimate GRC mining profits on the fly.
I think you're just too smart a guy to understand how helpful that would actually be. The average Gridcoin miner is not actually intimately familiar with the reward calculation. That's why these calculators have existed in the past and why we get people coming into the Subreddit on a weekly basis pointing out the fact that Katieee's calculator doesn't work and suggesting that we should set up a functioning calculator.
Some people do hide their machines, but if you use the "top computers" list, you can see all the machines (it just attributes hidden machines to an anonymous owner) and very easily gauge RAC potential for your hardware.
Once you have that, you and I could just grab our calculators and do the rest of the math ourselves, but most people can't do that.
You make some good points about simplifying the process for people not familiar with the system. I guess what I should have said is that I see more value in a calculator going from hardware --> RAC, than a calculator going from RAC --> GRC mint. Of course, a calculator that goes straight from hardware --> GRC mint would be phenominal.
Indeed! I dropped you a line on Slack. I think there are some potential ways to do it but they require some pre-research... presearch? Anyway we would have to do some up-front legwork but I think there's a path toward making it happen. It just might not cover every single CPU/GPU under the sun. Maybe we have something set up that can handle maybe 75% of the rigs out there.
We'll talk more soon.
I think we may need a 4th gen BOINC credit mechanism or some form of benchmarking on an individual project basis (without the need for 2 weeks of crunching) to estimate potential RAC.
I wrote the following in the 'for the betterment of BOINC' thread:
If we were able to benchmark attainable RAC with the user's computer (through a project specific benchmark perhaps) then they would be able to work out how much GRC they could earn ahead of crunching (currently you need to crunch for weeks before figuring this out), this could help users make a more educated project selection.
well actually this seems to me more a problem of number crunching out of already existing data sources. For sure this will be the hell of a work and in the end you would end up just with an average per CPU/GPU combination.
Congratulations to @xaqfields, your idea brought you 25 SBD :)
https://steemit.com/gridcoinstats/@sc-steemit/bounty-price-of-25-sbd-only-4-hours-left-to-give-or-vote-for-the-best-idea
Yay! Thank you for the opportunity! I hope this process gave you lots of great ideas (for a product you've created which is already great!).