The Gridcoin Network's 3rd Medium Post - The Gridcoin Ecosystem and Resources
Has it been two weeks already?! I guess time flies when you're doin' science.
Anyway, here is our continuing effort to bring Gridcoin to the Medium audience. We have a series of articles planned for release every fortnight. This post is titled, "The Gridcoin Ecosystem and Resources." Below, you will find the link to the article along with the text. If you have a Medium account, give us a clap and a follow to help increase our visibility. We hope you enjoy! Feedback is always welcome.
The Gridcoin Ecosystem and Resources
The Gridcoin Ecosystem and Resources
The Gridcoin network is an evolving ecosystem. In its current state it is comprised mainly of data-based projects, crunchers, stakers, and community participants.
Data-Based Projects
Data-based projects are projects which provide data for the Gridcoin network to crunch. Currently, these projects are hosted on the BOINC software. In the future, projects hosted outside of BOINC may be added to the ecosystem.
Projects are brought into the Gridcoin network through the Gridcoin whitelist, which is a list of projects approved by network participants. To be added to the whitelist, a project must convince network participants of its value and pass a blockchain vote. This processes has been expanded on and defined in a proposal currently up for a vote. The proposal can be found here.
Projects are removed from the Gridcoin whitelist through the same process of blockchain voting, though a proposal to further define this process is currently in development. This proposed process can be found here.
As of this posting, the complete whitelist consists of 27 data-based projects, listed below with their brief descriptions. The maintained list can be found here.
Projects
ODLK1 - OLDK is building a database of canonical forms of diagonal Latin squares of the 10th order.
Citizen Science Grid - Umbrella project for DNA@Home, SubsSet Sum@Home, and Wildlife@Home. Hosted by the University of North Dakota.
Cosmology@Home - Darkmatter research. Hosted by the Universe Model Research Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
DrugDiscovery@Home - Discovery of new drugs for the most dangerous and widespread diseases. Hosted by Digital BioPharm Ltd.
LHC@Home - Accelerator Physics CERN
Sourcefinder - Sourcefinder is about testing the performance and quality of the Duchamp Sourcefinding application. Hosted by the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia
NFS@Home - Lattice sieving step in Number Field Sieve factorization of large integers. Hosted by the California State University Fullerton.
NumberFields@home Research in number theory. Number theorists can mine the data for interesting patterns to help them formulate conjectures about number fields. Hosted by the Arizona State University, school of Mathematics.
Rosetta@Home - Protein structure prediction. Hosted by the University of Washington
SRBase - Attempting to solve Sierpinski / Riesel Bases up to 1030. The project is in collaboration with the Mersenne CRUS project.
theSkyNet POGS - Astronomy Research. A joint venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia
TN-Grid - The gene@home project is an implementation of the PC-IM algorithm, whose purpose is to expand Gene Regulatory Networks (GRN). Hosted by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR)
VGTU - Distributed computing platform for scientists of Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU). Hosted by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.
Universe@home - Physics and Astronomy data crunching hosted by the University of Warsaw.
World Community Grid - FightAIDS@home, Smash Childhood Cancer, fight Tuberculosis, research better materials for solar panels. Sponsored by the IBM responsibility initiative.
YAFU - Factorize numbers of 70–130 digit length which are needed to bring Aliquot Sequences to a size of 130. Privately hosted.
yoyo@home - Brings existing distributed computing projects to the BOINC world using the BOINC Wrapper technology. Supported by Rechenkraft.net e.V.
Amicable Numbers - Amicable Numbers is an independent research project that uses Internet-connected computers to find new amicable pairs. Privately hosted.
Asteroids@home - Asteroid research hosted by the Charles University in Prague.
Collatz Conjecture - Attempts to disprove the Collatz Conjecture. Privately hosted.
Einstein@home - Search for spinning neutron (pulsars) stars using data from the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors, the Arecibo radio telescope, and the Fermi gamma-ray satellite. Hosted by the Univ. of Wisconsin — Milwaukee, Max Planck Institute.
Enigma@Home - The M4 Project is an effort to break 3 original Enigma messages with the help of distributed computing. Privately hosted.
GPUgrid - Full-atom molecular simulations of proteins. Privately sponsored.
Milkyway@home - Creation of a 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy using data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Hosted by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Moo! Wrapper - Moo! Wrapper brings together BOINC volunteer computing network resources and the Distributed.net projects. Hosted by Distributed.Net.
PrimeGrid - Search for prime numbers. Privately sponsored, supported by Rackspace.
SETI@home - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Hosted by UC Berkeley.
Crunchers
Gridcoin crunchers are network participants who direct their processing power to data-based projects. They are rewarded for their participation with GRC which is distributed using the magnitude mechanism. In its current state, a protocol defined magnitude kitty is split equally between each data-based project. A cruncher is then given an individual magnitude based on their relative contribution to the data-based projects. Such a model builds a magnitude economy which encourages a flatter distribution of processing power, which in turn helps ensure projects get their work completed regardless of their immediate perceived value among network participants.
Stakers
Gridcoin stakers are network participants with substantial balances of GRC who provide network security by staking blocks for the Gridcoin blockchain through the proof-of-stake protocol. There is no required balance of GRC to stake a block, however proof-of-stake by definition makes a participant with a higher balance more likely to stake a block than a participant with a lower balance. Stakers are rewarded for their participation with transaction fees, though a new reward mechanism is currently being explored. An introduction to this proposal can be found here.
Community
Gridcoin is an open-source network. Its community is comprised primarily of volunteers, though developers are reimbursed for their work from the Gridcoin Foundation. In general, open-source communities maintain tasks related to: development, graphic design, analysis, documentation, copywriting, translation, and outreach, marketing, and organization.
These tasks are completed by the Gridcoin community, which is comprised of blockchain purists, enthusiasts, and coders, established scientific researchers, commercial researchers, institutional researchers, Ph.D candidates, undergraduates, citizen scientists, data analysts, makers and tinkerers, and individuals and groups of all backgrounds. Every participant and developer seeks to advance science, research, and data analysis through blockchain technology, incentive mechanisms, value systems, or by participating in a distributed computing network.
If you or someone you know would like to get involved with building and maintaining the Gridcoin network and its ecosystem, feel free to reach out using any of the resources listed below.
Resources
Website and Wallets
Repos
Block Explorers
Social Media
Other Resources
Exchanges
The Gridcoin cryptocurrency can be traded on any of the exchanges listed below.
| Exchange | Trading Pair |
|---|---|
| Bittrex | GRC/BTC |
| Poloniex | GRC/BTC |
| flyp.me | GRC/Any Supported Currency |
| OpenLedger DEX | GRC/BTS |
| OpenLedger DEX | GRC/BTC |
| OpenLedger DEX | GRC/BITUSD |
| OpenLedger DEX | GRC/BITCNY |
| C-CEX | GRC/BTC |
| C-CEX | GRC/USD |
Previous Articles
An Introduction to BOINC
An Introduction to Gridcoin
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors
A good job done ..
As usual you show your skills at disseminating valuable information, thanks @jringo ..
"SCIENTIA HUMANA LIBERTAS"
Courtesy of @joshoeah
Nice summary jringo!
Your contribution cannot be approved because it does not follow the Utopian Rules.
This is not Medium. We have a seperate audience. Also title states "Medium".
Lists with block explorers, exchanges, social media links reminds me btctalk ann posts. This is not encouraged here.
Please have a look to our blog post rules before posting again in that category.
You can contact us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
Silly ..
Never heard of cross pollination?
lol
Very funny but it is truthful.