Competitive Advantages

General Advantages

One of the main advantages of Gridcoin is that crunching (“mining”) does useful scientific research. Crunching helps science in areas like fighting diseases, finding asteroids, understanding subatomic particles, and more. In other cryptocurrencies, mining doesn’t produce any meaningful results. This means that regardless of the number of Gridcoin you earn, crunching alone achieves something useful.

While there are some other cryptocurrencies that try and reward scientific work, they are limited in other various ways (most are heavily centralized among other things) see:

Additionally, Gridcoin’s system of scrapers offers a scalable system that minimizes that amount of centralization. Scrapers get BOINC statistics (which determine rewards) from the projects and then compress them down to only the useful stats — reducing data sent and stored. The wallet compares the data from each scraper against each other limiting the trust needed. Scrapers are run by several trusted members of the community located around the world. Read more about scrapers on the Scraper Wiki Page

Further, Gridcoin has a voting system to help keep Gridcoin aligned with the community and have meaningful discussions. Voting helps reduce conflicts by not having unexpected changes and having a way to voice your opinion without needing to fork and split the community.

Comparison to CureCoin

What Is CureCoin?

CureCoin is a cryptocurrency that aims to reward [email protected] work

Why Gridcoin Is Different

  • CureCoin only rewards [email protected] — Gridcoin rewards many projects
    • CureCoin is designed only for [email protected]
      • Only one project can be rewarded
      • Expansion requires rework of the system
    • Gridcoin is designed for BOINC projects
      • Rewards many existing projects and allows for rewarding newly created BOINC projects
      • More rewarded areas of study and more scientists running and starting projects.
  • CureCoin involves Proof of Work — Gridcoin uses Proof of Stake
    • More energy used in Proof of Work
      • Less used energy on scientific work in CureCoin
    • With Gridcoin more energy goes directly to science
      • Less energy used by Proof of Stake

Comparison to Obyte

What Is Obyte?

Obyte (formally Byteball) is a cryptocurrency that focuses on various different aspects such as smart contracts. Among other bots, it has a bot that distributes out Bytes for work on World Community Grid

(note you can earn both Gridcoin and Bytes at the same time)

Why Gridcoin Is Different

  • Obyte’s main focus is different from Gridcoin
    • Science aspect is a secondary or tertiary goal
      • Fewer Obytes sent to reward science and more goes to other distribution methods
    • For Gridcoin science is a primary goal
      • Larger percentage rewards science
  • Obyte’s bots are heavily centralized
    • Happening through one bot that could stop at any point
      • Funding to this bot comes entirely through a grant from a fund controlled currently by 4 people
    • In Gridcoin, coins are distributed as new coins in the network not through a single fund or bot
  • Obyte only rewards World Community Grid and no other BOINC project

    • On any other project, you can’t earn Obytes for it

    • With Gridcoin there are 16 projects you can contribute to

Comparison to Primecoin

What Is Primecoin?

Primecoin is a cryptocurrency that uses a proof of work algorithm to find Cunningham chains of prime numbers.

Why Gridcoin Is Different

  • Primecoin can only find prime numbers and do no other scientific computation
    • Limited by Proof of Work algorithm
      • Any expansion of Primecoin to other types of computations would need to fit a Proof of Work algorithm. These algorithms need abilities that many scientific problems lack
    • With Gridcoin more can be rewarded such as fighting disease, finding asteroids, and many other types of science

Comparison to Tokens

What Are These Tokens?

There are a variety of tokens that have tried/are trying to reward scientific work.

Why Gridcoin Is Different

  • Most of these tokens are heavily centralized
    • One person/group decides how they should be distributed
      • Many of these tokens have suddenly stopped because the people behind the projects decided to stop giving tokens out.
    • Gridcoin has systems in place to not give one person or group the ability to control distribution.
      • The Scrapers, Proof of Stake, and more allow for a much more decentralized system.
  • New tokens lack an existing community
    • Have to spend even more time on marketing, outreach, getting more developers, etc.
      • Have to overcome the chicken and egg problem for adoption
    • With Gridcoin, the community already exists
      • Able to help keep growth from it
      • Larger number of people to help with development, marketing, site building, and more
  • Tokens are limited in setting fees and changing other aspects
    • Tokens don’t run on their own network — limited by system of the network they run on
      • For instance for erc20 tokens on ethereum, to move tokens around you have to spend ethereum to do it with the fees from the ethereum network itself
    • Gridcoin runs on its own network
      • The fees can be changed if the community decides to
      • Other network level changes have and can be made