Month: November 2018

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Gridcoin

What is Gridcoin?

Gridcoin is a distributed computing network built on the blockchain. There is a lot of unused resources or underutilized resources lying idle in terms of existing hardware. It is these resources that Gridcoin is designed to put into good use.

Anyone who has access to the Gridcoin network and can process data is granted free access. Those who participate in the network are given incentives through cryptocurrency that is minted under the Gridcoin protocol.

There is too much idle processing potential on the internet at the moment. These are resources that instead of being left to lie fallow, can be put into good use.

What Gridcoin does is to mint and distribute cryptocurrency in lieu of the processing power needed, and what a participant in the ecosystem makes available.

Instead of being wasted, this processing power is then channeled towards scientific discovery and data-driven analysis

What is the problem that Gridcoin Solves?

One of the biggest challenges that Bitcoin has is a waste of resources. Bitcoin is a resource-intensive blockchain platform, and in the long run, it becomes unsustainable given the amount of resources that are burned just to process transactions.

This is where the concept of Idle Processing Potential (IPP) comes in.

IPP is the processing power of one computing device multiplied by the unused processing potential over a given period of time. What makes up the IPP network? Anything that has a processor falls in the concept of IPP. This means that anything from computers, toys, cars, gaming systems, phones and so forth.

The challenge behind IPP is that there is a lot of idle processing power lying around, and as more and more devices are made available, this points to idle resources. We must face the reality that these devices are part of our life at the moment.

You will find them in almost any house. Therefore, there is an insane amount of processing power that is lying idle. Instead of letting this processing power go to waste, Gridcoin proposes a solution where the developing systems and legacy systems can contribute their IPP to distributed computing systems.

How does Gridcoin Solve the problem?    

Gridcoin is a pioneer in the blockchain industry. It directs computational power to help advance scientific progress. In order to solve the problems above, Gridcoin sets itself apart from the competition in the following ways:

Energy Efficiency

There is a lot of energy waste that is associated with Bitcoin and most of the other projects that are built on it. Why waste so much electricity? It is estimated that millions of dollars are put to use each day on electricity use to run Bitcoin.

Instead of struggling through this, Proof of Stake is a feasible workaround that has been implemented by Gridcoin. The good thing with the Proof of Stake algorithm is that it has proven the feasibility of immense cryptographic strength without having to spend so much on electricity bills.

Therefore, users can still perform the same transactions they would on Bitcoin, or even more, but at a lower cost of operation.

The other issue when it comes to efficiency is coin velocity and coinage. Coinage is a concern that arises out of remuneration and retention of coins.

On the other hand, coin velocity is as a result of transactional spam. These are issues that have dogged Bitcoin for the longest time, making it unattractive for those who do not have the resources.

What Gridcoin does differently is to offer rewards to users who support real scientific contributions. Gridcoin is for a worthy cause, and such causes need all the support possible. It is about changing the world as we know it today and redefining the future. As an energy-efficient blockchain project, the playing field is level on Gridcoin.

To protect the network, Gridcoin uses distributed signatures. The distributed signatures belong to the majority of the stakeholders who own coins on the platform. Payouts are shared in terms of the quantified contribution to the scientific causes on Gridcoin.

Distributed Research

Since the goal behind Gridcoin is to reward contributions to science, fairness is mandatory. This is where BOINC comes in handy. This is a system of distributing credit nodes.

The University of Berkeley distributes tasks to volunteers in computational research. On the Gridcoin platform, the work is handled through cryptographical validation.

BOINC is an open source volunteer computing grid that uses the computing power of individual users, combines the computing power to advance scientific research.

Using BOINC is free, and it has already supported more than 30 projects in different scientific areas.

Gridcoin runs a robust protocol such that even in the worst-case scenario where there is an attack or disaster that renders BOINC ineffective for up to 14 days, the platform would still thrive. What this means, therefore, is that Gridcoin strives to encourage new uses and incentives, especially towards directing resource use into science.

