are the number of user falling?

[beer]

I have the feelings that the number of end users that runs folding@home is getting fewer and fewer. Is there something about it?

[JimboPalmer]

There is more of a difference in power consumption between idle and full utilization. Running 24/7 is a harder sell.
Fewer PCs are desktop units. Laptops can have thermal issues.
Fewer computers are PCs. There is no iOS client, the Android client only uses one CPU, no GPU, reacts badly to big.LITTLE

But mostly, the project is run by biochemists, not known for their advertising skills, not social scientists.

[foldy]

I guess today things like pc mining is more popular. To get more users to FAH the price paid for folding must match the price paid for mining.

[toTOW]

The feeling of being helpful to the science should be enough ...

[rwh202]

If I was the project managers, it wouldn't just be the total number of users that I'd be concerned about, it would be the small number of big contributors that were being relied on.

Total folding output is around 3 billion PPD. Half of that (1.5 billion PPD) is down to just 200 folders.

Throw in the uncertainty of the various coins and how many of those 200 are solely there for the $s - 118 of them are affiliated to coins and account for over 1 billion PPD - I'd be making sure there was something in the pipeline to engage a wider audience of users and hardware.

[verlyol]

I agree with toTOW the simple fact of being useful to science should be enough...
the attraction for cryptos and profits are unfortunately stronger.

but things are changing as mining is no longer profitable ... It is hoped that some will return to the project.

[foldy]

Mining showed that millions of people will build dedicated PCs at home if they get paid for it. And the price is much lower than at professional data centers. There are other use cases like Rendering or AI computations which could be done distributed at home but they have larger requirements e.g. very fast internet connection speed because of big data.

FAH would even run on mining rigs on Linux although pcie speed on x1 risers is bottlenecking for fast GPUs and it needs one CPU thread per GPU. Current revenue for mining on fast GPU is $1 a day minus power cost. If projects like CureCoin or FoldingCoin would get more funds to pay $1.5 a day for 1 million PPD (= 10 TFLOPS) then many miners would switch to FAH driven by profit. So 1 PetaFLOP (=1000 TFLOPS) for FAH costs $150 a day = $55000 a year currently. On the other hand professional Cloud GPU renting 1 PetaFLOP costs $25000 per month = $300000 a year. Which is more than 5 times the amount compared to home GPUs. Currently FAH has 100 PetaFlops and to double that speed to 200 PetaFlops using PC at home it would cost $5.5 million a year.

But this is just hardware calculations. The most performance speedup would be if the scientists find new ways of folding protein calculations which speed up the whole process by factor 2 or 10 or 100. So just factor 2 would be worth $5.5 million a year.

[toTOW]

Mining showed that ...

... people are venal and there's no hope for mankind.

[verlyol]

... people are venal and there's no hope for mankind

I agree with that .... and things are worse than before .... money, money and money again

[verlyol]

Linking a crypto as curecoin or foldingcoin to a project based on voluntary action is not a good idea ....

unfortunately, the search for profit becomes the first priority...

[bruce]

FAH will continue to be based on Donations. (There's a good reason that we call the people who fold "donors" rather than "users" as the title of this topic shows.)

FAH has no control over what curecoin or foldingcoin do and we do not provide support for them. They do use our points as proof-of-work. We also have no control over why people choose to participate in FAH -- or not to -- except for their interest in scientiific research but we do encourage you to donate to FAH.

[rwh202]

Linking a crypto as curecoin or foldingcoin to a project based on voluntary action is not a good idea ....

unfortunately, the search for profit becomes the first priority...

I think it's unfortunate that the crypto wasn't better embraced by the folding community and instead left to the 'miners', or indeed that the coins were structured such that they encouraged them.

Instead we have huge GPU render farm mercenaries that switch from coin to coin chasing profit that suck the funds that otherwise could support 'grass roots' folding.

On the plus side, even at current prices, it heavily subsidises my £500 a month power bill that I otherwise wouldn't have the resources to contribute. Also, the windfall from the bubble in prices last year would have handsomely rewarded the longstanding volunteers and perhaps given them new impetus for new hardware (or car or house depending on how well they did).

[verlyol]

On the plus side, even at current prices, it heavily subsidises my £500 a month power bill that I otherwise wouldn't have the resources to contribute. Also, the windfall from the bubble in prices last year would have handsomely rewarded the longstanding volunteers and perhaps given them new impetus for new hardware (or car or house depending on how well they did).

Yes the bubble has allowed some to make much profit ...... and I can understand that to pay a big electricity bill this helps...
But personally I think that a project like FAH should enough for people's motivation...

On the other hand here in Belgium the cost of the electricity is high (on average 0.27 € for 1KWh) and thus it is practically not possible to make profit with alt-coins.

[artoar_11]

Where I live I watch the behavior of people. People became only consumers. They want to have new modern things (TV, iPhone, Gaming PC, Car), but they do not want to give anything to society. For many, the day begins and ends on Facebook. Too bad.

[verlyol]

Where I live I watch the behavior of people. People became only consumers. They want to have new modern things (TV, iPhone, Gaming PC, Car), but they do not want to give anything to society. For many, the day begins and ends on Facebook. Too bad.

Exactly !

I think it's the same everywhere ...Unfortunately....