Gridcoin (

Abbreviation An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

: GRC) is an open source cryptocurrency which securely rewards

volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...

performed on the

BOINC The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...

network. Originally developed to support SETI@home, it became the platform for many other applications in areas as diverse as

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

climatology Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...

environmental science Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...

, and

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

. Gridcoin requires a significant level of skill in order to begin "crunching". Despite this Gridcoin's ability to monetise idle computing time, "crunching" can modestly help with reducing

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in ...

. But its main benefit is the CPU time being used for research and helping to solve scientific problems. It was created on October 16, 2013, by Rob Halförd. Gridcoin, initially using the energy intensive

proof of work Proof of work (PoW) is a form of Cryptography, cryptographic proof (truth), proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can s ...

- as used by

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

, before migrating to a

proof of stake Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of p ...

protocol in 2014, similar to

Peercoin Peercoin, also known as Peer-to-Peer Coin, PP Coin, or PPC is a cryptocurrency utilizing both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work systems. History Peercoin is based on an August 2012 paper which listed the authors as Scott Nadal and Sunny King. Ki ...

, in an attempt to address the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. 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. The implementation Gridcoin-Research was created as a fork of Bitcoin and Peercoin and is licensed under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

. It uses

Qt 5 Qt (pronounced "cute") is cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems wit ...

for its user interface and prebuilt

executables In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions", as opposed to a data file ...

of the wallet are distributed for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gridcoin Cryptocurrency projects volunteer computing