Frequently Asked Questions

If you are having any troubles with the Gridcoin wallet, make sure you are on the latest version before trying to solve them.

You will see a lot of references to the data folder in this FAQ. Here are the default locations:

Windows	Linux	MacOS
`%appdata%/GridcoinResearch`	`~/.GridcoinResearch`	`~/Library/Application Support/GridcoinResearch`

Gridcoin & Science

Why is Gridcoin (GRC) special?

Almost all of your computing power can be directed at beneficial scientific and medical research while crunching Gridcoin.

See the list of Advantages & Features.

How can useful work in a cryptocurrency be verified without repeating the work or trusting a central server?

In Gridcoin, work units are given out by distributed project nodes within the BOINC network which uses their independent calculation to reward research. Gridcoin compares participants in each project by their subsidiary credits earned in BOINC to measure performance in relation to dynamic inner project network average.

BOINC has been rewarding scientific work units in a credit system since 2003. In case a project maintainer maliciously decides to give out more credits than appropriate, it only affects the inner project competition. The maximum share of new Gridcoins for this project stays the same percentage (subject to the number of total projects). And projects can be removed by a blockchain vote.

Security in Gridcoin is based on Proof-of-Stake. Network consensus is not dependent on BOINC rewards working properly or even existing. Even if every BOINC project shut down tomorrow, Gridcoin’s blockchain would continue making new blocks and functioning as expected (sending and receiving transactions), minus the minting of rewards for BOINC users.

Crunching (Research & Mining Equivalent)

How do I start crunching?

Consult these guides:

Solo (recommended method)
Pool

I get an “e-mail mismatch” or “split CPID” error in the solo crunching wizard in the wallet?

First, make sure you are using the same e-mail address for each BOINC project you are attached to.

Some context: CPIDs are IDs assigned to you by BOINC projects based on your e-mail address. BOINC projects publish user stats by CPID (which Gridcoin uses to calculate your rewards). When you first attach to a project, it gives you a CPID (so all projects will have different ones). Your BOINC client then picks the oldest CPID and tells all the projects to use it going forward.

This usually resolves itself, but you can help it along by doing the following:

Go to BOINC’s advanced view (view (in menu) -> advanced view)
Go to “projects” tab
For each project, click on the project and select “no new tasks” on the left
Go to your tasks tab and cancel all existing tasks (this is needed, otherwise BOINC may not actually “update” when requested in subsequent steps)
Back in the projects tab, for each project, select “allow new tasks” and press “update”, then press “no new tasks” when complete and abort any tasks it downloaded. The project update process will take about 10 seconds for each project. You can monitor this progress by going to tools -> event log
In the solo crunching wizard, press the “refresh” button to see if your CPIDs have all matched up. You may have to do step 5 one more time.
Once fixed, you can re-allow new tasks on each project and continue crunching

Note that if one of the projects you are attached to is not online, you may not be able to update it. You can just remove the project for now and add it back later, it should converge onto the CPID the rest of your projects use. You can always check in the solo crunching wizard to make sure all your CPIDs are the same. If they change, you may have to repeat this process again and make a new beacon if your CPID changes.

How can I increase my magnitude or earn more GRC? How are rewards calculated?

If you just started solo crunching or switched BOINC projects, it will take a week or two for your RAC to “ramp up”.

The GRC you are awarded is based on your magnitude. Your magnitude is based on RAC (“recent average credit”) which is a rolling average over the past month. Gridcoin relies on the RAC values provided by the project to calculate your magnitude.

However, you can’t just compare your RAC between projects because different projects use different systems for how they allocate credit. Because of this, your magnitude is your RAC earned on a project relative to other Gridcoin crunchers. Your “total magnitude” is the magnitude you have earned on each project, added together.

You can see estimated magnitude levels for your hardware here: http://quickmag.ml/cgi-bin/script.cgi. Unfortunately, data for some whitelisted projects like WCG are not available so they won’t be included in the estimate.

See our guide for picking optimal projects . Try different projects and see whether your hardware can keep up a high magnitude. You can review your outcome magnitude in the wallet.

Anyway, if you like a project you should still support it, to keep the BOINC spirit up.

What should I put in my config-file for Gridcoin-Research?

Please check the config file page

How can I tell if I’ve staked a block?

If you are using the GUI you will see a transaction with a gold icon.

You can also lookup your address on a block explorer.