Continued Decentralization

One of the reasons why Gridcoin has become easily acceptable and appreciated by a lot of people is the low resource requirements. Compared to other platforms, Gridcoin is not resource intensive. Therefore, this means that anyone with a basic machine can run Gridcoin on their devices. You can even run it on your phone. The hardware requirements of most of the blockchain projects usually lock a lot of people out of access.

Being an easy to set-up platform, anyone, including those who research in their leisure time, and beginners who do not know the first thing about blockchain platforms can contribute the idle processing power of their devices to the Gridcoin platform. Standard devices like mobile devices, home computers can all form a part of this network.

There are a lot of computational tasks that are carried out in the world at the moment, and this might be too much for ASICs.

This is because they are designed in such a way that their general-purpose computing setting makes them resistant to hardware optimization. As long as you have a computer at home, you can include its processing power into the blockchain and get rewards for your contribution to scientific research.

What makes Gridcoin better than the competitors?

Open Source

Gridcoin is hosted on GitHub under an MIT license. By hosting Gridcoin on GitHub, this means that anyone who is interested is free to view, access, modify, experiment with, learn from or even make a copy of the Gridcoin software. There are a lot of benefits that accrue to open source projects.

Any developer who has in-depth knowledge of C++ is in a good position to contribute to the development of Gridcoin. Other than that, the Gridcoin software was specifically designed for easy maintenance, auditing, and extension.

One of the perks of running such a project as an open source project is that it allows the users a world of opportunities, especially when it comes to developing projects pegged on Gridcoin.

Apart from that, it is very easy to address any challenges concerning the Gridcoin environment as and when they arise.

For programmers and other contributors, an open source project means that they are free to identify any concerns or issues that might be present in the code before they move to production with their projects. Besides, the GitHub community is one where developers can always ask for help from other experts in the field concerning anything that they might be struggling with.

Open Data

Apart from being an open source project, Gridcoin is also an open data project. This means that you can either access the data on the blockchain through a web-based blockchain explorer or through your wallet software.

Why is this an important feature? The blockchain environment was specifically designed with a view of transparency. Anyone is able to audit the ledger at any given time.

Gridcoin is part of a global open-ledger system, hence all data accessed through it is secure and open. Open publication of data means that a lot of people are free to experiment with and analyze the data.

Open Access

The Gridcoin network is unrestricted. Therefore, anyone who wishes to access it is free to do so. The only barrier put in place to secure the computing services for the Gridcoin project is a network consensus.

Through network consensus, anyone on the network has access to instant, borderless services. Other than that, this is a platform that is free from censorship constraints. Open access is primarily encouraged for academic publications. In so doing, Gridcoin opens up the project for public engagement with open data and science, and this is in line with the ideals of Gridcoin of making the world a better place.

Open Education

Open access supports the learning initiative, culminating in an open education platform. As an open source project, Gridcoin fully supports the open education resources (OER) development. Gridcoin is one of the projects that is actively involved in supporting easy access to educational facilities for the masses.

An educated society is an empowered society. This also makes it easier to draw lots of participants and experts in different fields to engage one another, and in the process make the Gridcoin ecosystem better through their interaction.

Gridcoin employs BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), an approved distributed computing platform. Through this platform, Gridcoin can support massive organizations, laboratories, and research institutions to create and develop projects not just for the purpose of research and discovery, but also for individual needs.

To show support and commitment towards open education initiatives, Gridcoin whitelists any relevant project that has a large scope potential.

How can Gridcoin be categorized?

Gridcoin is a distributed computing network. What sets Gridcoin apart from other distributed networks is that it is powered by idle processing potential of hardware that is already in use. Gridcoin is a free access platform for anyone who needs to process some data.

What’s Gridcoin’s vision on Security?

