Overview
BOINC is a platform that lets you help researchers with your computer and or phone. When installing the BOINC client, you can join a number of different projects run by different researchers. Likewise researchers get an easier to setup system that lets them get help from a number of regular people. The idea is to lower the cost for researchers and letting regular people take advantage of their idling machines to do useful work
Important Terms
These are some important terms in BOINC that are important to Gridcoin
Recent average credit (RAC) is a rolling average of the credits you earn in BOINC. It’s exponential so your most recent credit earned in weighs into it more than those from weeks ago. Gridcoin uses the RAC that projects report to help calculate rewards
Cross project identifiers (CPIDs) are one way that users can be identified across projects. Gridcoin use this to help know which people have opted in to rewards and how much work they’ve done to help calculate rewards
Common Misunderstandings
BOINC is separate from Gridcoin. While Gridcoin rewards BOINC projects, BOINC is developed separately, projects are operated separately, and they aim to keep it separate. This is not a bad thing, but it is something to understand
Folding@home is not a BOINC project. While it is similar in that you use your computer to help science, it is not a part of BOINC and you can’t use the BOINC client with it.