Reward calculation: what is RAC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_Credit_System#Recent_average_credit

I had a magnitude for some time but it dropped to 0. What happened?

The reason for this is most likely that you have to resend your beacon, which should be done every 6 months. Normally, this happens automatically every six months if your wallet is open. If your wallet is locked (it is unlocked by default), unlock your wallet so that it sends automatically or type advertisebeacon in the console.

Pool Crunching

Is it possible to join a pool?

Yes, there are currently 2 operational pools:

I am crunching for the pool but the wallet still shows INVESTOR and 0 magnitude. Is that ok?

On the beacon menu, make sure to click on “Pool” button at the start. Click start over if you don’t see a selection option. This doesn’t technically matter, but it will help get rid of error messages that aren’t relevant to you

I am crunching for the pool but even though I work on projects this is not shown on the profile page of the pool. What can I do?

Make sure you remove all existing projects, which use your account, from the BOINC manager before syncing to the pool.

Staking

What do I get for staking a block?

Proof of Stake rewards will give you 10 GRC for each block you stake plus fees for any transaction in that block. If you are a solo cruncher, you will also receive your BOINC rewards (“accrued rewards”) in wallet. You also get the good feeling of knowing you have contributed to Gridcoin’s network security and decentralization.

The wallet says “Not Staking because you don’t have mature coins”, how long does it take for coins to mature?

It takes 16 hours for GRC to become mature from the time of arrival in your wallet. After a specific set of coins have Staked, they will need to mature again for 16 hours before they can Stake again.

Why can’t I send coins in my wallet balance?

You may have a balance reserved in stake. If this ever happens to you do this in the console:

reservebalance true AMOUNT

Where AMOUNT is the amount you want to send

Wait for a few blocks

Then send it.

When I get an interest/mining payment, a portion of my GRC looks to be moving from my total balance into the “Stake” line of the wallet balance. Is that correct?

Yes. It means that those coins are currently on cooldown so they aren’t able to stake for the next 16 hours.

Can I stake with an encrypted wallet?

Yes, but you have to unlock it first. It’s recommended to unlock it “for staking only”.

The console walletpassphrase command does what clicking the lock button does.

To lock Type

walletlock

to unlock for a certain time type

walletpassphrase PASSWORD TIMEOUT

to unlock type

walletpassphrase PASSWORD

to unlock only for staking type

walletpassphrase PASSWORD TIMEOUT true

How do you turn staking on and off?

walletpassphrase "your passphrase in double quotes" timeout true

where timeout is the number of seconds, e.g. 10000 and true is a toggle that unlocks the wallet for staking only.

What happens if I stake on a fork?

When you stake on a fork, the stake you see is not actually a real stake on the main chain. When your wallet figures out that it is on a fork, you will see these rewards disappear as the wallet corrects itself. This process happens automatically. While frustrating, once off of the fork, you are still able to stake again.

My pending rewards are stuck at 16384 GRC

If you see your pending rewards at 16384 GRC, you have hit the maximum amount of Gridcoin that can be sent per stake. When you stake you will only earn 16384 GRC and any amount of extra work done will not be included. If you keep hitting this limit, make sure you are running your wallet to stake 24/7 (or close to it). If you are, you should get more Gridcoin to stake more frequently.

If you want to get an estimate of how likely you are to stake before that limit, you can try solving for that probability using: 16384/(magnitude/4) = -ln( 1 - Probability ) * 10000 / Balance * Difficulty.
The probability there are the odds that you stake at least once at any point before that limit (it’s a confidence interval).

Note: It is highly unlikely for most users to run into this limit. It requires a very high magnitude to possibly run into this.

Manual Reward Claim

What is Manual Reward Claim (MRC)?

Manual Reward Claim (MRC) is a feature in v5.4.0.0. When you earn BOINC credits in solo crunching mode, you accumulate owed Gridcoin. This GRC doesn’t exist yet and you can claim it via two methods, staking or MRC.

MRC allows a user to claim their owed GRC without the requirement of having a large amount of GRC to stake it (like in previous versions).

MRC was made to solve the issue of new users being unable to claim rewards without either acquiring GRC first or using a pool. Note that you have to pay a small amount of GRC as a fee for using the MRC service.

If I have enough GRC to stake, do I need to use MRC?

No. MRC is optional. If you would like to advance the payment of your owed GRC without having to wait for your next stake, then you are able to issue a MRC request from the wallet.

