I used to contribute to scientific research - for free - through BOINC for years. For the uninitiated, BOINC is a distributed research platform initially conceived to help distribute work for SETI@Home to the computers of volunteers. The computers of the volunteers would analyse the astro-array recordings provided for alien signals, and return the analysis to the project server. However, the platform proved so fit for purpose that many other projects have adopted it as well. It now enables research from pure mathematics (such as finding primes) to biomedicine (mapping cancer markers) and astrophysics (mapping the Milky Way).
One day, somewhere in late May, I stumbled upon Gridcoin. Gridcoin is a cryptocurrency that is 'minted' by researchers doing research through the BOINC platform. This was my first proper interaction with cryptocurrency, as while I was aware of the existence of BTC, I never appreciated the value of crypto. Even so, when I met Gridcoin I was hooked!
The thing with Gridcoin is that your daily mint is relative to your contribution to each research project, in relation to everyone else. That is to say that you earn the most GRC by doing work for the least popular projects. In my BOINC days this was of no concern, as I computed whatever I thought was the coolest or had the most value. After Gridcoin came onto the field, I slowly started to move hosts to focus on different research. Cancer research was dropped and replaced with finding primes. Protein folding was replaced with decoding Enigma messages from WWII. Before I knew it, about a month into my Gridcoin journey, all my compute power was allocated to min/max my daily mint.
Now, before we continue, projects like finding primes and decoding the Enigma messages are not without value. They are just more catered towards very specific applications or interest groups. On the other hand, research into disease and medicine has a far greater impact on society as a whole.
Now, 3 months to the day since I joined Team Gridcoin, I have started to reverse the process. Just yesterday I moved my 13 most powerful workstations to Einstein@Home to scan the universe for gravitational waves and pulsars. Did you know that if you find one of those, you get published in the Astrophysical Journal (have a look here and scroll to page 19)? Those 50,000 GRC I have mined are cool, but they are not nearly as cool as getting published in a journal that prestigious, which normally takes years of work and costs thousands of dollars.
To be perfectly honest, this most recent shift was partly brought on by the top research volunteer at Einstein@Home, and I would like to share part of his motivation with you:
To me, it is quite important to support those who have a chance of making the discoveries that just might really allow us to understand this enigmatic universe we find ourselves in. It is too depressing a thought to imagine we are marooned on this speck of dust we call home without a practical means of ever realistically being able to escape from our solar system. We should be able to colonise other planets or moons but to even just visit a nearby star system seems impossible, let alone the rest of the galaxy. So I've chosen to support projects which might increase our knowledge and understanding of the universe. The hope is that some of these endeavours may help to discover new physics and with that, new possibilities for eventually exploring the cosmos.
The shift has been further motivated by longtime Gridcoin supporter @Vortac. Where I considered project selection an endless tug of war between ethics and money, he managed to put a much brighter spin on it:
Think of the poor POW miners - they are robbed of all this choice and always forced to crunch the same meaningless stuff.
Over the course of the next month I will continue to move my hosts to Einstein and return some to World Community Grid. Sure, this will drastically drop my daily mint, but at least I am making contributions that have a large impact on society. I would rather tell my kids that I did my part to help cure cancer, or explore the cosmos, than that I whacked out a few thousand more dollars. Besides, getting mentioned in the Astrophysical Journal should see the grant money flow in for my own research lab!
Whether you are part of the Gridcoin family or an external observer, I'd love to hear what you think!
Content Credit:
Musée Rodin, Overcup Press
