zArchive~Advantages & Features - gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Wiki GitHub Wiki

Competitive Advantages (in comparison to other altcoins)

One of the primary advantages to using Gridcoin is the participation in the BOINC network. Participating in BOINC projects with your computer will help advance science in areas like cancer research, fighting malaria, curing AIDS, predicting climate change, searching for aliens (SETI) or curing Alzheimer's.

Another advantage is that Proof-of-Research is ASIC proof. 95% of projects run in BOINC are general computation projects, These projects require computations that would be very difficult to create at the hardware level. Thus making it very difficult to make AISCs. IF an ASIC is developed for a certain project, it would 2. enhance the research in that specific research field and 2. have no bit influence on Gridcoin. The reason is, that the Gridcoin payment happens project specific. Imagine there are 40 whitelisted projects and in on of them ASICs are being used. 39 of 40 projects are paid normal, meaning 39/40=97.5% of the Gridcoin production by research payments would still be distributed without the influence of the ASICs. As it happens, we support one ASIC project: Bitcoin Utopia. As long as you do not try to be paid from that project using your CPU or GPU, payment is still fair.

Through the use of the Proof-of-Research algorithm, electricity that would have otherwise been wasted on Hashing numbers which have no use other than maintaining the network, is now used to benefit all of humankind making the coin very energy efficient and with a target block time of 90 seconds, transactions are quick to confirm making it quicker and easier to purchase items from merchants.

Mining with Gridcoin is always distributed, there is no need for pools for Gridcoin other than simplicity and usability for newbies. Through the use of PoS 2.0 every client on the network can mine blocks, While rewards are calculated based on your contributions to BOINC. With the Research Age payment system, coin age and research age can accrue up to 6 months. This means a single payment within 6 months will completely pay a researcher/miner or an investor without any loss of coins.

The Gridcoin wallet has integrated web features such as Block Explorer Links, Exchange Links, and Gridcoin BOINC Team Stats link.

Benefit of Decentralization

Earn Gridcoins while you sleep and research

Use the cryptocurrency for purchases, or exchange them with others

Fast Way to Get Started

All of this is free and fun. It is an exciting project that ultimately can help advance humanity

New User Wizard for extremely simple setup!

You do not need any special computer hardware or expensive graphic cards

BOINC will run in the background and honor your preferences to not disturb your computer's resources while you are using it yourself

Gridcoin requires very little resources to stay running

Low maintenance / Easy to support the new wallet

Worthy Investment

You will earn interest per year on your coins, plus a research subsidy

Very attractive deflationary coin mint schedule (for investors).

Integrated Research

BOINC Miners earn Proof Of Research interest plus a research subsidy

Researchers have a Savings Account capable of paying back payments up to 6 months old (BOINC work must be done while Gridcoin Node is offline) once Research Age feature is live.

Scalable – Supports virtually unlimited quantity of BOINC Researchers

Robust Security model

Coin mint subsidy Integrity is maintained - Researcher must submit a valid CPID for all blocks, and the validity is checked by a third party credit node by other nodes!

Consistent BOINC Rewards using a magnitude consensus system (Magnitude calculation method).

High Security – 51% attack would mean an attacker has 51% of the coins. There is no logic in that attack.

Automatic Wallet Backups once per day.

Flexibility

Cross Platform Compatible (Mac, Linux, and Windows)

Smaller, more efficient code base for exchanges to support

Software Quality

Reliable, burned-in and tested application. Fully Open Source software (github/Gridcoin-Research).

Core developer has been in professional application development for decades. He previously hired co-workers and is supported by C++ specialists. The coming Foundation will pay for future development efforts of the core team.

RPC Programming Interface

Dynamic RPC execution subsystem (execute new commands dynamically in wallet RPC)

Advanced RPC functions integrated in: listitem magnitude (User Magnitude Consensus)

List cpids (Projects Mounted for User)

Showblock with Extended fields per block (Project, RAC, CPID, etc)

Wireframe rendering

Listitem projects (Gridcoin whitelisted BOINC projects)

Listitem network (Average RAC per project globally)

Listitem Explainmagnitude (audit magnitude assessment by component)

Next Generation Features

Run time contract execution (beta)

In client voting for foundation votes.