How often can I make a MRC request?

Once every 14 days is the most often you can make a MRC request. Note that if you have only just created your Gridcoin wallet and advertised your beacon, you will need to wait 14 days until your first request.

Note that you may not want to claim on such a frequent interval because the fee for doing so is much higher than if you were to wait for longer.

Are there any fees associated with the MRC request?

Yes. The fee decreases the longer you wait between requests and helps fund development. After a few MRC requests, you will probably have enough GRC to stake on your own and skip MRC fees entirely. As a bonus, if you stake a block with somebody else’s MRC request, you collect a portion of their fee.

The fee has two components:

Blockchain transaction fee: This fee is the usual fee that is required to send a transaction over the Gridcoin blockchain and is usually insignificant. This fee is charged when you make the MRC request.
MRC fee: This is the fee that is charged after the MRC request is processed and is applied to the rewards that you have claimed. The fee is equivalent to roughly 5.6 days of crunching. If you request every two weeks (14 days), 5.6 days is 40% of that. If you request every six weeks, it is 13%.

The recipients of the MRC fee is as follows:

The Gridcoin Foundation receives 80% of the fee
The staker of the block which contains the MRC request will get 20% of the fee

The math: The fee starts at 40% of the owed GRC at the 14-day interval since the last claim (or beacon creation) and decreases by 40% * 14/(number of days since last claim).

Which address will receive the MRC reward? Can I redirect it?

The GRC address which issued the last beacon from your wallet will receive the GRC reward. It is not possible to redirect this reward to a different address unless you send GRC from this address manually.

In your wallet, this address will appear as “Beacon Rain Address”.

What happens if the MRC queue is full?

Each block on the Gridcoin blockchain can handle 9 MRC requests at a time. If this limit has been exceeded and you make a MRC request, it will likely be cancelled and the fee refunded to you when the next block is staked.

If you want to ensure that your MRC request is fulfilled, then use the “Fee Boost” field in the MRC screen to increase your chances of getting paid in the next block by increasing the fees you pay.

Why did my MRC request seem to disappear without action?

There are a few reasons this may happen. One possibility is that you made the MRC request right before a new block has been staked, which means your transaction did not get picked up quick enough and hence became ‘stale’.

Another possibility is that your position in the MRC queue was high enough that your request was not fulfilled in the current block. Hence, you will have to make another request.

In all instances, the fees that you pay for the MRC request will be refunded to your Gridcoin wallet.

Is there a command-line tool I can use to make MRC requests?

Yes. The command is createmrcrequest [dry_run [force [fee]]].

Running this command without any arguments will attempt to submit a MRC request onto the network.

dry_run - If set to true, will show you the details about the MRC request you just made but does not actually send it to the network. (Default: false)

force - If set to true, will send the MRC request no matter what. This can only be used on the testnet. (Default: false)

fee - The fee amount to override the calculated transaction fee for the MRC request. If the fee here is higher than that of the calculated one, then you will be placed higher in the MRC queue. You can use this in conjunction with the dry_run option in order to see what position in the queue you will skip to depending on the fee.

BOINC

Choosing BOINC projects: In BOINC, is there still a defined whitelist of “projects” or can we use any project?

Only crunching for projects on the whitelist will earn you GRC. You can find the current whitelist in your wallet by going to the solo crunching wizard and going to projects. You can also run “projects” in the console to list all the whitelisted projects. This website also displays the whitelist, but “greylisting” may not be reflected there. Projects are usually greylisted due to low work availability or the project website undergoing maintenance. These interruptions are usually brief in nature. You cannot earn GRC for your crunching on a project while it is greylisted.

If it says “non participating project” does that mean that they aren’t accepted for Gridcoin purposes?

That means you aren’t participating in those projects or the e-mail address you have in the conf file doesn’t match the e-mail address used in your BOINC manager on that machine. Any changes about e-mail address on a project take around a day to propagate.

Can I crunch BOINC on multiple machines? Do I need to install the wallet on each of them?

Yes. The typical setup is to have one machine with the wallet in solo crunching mode and BOINC. BOINC should be attached to all projects you are crunching, though you can set any projects you don’t want to crunch on that machine to “no new tasks”. You can install BOINC on as many other devices as you want, so long as you use the same e-mail address for BOINC, you will receive credit for that work. There is no need to install the wallet on the other machines, and doing so may cause you problems.