The security protocol employed by Gridcoin is Proof of Stake (PoS). This is a security system that has been successfully used by so many other blockchain projects in the past. A lot of projects are actively migrating towards Proof of Stake because this protocol is not resource intensive as compared to Proof of Work. Apart from that, Proof of Stake is also a protocol that rewards those who stake blocks through the transaction fees employed in the said blocks.

Proof of Stake secures the blockchain project without having to perform energy-intensive calculations.

As a result, it frees up CPUs and GPUs from having to secure the blockchain. The processing resources, therefore, can be invested towards other useful ventures like completing analytical tasks.

Examples of Gridcoin use cases/applications

There are a lot of projects that currently use Gridcoin or BOINC. These are projects that are geared toward solving world problems like global warming, investigating diseases, discovering pulsars and so forth. The following are some of the projects that have benefitted from the Gridcoin project:

POEM@home

This is a scientific project that studies the protein structure to understand protein functions and predict the structure of the protein from the unique amino acid sequence.

Other than that, it also investigates the interaction between different proteins, in an attempt to understand how sicknesses and diseases are caused by malfunctioning proteins. The knowledge from these studies should be applied in developing treatments for diseases.

World Community Grid

In this project, millions of data-based computing experiments are distributed to volunteers on their devices. Once the experiments have been completed, the results are collected and sent back to the research teams.

The research teams study these results in an attempt to identify existing patterns and hopefully use this as a stepping stone towards scientific progress.

Since the project was started, scientists have managed to accomplish work that would have taken them thousands of years, in a very short time, thanks to the input of the volunteers. In cancer treatment and solar energy research alone, the World Community Grid has been able to make significant progress, with the research partners publishing lots of articles in scientific peer-reviewed journals. This has also helped advance knowledge in poverty, health and sustainability.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/GridCoin

https://www.gridcoin.us/

https://gridcoin.io/

https://gridcoin.science/

https://www.gridcoin.us/blog.htm

https://steemit.com/created/gridcoin

http://wiki.gridcoin.us/FAQ

https://gridcoin.io/#FAQ

https://www.gridcoin.us/assets/img/whitepaper.pdf

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Energycoin

What is Energycoin?

Blockchain technology has been at the forefront of an internet revolution. This is a technique that is changing the way we do things online. It changes the way we handle data and information, empowers users online through radical transparency.

The blockchain has also brought about decentralization, which makes it difficult to tamper with data because they are no longer held in centralized servers. More importantly, anything that is written on the blockchain cannot be undone. This is the technology that runs Energycoin. What is Energycoin?

The Energycoin blockchain is about a sustainable environment. It is a project that leverages on the benefits of blockchain technology to create sustainable initiatives upon which a new economy will thrive.

Energycoin is using blockchain technology not just to respect the boundaries that nature has created, but also to encourage recovery where nature has been depleted.

Energycoin is all about clean energy and a green environment that works for everyone. Energycoin is a project of the Energycoin Foundation, a project that is geared towards transitioning to a green economy. The team at Energycoin realizes that anything that involves the environment will be a team effort project.

Because of this reason, the goal is to encourage and empower users all over the world to authenticate and carry out transactions, with the real value being their local climate action. With more people working together to protect the environment, it is easier to realize a green and sustainable environment for future generations.

Once you have Energycoin, you can exchange them for regular currency, through Bitcoin. Given that Energycoin is an energy efficient derivative of Bitcoin, you should not have any concerns with transactions.

By fixing the value of Energycoin into local and sustainable campaigns, it becomes the foundation for building a green economy.

What is the problem that Energycoin Solves?

Environmental degradation has been going on for a very long time. This is one aspect that Energycoin aims to tackle, in a cost-effective manner. There are three aspects that Energycoin is working hard to achieve, in an attempt to protect the environment. These are:

  • Rewarding sustainable mobility by achieving more bicycle miles
  • Encouraging energy saving
  • Generating more green power and encouraging a shift towards green energy

Given all the information access that we have at the moment, it is possible to save up to 70% in energy consumption. People just do not want to put the knowledge they have into action. There are a lot of things we do each day that waste a lot of energy unnecessarily.

