Overview
Beacons are what tie a user to their work on BOINC. They are only required for solo crunching and have a fee of 0.5 GRC + transaction fees. To keep a beacon active, it must be renewed every 6 months. Beacons automatically renew if your wallet is open and unlocked staking (which wallets are by default).
See the last step of the solo crunching guide for the process of sending a beacon. Note that BOINC and the Gridcoin wallet must be setup beforehand
Rational
Beacons require verification to ensure a user is not trying to steal someone else’s reward. Additionally, they let the network know which BOINC user’s stats to monitor and which to ignore.
What is in a Beacon?
The beacon stores your BOINC Cross Project Identifier (CPID) and a cryptographic public key. The seemingly random text you use for verification is a signed message with your private key — letting you prove you own that account
Miscellaneous
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The “beacon address” is just the address that you used to get the coins for your beacon. There isn’t anything special about the address otherwise, and it’s just an ordinary address
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A beacon is technically a form of a smart contract albeit a simple one
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You can view the status of your beacon (if you have one) on the researcher wizard or with the
beaconstatuscommand