Folding Forum

He could donate the 100,000 dollars.
Why put out 100,000 dollars to have people use so much computer to "mine" coins that are meant to get people to fold?
Maybe get some other big donors to kick in some money to be use as Prize money or some other enticement?
It is the mining part that just seems fishy. That is a lot of computer power to do exactly what?
One thing I heard is it keeps track of all the coins.
So how does it make money and for who? IRS DEA DHS and other ABC government agencies are looking into all these coins.

Bill1024 wrote:It is the mining part that just seems fishy. That is a lot of computer power to do exactly what?
One thing I heard is it keeps track of all the coins.
So how does it make money and for who? IRS DEA DHS and other ABC government agencies are looking into all these coins.

Cryptocurrency coins (BTC, Curecoins, etc) are just a number, and you own it by way of ownership of a private key.

Mining is the process of adding transactions to the public ledger, known as a blockchain. The SHA-256 checksum takes both the transaction and the hash of the previous block as input, creating a chain. The very basic statistical math together with the unpredictability over of the SHA-256 output is what enables proof-of-work being used this way, where difficulty can be specified. The public ledgers thus have a lot of computation and verification behind them, and whichever blockchain with the greatest amount of computational power behind it is the one everyone uses. This is how everyone agrees on a single chain, and this setup makes it very infeasible to launch attacks against it. In return for processing the transactions and ensuring this security, miners are rewarded with coins as a sort of transaction tax.

CygnusXI, I think the idea behind curecoin is brilliant, but some hardcore folders treat folding very seriously, for example: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=25411&p=253960#p253958. So yeh, I think this whole thing is a very delicate matter, if it is not done correctly, a lot of people will get annoyed.

I can see it perhaps working, but probably being limited to say a single project (at least initially), quite separate from F@H and its point system itself.

Maybe difficult for single projects as we donors have only limited control on what project we are working on. But I could imagine to say: only SMP projects are entitled for coins. Core A3 and A4. But also that might be difficult to implement; depends on if there is any interface between FAH and CC.

There is no interface between CC and FAH. CC downloads the stats files like any other 3rd party stats site.

P5-133XL wrote:I really don't think that PG has the income necessary to pay people to fold.

This is what makes cryptocurrency the perfect medium for this type of reward system. The value is determined by many factors, just take a look at Bitcoin and all the hype of investing into it. BTC peaked at 1250 USD $ per bitcoin. Curecoin having a value attached to medical research would create another crowd of investors that want to buy curecoins for their investment opportunity. This is what will enable curecoin to pay folders a modest amount of " currency ".

Bill1024 wrote:Why not just have PG pay a penny per 100 points (or what ever the payout rate has to be) so that all the computer power is directed at FAH and not mining?
And folders can stay on their teams and there are no lost computer cycles going to who know what all that "mining" computer power it self, is being used for.

I think you are referring to the mining of the blockchain to secure transactions. This is now done by ASIC miners, no one uses GPUs or CPUs to mine SHA 256 algo coins anymore, because they just cant compete against the ASIC miners. The asic miners can not fold, so curecoin will put the asic miners to work doing what they do best, which is securing the blockchain. This leaves all available the GPU / CPU with the only option to earn many curecoins by folding.

7im wrote:There is no interface between CC and FAH. CC downloads the stats files like any other 3rd party stats site.

This is correct. FAH is already a fine tuned creation that I would never wish to change. Curecoin systems will operate indepently and will require no additional work from FAH to gain the benefits. Changing the FAH system is something that I think everyone here would agree is outright stupid. Curecoin will act much like a 3rd party plugin / client in the sense that we require no additional data from FAH. Pande labs has put far to much work into the FAH system for anyone to ask them to change it. Maybe someday 10 years down the road from now these things will be different. As both systems grow, adapt, and knowledge is shared there is a chance that even more amazing things may develop. I dont want to put my foot in my mouth since curecoin has not even officially launched yet, however, Curecoin team has paid many $ worth of crypto currencies to encourage folding and so far things are pretty good for still being under development. Since may 1st 2013 we have climbed the ranks into a current position of Rank # 240. This is a good show of its potential.

To repeat myself and what 7im said and clarify, FAH will in no way give Curecoin any special access to its servers. It is not needed, nor would I want access to FAH systems. FAH is perfect like it is, Curecoin is capable operating independantly of FAH, Without increasing the work load in any unnecessary way. The only anticipated increase will be more WU's being served from FAH servers to the folders. That is certainly a good use of server power.

Hmm, if you don't consider the financial aspect of curecoin, it sounds like a "third-party cryptographically enhanced Folding@Home score exchange system". Although if you market curecoin in that way, nobody would actually want to play with curecoin.

Is there an ETA for PG's official position on curecoin?

Jesse_V wrote:

Bill1024 wrote:It is the mining part that just seems fishy. That is a lot of computer power to do exactly what?
One thing I heard is it keeps track of all the coins.
So how does it make money and for who? IRS DEA DHS and other ABC government agencies are looking into all these coins.

Cryptocurrency coins (BTC, Curecoins, etc) are just a number, and you own it by way of ownership of a private key.

Mining is the process of adding transactions to the public ledger, known as a blockchain. The SHA-256 checksum takes both the transaction and the hash of the previous block as input, creating a chain. The very basic statistical math together with the unpredictability over of the SHA-256 output is what enables proof-of-work being used this way, where difficulty can be specified. The public ledgers thus have a lot of computation and verification behind them, and whichever blockchain with the greatest amount of computational power behind it is the one everyone uses. This is how everyone agrees on a single chain, and this setup makes it very infeasible to launch attacks against it. In return for processing the transactions and ensuring this security, miners are rewarded with coins as a sort of transaction tax.