If people can change this attitude and insulate their buildings properly, it is possible to conserve up to 70%.

This is one of the fastest and most affordable ways of increasing the amount of sustainable energy.

Besides, if you save energy, you do not need to generate it. This further reduces the cost of production.

There are a lot of things that can be done with the money that is saved in such a process. By saving money through insulation, that can be channeled into other useful ventures like investing in a windmill.

Saving energy is also another way of earning energy. With innovative practices, the energy savings can be determined through a meter, and the value loaded on the blockchain

How does Energycoin Solve the problem?

Bicycle miles on the blockchain

Mobility is a normal part of our lives. The choice of mobility equipment greatly determines the impact you have on the environment. By avoiding car miles, you are making a significant contribution towards a safer environment.

In partnership with Ring-Ring®, the Energycoin Foundation has been able to store all bicycle miles earned on the blockchain. How is this done? bicycle miles are recorded based on every 100 bicycle miles covered. Users can then collect their earned tokens from the blockchain, and use them as currency for whichever purpose on the blockchain.

Ring-Ring® is a platform that has been at the forefront, encouraging people to use their bicycles in a bid to earn direct benefits through the cycling miles they make. This targets health insurers, municipalities, employers, entrepreneurs, and residents.

Ring-Ring® has been under intense tests over the years and proven to be effective, hence its use in different municipalities. Companies are currently coming on board in an attempt to meet the climate objectives of Energycoin as part of their CSR policy.

This project was first rolled out in the Netherlands and has been a success. This is the only country in the world where the number of residents is lower than the number of bicycles.

Even by overlooking the benefits that cycling has to the environment, the physical benefits to the cyclist are incredible. Cycling allows users the benefit of freedom of thought, improves your health and wellbeing.

Some of the facts and figures that support this cause are as follows:

  • More than 70% of the journeys in the Netherlands are less than 5 miles apart. 26% of these journeys can be completed by walking from one place to another, 37% completed by cycling.
  • For each car mile you avoid, you earn 41 Eurocent social profits
  • A single car consumes up to 7 times more space than a bicycle

Own solar generated power rewards

Based on research there is a close link between the regularity of earthquakes and the extraction of natural gas. It is imperative, therefore, that providing an alternative to gas production would help reduce the frequency of earthquakes in areas where they are common.

Through an energy cooperative, Zonnedorpen, solar fields are constructed for people who do not have space wherein they can generate solar energy. The land is leased out and crowdfunding where necessary is done through GreenCrowd.

This is one of the initiatives that are supported by the Energycoin Foundation. Those who invest in this project are paid in cryptocurrency for every 100 Euros they invest in the project. Users can then redeem their coins for whichever reason.

The idea behind this is to accelerate the realization and implementation of sustainable goals. In so doing, it is possible to create building blocks in an economy that has specific planetary boundaries.

Local climate action on the blockchain

The Energycoin Foundation is trying to make this a project that is as inclusive as possible. Anyone who can be involved is welcome. It is about togetherness in building a green economy, one that will benefit everyone in the long run. Local climate policy is determined by water boards, companies, provinces, municipalities and so forth. These are the entities and individuals who are playing an active role in realizing the green economy.

Through local energy cooperatives and initiatives, it is possible to achieve energy transition and turning the neighborhood green. What the Energycoin Foundation does is to teach people what they can do locally and within a manageable scale at different levels. This is in the realization of the fact that even though everyone cannot make a sizeable contribution to the grid, in his or her own way, each small contribution will go a long way.

The idea here is to make sure that each contribution has a measurable impact. Each action is measurable on the blockchain. On the Energycoin blockchain, users are able to create tokens through their contributions to the green energy grid.

What the Energycoin Foundation is looking to do is to speed up the transition to an eco-positive society, an economy that protects the environment. It is also about scalability and a positive impact on the environment.

