Folding Forum

Good afternoon, is FoldCoin associated with Folding@Home (I guess it is ) but most importantly, is it worth setting up? i tried earlier and i faild to use my username and passkey, so I would have to start earning points from scratch?

You may be right that some people associate Fold Coin with Folding@Home, but Folding@Home has no association with FoldCoin, and there is no support at all for FoldCoin (or other such dodgy schemes) here.

Unfortunately, what I've come to understand over the last two weeks, it's that F@H is extremely closed up, with little insight of what is really being achieved. For all I know my gpu could be mining for someone else, it seems that I nor anyone else could verify or deny that. Just saying... Am I mistaken?

[like you, I am just a volunteer here, I have no inside knowledge of F@H philosophy]

I am not sure I understand, F@H is doing important COVID-19 work. (and other diseases) The researchers are indeed focused on the research, as they should be.

If you visualize F@H as entertainment for volunteer folders, then yes, that is not the goal here.

And yes, if you do not care how much scientific impact you are achieving, there are many other options.

One would assume that when you are offeredsuch computation power, for free non the less, you can afford to be more forth coming and open about the how, the where and the why you do what you do. Again, am I mistaken?

This here is just the support forum for users and there is no support for, say, satellite solutions like FoldingCoin - for that you'd have to look at https://foldingcoin.net
You can just hope that some forum dwellers also use FoldingCoin and will be able to help you. But in almost a year that I follow this forum, on and off, I never heard of it.
If you're interested in the research, the science of FAH, there's https://foldingathome.org/home/ (and the corresponding menus)
You'll also find news and infos on https://twitter.com/foldingathome and https://www.facebook.com/Foldinghome-136059519794607/
There also is a Twitter account for the Covid Moonshot project: https://twitter.com/covid_moonshot that FAH is involved in. Some FAH researchers also have a Twitter account. For example: https://twitter.com/drGregBowman https://twitter.com/jchodera
Then there are a couple of Discord servers, one is public (https://discord.com/invite/foldingathome ), another is a bit more restricted and gathers developers.
Many exchanges are led on github.com, most notably https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/fah-issues/issues
It is a very decentralized organisation to the point it can feel vague and hard to grasp. The only "core" would be the Consortium: https://foldingathome.org/about/the-fol ... onsortium/ based at https://bowmanlab.biochem.wustl.edu/

Tbh there is a lot of information available ... much needs grad level understanding of molecular dynamics to understand in full ... but most projects have a good layman's description of what each is doing ... data produced is public domain ... academic papers are published ... webinars and videos are shared/available ... some of the web pages are a tad dated which can be confusing ... and there are some misunderstandings where better communication up front (if new folders would ever read it) might avoid these in areas such as impact of equipment (heat, noise, power costs) or how academic research is about improving the science and knowledge not directly producing cures although research may well lead to these ... the various coin and reward systems are ways different groups incentivise folding participation but are all managed by the various groups and as a help forum for FaH advising on those is outside the remit ... as a support forum you will find lots of information about issues (and of course most people use the forums have them) but actually there are far more folders than forum members or guests so things may seem worse than they really are ... general information about fah isn't as such a support issue and this is covered in other channels as previously mentioned but there is quite a lot available

iero wrote:Unfortunately, what I've come to understand over the last two weeks, it's that F@H is extremely closed up, with little insight of what is really being achieved. For all I know my gpu could be mining for someone else, it seems that I nor anyone else could verify or deny that. Just saying... Am I mistaken?

Are you asking for proof that Folding@Home isn't a scam front-end for cryptocurrency mining?

Interesting question but typical of today's world. All the evidence is that it is doing very scientifically valuable research with multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers published and funding from giant corporations. No evidence or even a suggestion of such has been made that it is a scam and unless you have some evidence I suggest that your "question" is illegitimate and somewhat troll-like. No offense meant.

iero wrote:Unfortunately, what I've come to understand over the last two weeks, it's that F@H is extremely closed up, with little insight of what is really being achieved. For all I know my gpu could be mining for someone else, it seems that I nor anyone else could verify or deny that. Just saying... Am I mistaken?

You are mistaken. If you use the folding client downloaded from the official site or the few associated repositories that have requested permission, the client only connects to Folding@home servers for work. It does not do any mining for anyone including FoldingCoin. What you are getting from FoldingCoin or the few other sites/teams awarding cryptocurrency is an award of their currency based on the number of points given for your work by Folding@home.

Here is the official statement on cryptocurrencies - https://foldingathome.org/2019/01/14/fo ... ?lng=en-US. Basically Folding@home is treating them as it does any other team based reward, beyond acknowledging they exist the project is not supporting them or distributing them, and any questions about them need to go to the supporting group. Besides these groups with cryptocurrencies there are teams that award such items as virtual badges to discounts on hardware purchases.

So in the end when you fold using the F@h client what the project awards you is points. Useful for tracking how much your systems have done in comparison with others. Based on those points some organizations will give you something more, but those items are not officially determined by or connected with F@h. In the case of cryptocurrencies, depending on their current ability to be exchanged you might make some money to cover a part of your costs of electricity, etc. But F@h is not involved in that part, and probably can not be involved officially in that under the terms of the various research grants they get from government and private sources.

iero wrote:Unfortunately, what I've come to understand over the last two weeks, it's that F@H is extremely closed up, with little insight of what is really being achieved. For all I know my gpu could be mining for someone else, it seems that I nor anyone else could verify or deny that. Just saying... Am I mistaken?

By using the word mining, you're not hearing the earlier statement that FAH is NOT associated with any cybercoin and does not support them. (They're welcome to support FAH if they choose to.)

Any cybercoin may elect to use points earned by folding proteins but we are not allied with any of them. We generate scientific results which are then published in the public domain. That also means we are not allied with any drug company. They're welcome to use or not use our results free-of-charge.

If a specific site chooses to award cybecoins based on the scientific results you produce, fine... you can do both at the same time.

The various folding-related "coin" programs are entirely opt-in, and (as others explained) F@H has absolutely no involvement with managing them. F@H neither endorses nor denounces them. People opt in to these programs by following whatever convention the program has for designating members; generally it involves setting your client's group option to the program's group number and adding an identification-string/wallet-address/whatever to your username so the coin thing knows where to send the "coins".

But if you just use F@H as normal and do not do anything special to join one of these programs, you will have no involvement with anything coin-related.

It's also worth noting that those involved in any of the folding "coin" schemes are still folding the same work units and advancing the same projects as everyone else. They get no special treatment (positive or negative) from F@H. As long as they follow the rules, anyone is permitted (and encouraged) to participate in folding, regardless of their motivations or group membership.