Hi, I'm new to BOINC. I have some question from my noob perspective.

Message boards : Questions and problems : Hi, I'm new to BOINC. I have some question from my noob perspective.
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bluebirdy2

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Message 95891 - Posted: 18 Feb 2020, 8:43:49 UTC

1) What do you think BOINC and blockchain(or cryptocurrency) have in common?

2) I read about VC from wikipedia and BOINC from the article(BOINC: A Platform for Volunteer Computing), and I found that there are no actual merits for the participants who provide their computing device.
2.1 The existing commercial clouds maintain and provide their computing power for money.
2.2 The blockchain participants participate for rewards(coin)
Then why do the VC participants provide their computing devices? I'd really like to know.
Are they just enjoying donating or is there any kind of reward that I don't know?


Thank you.
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Profile Dave
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Message 95892 - Posted: 18 Feb 2020, 9:45:19 UTC - in response to Message 95891.  

I contribute to climatprediction.net because I believe the science is important. Pretty sure quite a few feel the same about other projects.
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Bryn Mawr
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Message 95896 - Posted: 18 Feb 2020, 13:14:02 UTC - in response to Message 95891.  

No financial reward whatsoever - it’s my way of contributing to, mostly, cancer research.

Have computer, will process :-)
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Profile Keith Myers
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Message 95938 - Posted: 18 Feb 2020, 22:54:00 UTC

If you feel you must be financially rewarded for your volunteer computing, you can always join the Gridcoin currency pool. I volunteer my resources to projects I feel are worthy and pique my curiosity and interest. The award of credit can also provide some reward for the human competitive spirit. For example any numbers project leaves me completely disinterested and will never join, but the hard science projects I find worthy.
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Nick Name

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Message 96052 - Posted: 25 Feb 2020, 8:45:11 UTC - in response to Message 95891.  

1) What do you think BOINC and blockchain(or cryptocurrency) have in common?

Nothing directly.
2) I read about VC from wikipedia and BOINC from the article(BOINC: A Platform for Volunteer Computing), and I found that there are no actual merits for the participants who provide their computing device.

"Actual merits" depends on what you mean. Recognition for contributions to research does exist in some projects, e.g. GPUGrid lists publications your computer(s) has contributed to. Most projects give badges based on your contribution, how much value you think that has depends on your perspective.
2.1 The existing commercial clouds maintain and provide their computing power for money.

This is actually partly why BOINC exists. Many projects are short on money and BOINC provides a way to access pretty powerful computing resources at relatively low cost.
2.2 The blockchain participants participate for rewards(coin)
Then why do the VC participants provide their computing devices? I'd really like to know.
Are they just enjoying donating or is there any kind of reward that I don't know?
Thank you.

Gridcoin, which uses blockchain technology, was built on top of BOINC and does provide a - these days very small - financial reward for running BOINC. You can look into the details on it further on your own if you wish. For most of those folks obviously the potential monetary gain is the primary motivation for running BOINC. For the rest of us, it's more or less a hobby but one we find worthwhile. I think most participants have interests in both technology and science, and BOINC is a neat way to combine the two. The team component has added further interest as competitions and challenges have been created over the years and a lot of people really enjoy that. In short, what you're asking is really no different than why people build hot rods, do woodcraft or anything else. BOINC however actually might help to change the world one day. The ultimate reward for many of us is helping advance science for the benefit of humanity.
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Profile Dave
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Message 96054 - Posted: 25 Feb 2020, 10:03:31 UTC - in response to Message 96052.  

"Actual merits" depends on what you mean. Recognition for contributions to research does exist in some projects, e.g. GPUGrid lists publications your computer(s) has contributed to. Most projects give badges based on your contribution, how much value you think that has depends on your perspective.


CPDN also has a link to see which publications the tasks crunched have contributed to.

See which publications your crunching has contributed to
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ProDigit

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Message 96152 - Posted: 28 Feb 2020, 6:01:48 UTC

It's not done before as far as I know, but there is a possibility, that someone writes a program to crunch through bitcoin hashes, through boinc.
While this won't be very successful, unless the program is written and optimized for the fastest GPUs, since most bitcoin mining is done through the use of ASICs; which is dedicated, and optimized hardware for such tasks.
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Message boards : Questions and problems : Hi, I'm new to BOINC. I have some question from my noob perspective.

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