All the actions can be registered on the blockchain, verified and all this in a transparent manner.

What makes Energycoin better than the competitors?

Proof of Stake Algorithm

One of the primary differences between Energycoin and Bitcoin, for example, is the algorithm used. Energycoin uses Proof of Stake, while Bitcoin, of which Energycoin is a derivative, uses Proof of Work. Proof of Work is an energy and resource intensive algorithm that has often been criticized for making the entire process too expensive.

By making the process expensive, Bitcoin effectively locks out those who do not have powerful computing resources. Those who manage to get on board can hardly compete against others who have very powerful machines.

Compared to mining, staking is an energy efficient process and consumes less power. Therefore, as at this moment, the algorithm behind Energycoin is more efficient than that which is run in any of the other protocols.

Decentralization

Bitcoin and Ethereum have always been considered two of the biggest cryptocurrency projects in the world. However, with that, there are challenges that are inherent to these systems. The blockchain is supposed to be decentralized.

Unfortunately, Ethereum and Bitcoin are basically centralized entities. This is so far from what most people expect of a blockchain platform. The reason for this is because, upon recent research, it was revealed that there are no more than 20 entities that determine the blockchain systems for Ethereum and Bitcoin.

Energycoin, on the other hand, is a fully decentralized peer-to-peer network. All the transactions that take place on Energycoin are carried out through cryptography, and there is no middleman involved in the process.

Bitcoin 2.0

You soon realize that Energycoin is a very good alternative to Bitcoin, especially for any individual or entity that would love to make use of the benefits of cryptographic transaction systems. However, if you are concerned about the carbon footprint that is associated with Bitcoin, Energycoin would make a good alternative for you.

How can Energycoin be categorized?

Energycoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that is backed by an active community. It was built to support the green economy and encourage more people to do so.

One of the tenets of Energycoin is to introduce the value of sustainable energy to the blockchain realm. Given that this is a project that is built about energy conservation and sustainability, Energycoin is built around the Proof of Stake algorithm instead of Proof of Work.

What’s Energycoin’s vision on Security?

Energycoin is one of the safest blockchain projects available. Since inception, there has never been a cause for alarm. One of the reasons for this is because of the security behind the Proof of Stake algorithm that powers Energycoin.

To make the platform even safer for users, the team at Energycoin created secure wallets. The wallet is safe and easy to manage, and you can also move it into your phone.

Examples of Energycoin use cases/applications

Local energy corporations stand to benefit a great deal when Energycoin is fully implemented. One of the challenges that they often experience is determining which consumption was from gray energy and which one was from green energy. Through the blockchain, however, this should be easier.

Energycoin maintains a record of all the green energy generated locally. This includes solar panels from a private roof or a local energy cooperation running a windmill.

This is done in a period of every 15 minutes a day. This has been researched and presented before scientists, small businesses, NGOs and other relevant parties. In line with these developments, Energycoin can be used for the following:

Rewarding Participants

Any member of a local energy cooperation that uses sustainable energy, or a customer from an energy company that uses sustainable energy whenever available can be rewarded through Energycoin.

The Energycoin Foundation has been able to build a digital environment to record green energy generated locally and calculate the rewards applicable to the users. For example, members in a solar park or windmill can invest and earn returns faster if they connect their energy use to a local energy availability service.

Generating Interest in Solar Energy

One of the other things that the Energycoin blockchain has done is to handle the administrative angle of crowdfunding energy efficient projects. For any viable project that is crowdfunded through Energycoin, the administrative tasks are handled by the Energycoin blockchain.

Peer-to-Peer exchange

Citizens can also exchange green and local energy between one another through Energycoin. This is something that is already being commercialized in advertisements, and an administrative reality. It is technically possible to exchange green local energy from one person to another, through an energy company. However, Energycoin is making this possible through the blockchain.

Resources

https://coincheckup.com/coins/Energycoin

https://energycoin.eu/

https://energycoin.eu/blog/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1028941.0