Gridcoin
Gridcoin Logo
Denominations
PluralGridcoins
CodeGRC
Precision10−8
Subunits
 1⁄100000000halford
Development
Original author(s)Rob Halförd[1]
White paperGridcoin: The Computation Power of a Blockchain Driving Science & Data Analysis
Implementation(s)Gridcoin-Research
Latest release5.4.5.0 / April 23, 2023; 8 months ago (2023-04-23)[2]
Code repositorygithub.com/gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Research
Development statusActive
Project fork ofBitcoin, Peercoin[3]
Written inC++
Operating systemWindows, Linux, macOS
Developer(s)Gridcoin Community
Source modelOpen source
LicenseMIT License[3]
Ledger
Timestamping schemeProof-of-stake
Block reward10 GRC[4]
Block explorergridcoinstats.eu/block
Website
Websitegridcoin.us

Gridcoin (abbreviation: GRC) is an open source cryptocurrency which securely rewards volunteer computing performed on the BOINC network.[1][5][6][7] Originally developed to support SETI@home,[8] it became the platform for many other applications in areas as diverse as medicine, molecular biology, mathematics, linguistics, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics.[9]

Gridcoin requires a significant level of skill in order to begin "crunching". Despite this, Gridcoin's ability to monetise idle computing time towards "crunching" can modestly help with reducing digital divide and incentivise the public to donate their CPU time towards scientific research.[10][7]

It was created on October 16, 2013, by Rob Halförd. Gridcoin, initially using the energy-intensive proof of work - as used by Bitcoin, before migrating to a proof of stake protocol in 2014, similar to Peercoin, in an attempt to address the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining.[1][11][12]

An exploit was demonstrated in August 2017 that revealed the emails of Gridcoin users and allowed the theft of other users work. The research team disclosed the vulnerability to the developers in September 2016, and the patch for the vulnerability was released in March 2017 with version 3.5.8.7, however the implementation of the fix introduced other issues.[13]

The implementation Gridcoin-Research was created as a fork of Bitcoin and Peercoin and is licensed under the MIT License.[3] It uses Qt 5 for its user interface[14] and prebuilt executables of the wallet are distributed for Windows, macOS, and Debian.[2]

5.3.2.0 of Gridcoin-Research

References

  1. ^ a b c Hijfte, Stijn Van (6 July 2020). Blockchain Platforms: A Look at the Underbelly of Distributed Platforms. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. p. 145. ISBN 9781681738925. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Releases - gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Research". Retrieved 24 April 2023 – via GitHub.
  3. ^ a b c "License on Github". GitHub. Archived from the original on 28 May 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
  4. ^ "Network Blocks". Gridcoinstats. Archived from the original on 14 June 2020. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  5. ^ Dong, Zhongli; Lee, Young Choon; Zomaya, Albert Y (2015). "Crowdware: A Framework for GPU-Based Public-Resource Computing with Energy-Aware Incentive Mechanism". 2015 IEEE 7th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (Cloud Com). p. 266. doi:10.1109/CloudCom.2015.73. ISBN 978-1-4673-9560-1. S2CID 6852894.
  6. ^ Kent, Peter; Bain, Tyler (2019). Cryptocurrency Mining For Dummies. Wiley. p. 320. ISBN 9781119579472.
  7. ^ a b Elena Guerrero-Roldán, Ana; Baneres, David; Elena Rodriguez, M. (2020). Engineering data-driven adaptive trust-based e-assessment systems : challenges and infrastructure solutions. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. p. 144. ISBN 9783030293260.
  8. ^ Scoles, Sarah. "A Brief History of SETI@Home". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2017-05-23. Retrieved 2017-06-01.
  9. ^ "Projects - BOINC Projects". boincsynergy.ca. Archived from the original on 2022-08-28. Retrieved 2022-08-29.
  10. ^ Kreitem, Hanna M.; Ragnedda, Massimo (2020-06-10). "Distributed pool mining and digital inequalities, From cryptocurrency to scientific research". Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. 18 (3): 339–355. doi:10.1108/JICES-02-2020-0018. ISSN 1477-996X. S2CID 219647192.
  11. ^ "Bitcoin mining likely uses more energy than it takes to keep New Zealand's lights on". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 12 December 2017. Archived from the original on 8 January 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  12. ^ Kondru, Kiran Kumar; Saranya, R.; Chacko, Annamma (2021). "A Review of Distributed Supercomputing Platforms Using Blockchain". In Tripathy, Asis Kumar; Sarkar, Mahasweta; Sahoo, Jyoti Prakash; Li, Kuan-Ching; Chinara, Suchismita (eds.). Advances in Distributed Computing and Machine Learning. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems. Vol. 127. Singapore: Springer. pp. 123–133. doi:10.1007/978-981-15-4218-3_13. ISBN 978-981-15-4217-6. S2CID 224845754.
  13. ^ Grothe, Martin; Niemann, Tobias; Somorovsky, Juraj; Schwenk, Jörg (2017-08-14). "Breaking and fixing gridcoin". Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Conference on Offensive Technologies. WOOT'17. USA: USENIX Association: 14.
  14. ^ "Gridcoin-Research/build-unix.md at development · gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Research". GitHub. Retrieved 21 July 2021.

External links

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) projects
Cryptocurrencies
Categories