Welcome!
I will be succinct, itemize my points and try not to waste your precious time.
I started as a Forex trader before stumbling on Bitcoin, which led me to Poloniex where I started trading different alt-coins. While researching and performing due diligence on the coins I traded, I came across "mining and staking". I mined both solo and with different pools depending on the crypto.
The list below are some of the mistakes I made as a newbie mining Gridcoin - GRC, apply to others too. I believe it will give newbies a good head start by avoiding those mistakes and help "oldbies" currently making same mistakes and having difficulties with wallet sync, beacon advertisement, cpid invalid etc
1 - INTERNET DATA
You can't be stingy with your internet data, you will need lots of data to download wallets, blockchains (about 10gb or more, depends on the crypto), mining applications like BOINC, Claymore, Zecminer etc., YouTube instructional videos and guides (very important). If your downloads gets corrupted, you will have to re-download all over again.
- I avoided downloading videos, trying to save my data, it cost me time, money and energy because I never got the helpful information in them.
2 - WEBSITE - https://gridcoin.us
Always visit your crypto's website and community for information and updates. Some coins have no activities happening and are at the verge of becoming or are already extinct. If you buy into such coin or waste time mining, you are on your own.
Watch, read and comprehend every information shared on the crypto's website. Every single information is important.
- I joined the community after 2 months, wasted time doing it solo
https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net:6667/#gridcoin (wonderful family in here)
https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net:6667/#gridcoin-help
https://t.me/gridcoin
https://t.me/BOINC_Telegram
3 - WALLET AND BLOCKCHAIN DOWNLOAD
The blockchain (register/database) is currently about 10gb of data. If you allow the wallet to sync on it's own, it could take days or weeks depending on how fast your internet speed is. A way to speed up your wallet sync, is to download a snapshot of the blockchain database. This will give you about 80% of the total gridcoin's blockchain /database.
- I wasted time going through the manual route.
http://download.gridcoin.us/download/downloadstake/signed/snapshot.zip
4 - PROJECT SELECTION
The configuration (components/how powerful) of your mining device, that is, your computer, laptop or phone, will determine the type of projects to crunch. Some are CPU or GPU based, the more ram the better etc.
Take cognisance of the project's RAC (recent average credit) and Mag (magnitude), they determine the credit you earn and also boost your staking reward.
- I wasted time with some long hour, large data size projects with low RAC
https://gridcoinstats.eu/project/
5 - WHITELIST
Make sure the projects you select are on the whitelist, if not, you might not get any reward for your troubles.
- I was lucky in this aspect.
https://gridcoin.us/Guides/whitelist.htm
6 - PROJECT TEAM AND FORUM
After choosing your desired project to crunch with Boinc app, it is very important you join team Gridcoin to earn GRC, If you don't join the team after registering for a project, you will miss being paid. Beacon broadcast and joining a team is key. If you do this later, the work earlier done might not count. I believe it starts to count from the moment you register, join the gridcoin team and broadcast your cpid (beacon). Also, pay a courtesy visit to your project's forum to get informed of latest happenings.
- I registered but didn't join a team till after 2 months, so painful.
https://cryptocurrencytalk.com/forum/2436-projects/
7 - BEACON BROADCAST/ADVERTISEMENT
Beacon broadcast is a way your wallet introduce and integrate you into the blockchain/database/network. It send a beacon to the network with your BOINC id or Cross Platform ID (CPID) so that your "CPID" will be seen or recognized on the network/blockchain for credit reward among others.
Important - If your wallet is encrypted and secured with a password, your beacon advert won't be successful. You have to unlock and uncheck "for stake only" after typing your password, so that you can spend from your wallet. It will cost you 0.0011 GRC.
Important - Make sure your email and the links below is in your config file "gridcoinresearch.conf" so that your wallet can pick your CPID from your BOINC application (Windows)
boincdatadir=C:\\ProgramData\\BOINC\\
boincappdir=C:\\Program Files\\BOINC\\
You can go to Help -> Debug -> Console and type the command “execute advertisebeacon” via your wallet menu to manually initiate the broadcast, if your wallet hasn't done so already.
- I was crunching without advertising my beacon, believing I can get my credit anytime, since I was seeing it on the boinc stats page.
https://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/4079706928/lastDays
8 - BOINC
This is the application you will use to bring your projects together and manage them. Make sure you have just one CPID and use one email address.
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php
9 - FAUCET AND YOUR FIRST COIN
You need to have some coins in your wallet, in order to send the beacon and also to stake.
https://gridcoinstats.eu/faucet.php
http://faucet.gridcoin.asia/ You may be lucky but most times dry
- I missed the new CPID valid bonus and the daily trickling coins (nothing is too small) when cryptos where very cheap, I mistakenly focused on mining to get my coins.
10 - STAKING
You need good amount of gridcoin in your wallet to make meaningful returns by winning blocks. Having low coins might take you several months, if not years before you can start winning blocks or gaining interest on your staked coins.
Crunching or mining while staking increase your chance of winning blocks because of your increasing MAG (magnitude) on a daily basis.
You can buy GRC from an exchange (Poloniex) or talk to a trusted friend who have, to sell to you.
- I was staking an empty wallet, while crunching solo without an advertised beacon and expecting to see my wallet increase in size (coins), wasting precious time and resources.
10 - POOL MINING
You don't need to bother about Beacon broadcast and other mind blowing technical terms if you are pool mining. Just connect to the pool and your credit will be sent to you from the pool, though you still need a wallet to receive your credit and know how to setup for a pool.
Good luck and thanks for your precious time.
Forgive my errors and typos, they will be corrected on mention.