Multiple wallets: If you want Gridcoin installed on multiple devices, such as for identity seperation purposes, make sure that each wallet is a seperate wallet (do not copy a wallet.dat from one machine and try to run it on another), and that you only have one wallet in solo crunching mode for each e-mail address/CPID you use for BOINC. Any other wallets should be set to “investor” mode. Being in “solo crunching” mode means the wallet will make beacons and attempt to “claim” a BOINC e-mail address/CPID. If you have multiple wallets competing for this claim, it will get messy quickly.

Instead of discussing every single BOINC project to be added, is there any shared guidelines to be used for accepting or rejecting them?

https://github.com/gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Tasks/issues/227

Status

How can I check my solo crunching/beacon is setup correctly?

Go to the solo crunching wizard in the wallet. You can click on the project tab for information on a per-project level

Without using the GUI, you can also see a list of your magnitude in each project by using the explainmagnitude RPC command

What does “diff” exactly measure? What does it tell if it’s high or low?

A staking hash that is generated that is LESS than the target will stake. So the smaller the target (higher the diff) the LOWER the probability of staking.

This also means that diff is directly proportional to that average net coins staking on the network.

TL;DR: When more coins are staking the difficulty increases which makes it harder to stake and vice versa.

The formulas to calculate diff may be found in section 2.1 of the staking bluepaper.

How to call commands when starting Gridcoin Wallet on Windows?

Create a shortcut that links to the actual GRC program in Program Files directory and add the function at the end of the target, then properly name them for the function to execute:

Example with -rescan option: Make a new shortcut to "C:\Program Files\GridcoinResearch\gridcoinresearch.exe"

Add the command to execute at the end of the ‘Target:’ line like "C:\Program Files\GridcoinResearch\gridcoinresearch.exe" -rescan

Rename the shortcut to something like ‘GRC rescan’.

Then go to Advanced and tick on run as Administrator.

From now on when you double click on it, it will execute that Command Line function.

This way it is simpler and faster for newbies than CLI and batch.

How could I check whether my local block is the same as on an explorer?

After you double click on the tx in the list, write down the block number (not hash).

Then do

showblock blocknumber

And compare the details with details from explorer.

If you do want to get a block by hash, you would have to:

getblockhash blocknumber

getblock blockhash

But that is a little longer

Upgrade

How do I upgrade the Gridcoin wallet client?

Exit the wallet fully so it is not running. Be sure to check your system tray.
Download the installer from Github or your package manager and install over your previous installation.

Do not delete the data folder. This contains important data like your keys which let you access your coins.

Backup & Migration

What can I do if I didn’t save a prior version of wallet.dat?

The wallet has an automated backup in place that will make backups every 24 hours into the walletbackups folder inside of your data folder.

How can I move my Gridcoin wallet to another machine?

Note: These steps should work for any OS and for cross-OS migration. You should never run the same wallet on two machines at the same time because it looks to the network like an attack and your node may be banned. Additionally, you may lose coins and addresses as the wallets diverge over time. Don’t do it. These steps reference the “data directory”, see the top of this FAQ for where to find it depending on what operating system (Windows, MacOS, etc) your computer has.

If you crunch BOINC to earn GRC, install BOINC on your new machine and attach to all your projects first. You must attach to all the same projects as before, you can set a project as “no new tasks” if you don’t want to crunch it.
Fully shut down the Gridcoin wallet on source machine, make sure it is not running in the system tray.
Install the Gridcoin wallet on the new machine, fully shut it down after installation. You do not need to fully sync this wallet yet.
Rename the wallet directory on the new machine to GridcoinResearch_old and copy the contents of your wallet directory from the original machine to the new machine in the same place
Start the wallet on the new machine.
Setup backups on your new machine so you do not lose your coins when your system drive fails

Which is the best practice to save my new wallet?

Different methods were discussed in the Gridcoin Community Classroom #003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxrjUwX5XvA

How to compress my wallet getting rid of orphans?

The quick and easy way.

Close your client and rename wallet.dat to wallet.bak
Start client. Once started, click receive coins and see your 1st address and copy the address down.
Close client and rename wallet.dat to somethingelse.bak
Rename wallet.bak to wallet.dat
Start the client and send all coins to the address you copied down in step 2.
Make sure you get at least 10 confirmation for the transaction.
Close client and rename wallet.dat to wallet.bak and rename somethingelse.bak to wallet.dat
Start the client and enjoy your new wallet.