The base code for Curecoin which will be open source is a slightly different and newer breed of Bitcoin. Using the "Proof of Stake" system side by side with "proof of work" on the block chain along with some other parameters of the coin make the model of Curecoin even more secure then Bitcoin. There is no known attack including the 51% attack that could corrupt the Curecoin block chain. Ive also done my homework on checkpointing blockchains which can add another layer of security making the system far more secure then the current popular Bitcoin. This check pointing is actually unnecessary due to the amount of security the "proof of stake" model brings. Checkpointing will be implemented anyways for maximum security.

But still I would like to learn how CC want to identify each individual contributions securely; usernames are not unique. Only passkeys are; given that they based on email addresses supposed to be unique.

Oh, and happy new year all together !

fangfufu wrote:...Is there an ETA for PG's official position on curecoin?

Please note that PG doesn't give any ETAs. They will announce whenever they are ready.

fangfufu wrote:Hmm, if you don't consider the financial aspect of curecoin, it sounds like a "third-party cryptographically enhanced Folding@Home score exchange system". Although if you market curecoin in that way, nobody would actually want to play with curecoin.

CureCoin is a completely separate entity. They are simply marketing part of their operation towards FAH, while the rest is towards the growing cryptocoin market.

fangfufu wrote:Is there an ETA for PG's official position on curecoin?

This is the current position. viewtopic.php?p=253464#p253464 This position will not change if or until stated otherwise. As noted, PG never gives ETAs until shortly before an impending release. So far, there is nothing to release.

7im wrote:

fangfufu wrote:Is there an ETA for PG's official position on curecoin?

This is the current position. viewtopic.php?p=253464#p253464 This position will not change if or until stated otherwise. As noted, PG never gives ETAs until shortly before an impending release. So far, there is nothing to release.

I'm not sure I understand why you're waiting for an official FAH position statement. Is my understanding incorrect? Apparently Curecoin is an independent organization which can proceed without any server changes by FAH.

Only a negative statement would change anything. I suppose that iIf FAH decides it is unwilling to endorse CC, we may need to reclassify this discussion as unauthorized but it would probably still be treated as a 3rd party add-on of sorts unless some sort of damage to FAH was discovered.

In either case, we would still insist that you should never reveal your passkey to anyone.

bruce wrote:

7im wrote:

fangfufu wrote:Is there an ETA for PG's official position on curecoin?

This is the current position. viewtopic.php?p=253464#p253464 This position will not change if or until stated otherwise. As noted, PG never gives ETAs until shortly before an impending release. So far, there is nothing to release.

I'm not sure I understand why you're waiting for an official FAH position statement. Is my understanding incorrect? Apparently Curecoin is an independent organization which can proceed without any server changes by FAH.

Only a negative statement would change anything. I suppose that iIf FAH decides it is unwilling to endorse CC, we may need to reclassify this discussion as unauthorized but it would probably still be treated as a 3rd party add-on of sorts unless some sort of damage to FAH was discovered.

In either case, we would still insist that you should never reveal your passkey to anyone.

Please let me explain while Im waiting. This is very important. The potential of curecoin, broken down to numbers....

84.08 gh current litecoin speed.
50 mhash = ~ 6 million PPD
84,080 mhash in litecoin / 50 mhash = 1681.6 * 6 million PPD = 10,089,600,000 PPD
10,089,600,000 PPD could be produced by the litecoin users alone. And there are 100's of other scrypt based ( gpu friendly non ASIC ) cryptocoins with a lot of gpus pointed at them. A large portion of these miners are just waiting for Curecoin to launch, because they are tired of wasting electricity on worthless algorithms. I have my doubts as to the ability of the current FAH server to be able to hand out that many WU's without overloading. This is why Ill be sending an obligation free donation of at least $5000 USD to the FAH servers.

The potential of curecoin is not just something to ignore. Even if only 10% of the litecoin crowd decides to try curecoin thats still going to up the speed of the FAH network greatly. 10% of only litecoin ( dont forget there are hundreds of other scrypt coins with gpus pointed at them) would produce a work load equal to 1 billion PPD. I have yet to get any solid answers on how much more available server power is on the current FAH servers. So by waiting for these answers Im saving FAH a lot of potential future headaches and server overloads. I would also like to get the 5000$ donation to FAH first and let Pande Labs do the upgrades they would like to do to their servers.

I also need to know if 5000$ is enough to upgrade the FAH servers to handle the max potential of curecoin. Thousands of massive GPU farms are ready to jump onto the FAH network the second I say the word go. I hear that people are even planning on buying out all of the amazon ec2 and gpu clusters to aim at FAH for the launch of curecoin, including all the other VPS and GPU cluster services. This means simply, a large portion of all the worlds computing power will be aimed at FAH when curecoin launches. Ive already recieved reports of the numbers of people that plan to fold for curecoin. Expect to see FAH hit speeds that will make 10 petaflops look like a propeller plan versus a SR-71a Blackbird. When the time comes and everyone is ready, this is what will happen.

Ill be conducting another small scale test soon, but this one will be a little different from the others (not as small scale as the other tests). This test will be launched announced at curecoin.us .

ps, almost forgot to address the passkey issue. I will not ever ask anyone for their private key. My system is capable of tracking users work output while still not allowing anyone to steal points from another user.