Project-Rain Pull-Request submitted to the BOINC GitHub Repo!
What's BOINC?
BOINC is an open-source volunteer distributed computing platform which utilizes the spare computer resources on 500k+ computers to attempt to cure diseases, map the milkyway, search for extraterrestrial life, and any other kind of distributable computation.
Anyone who needs a serious amount of distributed computing power (100k+ CPUs) almost entirely for free can create a BOINC project to create a distributed cloud service of their own desire (fairly easily) whilst the Gridcoin network potentially rewards your project's volunteers on your behalf.
What is project-rain?
'Project Rain' is the practice of distributing crypto assets to BOINC users based on their verified BOINC computation; it was initially devised within the Gridcoin network and has been expanded to multiple cryptocurrencies and all BOINC teams through the proposed BOINC web server changes.
Think of Project Rain as a new share-dropping vector that doesn't require end-users handling wallet private keys nor providing proof of IRL identity.
Rather than earning one token for your BOINC computation, you could be merge crunching many BOINC distributed tokens!
Project-Rain merging into the BOINC repo?
Rather than running my own BOINC project solely for the purpose of providing the project-rain functionality, I have created a pull request to merge the changes into the BOINC GitHub repo. If it is merged then all future or updated BOINC projects will have project-rain functionality.
What cryptocurrencies are currently supported?
Gridcoin, Steem, Bitshares, Peerplays, Storj, NEM, IBM Bluemix Blockchain, ColoredCoins, Antshares, Lisk, Decent, Synereo, LBRY, Wings, BoardRoom, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Expanse, Golem, NXT, Ardor, Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake (Intel), Hyperledger Fabric (IBM), Waves, Peershares, Omnilayer, CounterParty, Hyperledger (MISC), Stratis, Metaverse, Cosmos, Stratis, Zcash & Heat Ledger.
Is there a mandatory team requirement?
There is no mandatory team requirement for joining the website, all BOINC teams/users are welcome to join!
Assets may however be distributed by rain makers to specific teams since they have full freedom of choice to do so.
Who decides upon asset distribution details?
The 'rain maker' planning on 'raining' an asset is fully responsible for picking the projects and/or teams to target as well as the desired 'rain weight' for each project.
Sneak peak!
Old screenshots (don't have the latest version running at the very moment, sorry):
The following screenshots show the old project-rain version, the pull request version auto-hides the fields when blank (so as to not immediately spam the profile view with crypto links).
User profile (self-view)
Browsing another user's profile
Example user xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<user>
<id>2</id>
<cpid></cpid>
<create_time>1497573052</create_time>
<name>derp</name>
<country>United Kingdom</country>
<bitshares>123</bitshares>
<steem></steem>
<gridcoin></gridcoin>
<ethereum></ethereum>
<ethereum_classic></ethereum_classic>
<golem></golem>
<nxt></nxt>
<ardor></ardor>
<hyperledger_sawtooth_lake></hyperledger_sawtooth_lake>
<hyperledger_fabric></hyperledger_fabric>
<hyperledger_misc></hyperledger_misc>
<waves></waves>
<peershares></peershares>
<omnilayer></omnilayer>
<counterparty></counterparty>
<peerplays></peerplays>
<storj></storj>
<nem></nem>
<ibm_bluemix_blockchain></ibm_bluemix_blockchain>
<coloredcoins></coloredcoins>
<heat_ledger></heat_ledger>
<antshares></antshares>
<lisk></lisk>
<decent></decent>
<synereo></synereo>
<lbry></lbry>
<wings></wings>
<hong></hong>
<boardroom></boardroom>
<expanse></expanse>
<akasha></akasha>
<cosmos></cosmos>
<metaverse></metaverse>
<zcash></zcash>
<stratis></stratis>
<echo></echo>
<tox></tox>
<retroshare></retroshare>
<wickr></wickr>
<ring></ring>
<pgp></pgp>
<total_credit>0</total_credit>
<expavg_credit>0</expavg_credit>
<expavg_time>1497573052</expavg_time>
<teamid>0</teamid>
<url></url>
<has_profile>0</has_profile>
</user>
Best regards,
@cm-teem
Been on the Boinc World Wide Grid projects for several years, and I finally teamed with Compumatrix, but have split, and trying other avenues. I will have to re-read your post and follow you for a further understanding of all that you have said here.
I think this is a great project.
I also agree with BOINC regarding the policy, as reactionary as it is, of keeping crypto out of the official BOINC UX -- I see this as more of a 3rd party project.
BOINC is science based. Its reputation is outstanding in the scientific community. Crypto is, at the moment, money based. It is associated with greed, scams, hacks, and volatility. It is critical that BOINC maintain its scientific reputation. Without this reputation all projects, including Project Rain and Gridcoin, would suffer if not fail outright. Once crypto has worked past its current reputation, perhaps BOINC will integrate, but for now I understand why it wants to keep a safe distance.
That's the thing though, the BOINC middleware software is unbiased and not solely made for scientific computation - you can distribute anything through BOINC, not just scientific projects.
Yes and no, many people know of the main projects (seti, wcg, etc) however it's not mainstream, there has been a large downtrend in user retention over the last decade and we aren't seeing new projects being created by large hardware manufacturers nor scientific organizations.
So is FIAT money though.
I disagree, reputation has no influence on my ability to pay a small VPS bill each month. Likewise, gridcoin will keep operating as long as users keep their wallet staking.
With their current stance, I do not believe they will ever change. We'll need FIAT markets to collapse first (thankfully not far in the future..).
I certainly need to remove several cryptocurrencies such as hong, boardroom (?), antshares -> neo.
Are there any that are missing and should be included?
You could add Bitcoin Cash xD
why remove ans?
It needs renamed to NEO
Sorry to hear your pull request got denied. Do you have any alternative implementation plans?
I could throw together a BOINC project so as to provide project-rain functionality, however I don't have any work units to distribute (which are needed for creating the user.xml.gz files).
It's not the end of the world, it just means that project-rain isn't getting included in BOINC by default.
Unfortunately...
At Github.
Yeah, really disappointing. AFAIK this 'policy' was created on the spot.
"Virtual Currency" ???
Is there really that large of a gap of knowledge in the BOINC community?
Yes, the vast majority of the BOINC community have zero involvement with crypto AFAIK.
Now this seems like a game changer and something I can get behind! Are we able to beta test it yet or the best way to get an update as to when it is live and we can start using it? THANKS!
I'll update the community if/when a BOINC project is created to run this code :)
Damn! This is awesome! Definitely gonna be donating some of my computers power occasionally. Resteeming. :)
oh man this is for the cause alright i love it more people need to get invloved in this movement together we can change the world
Very Cool! Citizen Science FTW
Thank you for the share, checking out right now