What should I do to recover an old backup of my wallet?

Backup wallet.dat.
Look for the walletbackups folder.
Find the most recent backup.
Shutdown the wallet
Copy it to the data directory and rename it to wallet.dat.
Restart the wallet.

If it still doesn’t start you can try using the -salvagewallet flag. This will try to pull whatever it can out of the wallet.dat file and will create a new file. Rename that new file to wallet.dat and try launching the wallet again without the -salvagewallet flag

Sync

I have lots of connections, but synchronizing stopped at a certain block. What should I do?

Just try to just wait it out the wallet should automatically fix itself.

If it still hasn’t gone up after a few hours try this:

Close the client
In your Gridcoin data folder, delete the accrual folder, the txleveldb folder, and blk00*.dat (with * being any number).
Restart the wallet and wait for it to sync.

Note that this problem is often caused by anti-virus software or firewalls. Be sure Gridcoin is not being blocked by your security software.

You can also try running the wallet as an administrator.

How could I test whether I am in sync with the network?

Compare your highest block number with the one listed at gridcoinstats.eu

When the explorer is clearly ahead of you (> 9 blocks) and increasing about every 90 seconds, your node is most likely on the fork. You can wait till it syncs or rebuild the blockchain.

When you are clearly ahead of the explorer and / or the explorer has stopped incrementing on a regular basis, it’s more likely that the explorer will sync up with you and your connected nodes at some point.

How do I get in sync fast?

Ensure you are running the latest wallet version.

While it downloads, delete the peers.dat in your data folder - you may have a bad peer group.

You can also try to reboot your router to attempt to get a new IP, to make sure you are not banned by good nodes because of earlier behavior.

I can’t get connections. How can I test whether the net is down or my node is misconfigured?

First, install telnet for your respective os.

Then open your command box and enter telnet addnode-us-central.cycy.me 32749. If there is no response, your Firewall might have blocked the port. Otherwise, your configuration might be wrong or your node may have been temporarily banned by the network.

When syncing from zero, the sync gets stuck or pauses for an untimely duration. What to do next?

Make sure you’re on the latest wallet version.

Syncing may seem to take longer with growing blockchain. If you get stuck use ‘reboot client’

Gridcoin Classic

What is Gridcoin Classic

Gridcoin Classic was the first iteration of Gridcoin. Gridcoin classic is no longer used and all coins were converted to Gridcoin Research coins via Proof of Burn. The Burn process ended on April 20, 2015. If you missed the Burn deadline, your coins are now in the possession of the Gridcoin Foundation and can no longer be claimed.

Development

Where can I find the source?

On Github

How could I participate in testnet?

Read the how to help section on the testnet wiki page

Troubleshooting

General

Some of my coins have disappeared.

Try running the client with -rescan or run the console command repairwallet.

I get the “error loading blkindex.dat” message

This is because the blkindex.dat file has become corrupt.

Close the Gridcoin wallet, make sure it is not minimized in the system tray.
Make a backup of your wallet data folder
Delete blk*.dat, the txleveldb subdirectory, and the accrual subdirectory in the wallet data folder
Restart the Gridcoin wallet. It will take some time to re-sync.

Note that errors like this often occur due to unexpected shutdowns and hardware issues. It is advised to make sure your hardware is stable and that you keep regular backups.

Error when sending a transaction

First, check that you have your wallet unlocked fully. If you have it locked for staking only, you will need to re-lock it and then unlock fully. Try sending the transaction after that. If you don’t have it locked at all, you can ignore this.

If you see Error: the transaction was rejected or you see an error saying “not enough fees”, you may have too many small UTXOs (what’s leftover from a transaction you received) to send a transaction. There is a maximums transaction size and so if a transaction tries to include to many UTXOs, it can be impossible to send. To fix this, you can try consolidating them using the consolidateunspent rpc command. For each of your addresses, try running consolidateunspent <address>. After this finishes, try sending the transaction again. This may require multiple rounds of the command if you have a lot of small transactions.

Windows Only

How can I move my data folder?

Close your wallet.
Move all data from the current location to the new location. The default location of the data is %appdata%\GridcoinResearch.
After you move the contents of the folder, right click the Gridcoin Shortcut, select properties, and add -choosedatadir to the end.
Run the wallet.
It will show the dialog box to choose the data directory.
Choose the new location.
Right-click the Gridcoin Shortcut, select properties, and remove -choosedatadir