Hello! I wrote a fairly lengthy response yesterday while extremely tired (you can read it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=268556.msg2889177#msg2889177 ) to someone asking why CureCoin was different form the plethora of other Alt-Coins. I didn't want to copy+paste that response as it's terribly written and poorly organized, but I figured this question was likely not special to him, and is something that should be addressed so people can make an informed decision about the currency.

Summary of CureCoin:
CureCoin is a project developed to serve two primary functions: be a currency, and provide incentive for computing power to be pointed towards computational research projects, such as protein folding.

The criteria for a work algorithm for a cryptocurrency involves work that can change difficulty, but at any difficulty confirming that the work was done correctly is incredibly simple. Hashing algorithms provide this; the resulting/winning hash can be required to have a certain number of fixed characters at the beginning (if a hash looked like 4a7ccd8edb0affec03a, but the requirement was that the first two characters were 0's, then that hash wouldn't be a winner. Additionally, while it may require millions, billions, or even trillions of attempts at finding a hash that meets a specific difficulty requirement, once one is found, everyone can, nearly instantly, confirm that it is the correct answer, and the can easily follow the same 'path' that he found to work (nonce, etc.). Folding (and other similar projects) don't have a proof of work that can support this type of need, and so the network had to be based on hashing functions.

CureCoin, however, sets aside 45% of the coins from each block, and distributes them to people who do folding work. While it is a somewhat centralized system for the distribution of that currency, there are some small plans that are looking to create 'trusted' pools of sorts, reducing the centralization of this method. At release, from my understanding, a server (with at least one failover server in place) will keep track of everyone's folding points on a daily basis, and award CureCoins based on those points. For example, if the CureCoin team earns 100,000,000 points on Tuesday, and I generated 1,000,000 points, then I would get 1% of the 45%, which, at a block reward of 100, would be 0.45 curecoins.

Now, there are of course 10% of the coins missing in the above explanation. From what I understand, the exact way those 10% are divided up is still up in the air, but according to cygnusxi (the lead CureCoin developer), this gives a rough estimate:
(All these percents are percents of the remaining 10%)
10% advertising
10% forum promotions - including universisty forums.
10% For stanford university to improve folding network.
10% Dev future updates on coin source and folding integration system
30% nvidia hardware giveaways
10% website / hosting DDoS protection for backbone nodes.
10% promoting services to accept / trade curecoins

The advertising will be bigger at the beginning, in an attempt to rope in three key sets of people: folders, NVidia GPU owners, and the general public, and appeals to each in a different way, which I will discuss later.

Forum promotions fall under the same line, as I understand.

Dev future updates refers to hiring other developers for specific purposes, whether it's security for the folding payout system(s), integration of future distributed computing projects, improvement to code, etc.

NVidia hardware giveaways will be giving away NVidia GPUs to some of the folders, allowing them to fold faster. Even though ATi cards may be a bit faster at folding for a lower price, NVidia cards have two things going for them: a guarantee that the folders won't switch the cards over to mining, and the future promise of JIT CUDA extensions, which may make NVidia cards severly outperform ATI cards if Stanford's FAHCores are rewritten to take advantage of CUDA again.

Website/hosting/protection is pretty self explanatory.

Promoting services to accept curecoins: this isn't just paying merchants to get them interested, but (I would imagine) also paying people to develop curecoin payment systems, help with the integration of these systems into existing stores, open new stores revolving around CureCoin, and finally paying people to promote CureCoin to potential businesses.

Why not just give some Bitcoin to some people who fold?
While this seems like a good idea, it simply wouldn't work. There wouldn't be a predictable amount of income for folders, there would likely be few people willing to just donate bitcoins to the cause, and it would not cover the many advantages CureCoin offers.

Advantages of CureCoin:
CureCoin offers a system by which folders can be guaranteed a predictable pay for their work.
CureCoin, maintaining a constant reward scheme (blocks @ 2.5 min, 100 total coins per block, 45 to folders), ensures that folding rewards will be predictable, and that there will be some sum of money guaranteed for their folding efforts.
CureCoin improves the public image of cryptos.
While BitCoin has a few fundamental flaws that people love to criticize (proof of work does nothing useful, electricity is wasted, ASICs trump GPU Miners), CureCoin has some good solutions for many of them.

The CureCoin proof of work is, indeed, useless, however the other half of the mining puzzle, the folding, has great scientific benefit (curing Alzheimer's, Huntington's, some types of Cancer, TB, etc.) and is a great use of electricity. So, in essence, only around half of the electricity used in accordance with CureCoin is 'wasted', the other part contributes to society quite well.

One thing many people with GPUs take issue with is ASICs. ASICs are the bad guys, they are out to get the GPU miners, etc. etc. (BTW, I have ASICs on order). With CureCoin, an ASIC for the hashing algorithm is quite possible, and in fact quite probable. While, at coin launch, all the people folding are using GPUs and CPUs and all the people mining are also using GPUs, when FPGAs or ASICs specific to the hashing algorithm are released, then the GPU miners will move solely over to folding. ASICs for CureCoin will actually be an amazing thing; the blockchain will be well-secured against large-budget attacks with custom integrated circuit projects and other forking attempts, the GPU (and even CPU!) miners will be able to still earn money just fine, and ALL GPUs and CPUs related to curecoin will be focused on protein folding. Triple win.

Additionally, if somehow ASICs or FPGAs for protein folding were developed, not only would it be an amazing breakthrough for science, but it would also not cover any other projects that CureCoin decides to dedicate itself to. (More info on this in the next advantage).

CureCoin can adapt:
CureCoin is not limited to just Folding At Home, or even just Protein folding. The framework is there to support any number of similar distributed computing projects, as well as those that may arise in the future.

CureCoin is backed by something more than trust in a cryptographic algorithm:
Another major complaint about Bitcoin is that it 'isn't backed by anything' except the faith and value that people put into the coin itself. Personally, I feel that this is all a crypto needs in order to work (or any currency, for that matter!), but for people looking for a project that backs the coins with something more than crypto, this project is also backed by computational research.

CureCoin can be used as a means for wealthier people to contribute to scientific computation:
Each CureCoin represents some amount of computational research backing it. As time goes on, the amount of computational research backing a coin increases, as more folders start competing for those 45 coins per block. Therefore, if, say, the 25,920 (24^2*45) folding coins per day goes out on day one to folders with a total of 2,592,000 folding points, then on day two those same coins go out to folders who are combined making 7,776,000 points per day, each curecoin would represent ~0.00000868% of the total CureCoin money supply, where the total money supply represents 10,368,000 points. However, if the next day twice as many folding points are acquired, suddenly each curecoin represents even more computational research. They can be traded as a currency, but also as something similar to carbon offsets--by buying them, you are putting value into the system and encouraging more people to fold, as well as being able to contribute to such computational research projects without getting 'down and dirty' with the hardware and software involved.

CureCoin allows more people with more hardware to participate:
CureCoin makes it so that ATi Cards, NVidia Cards, and powerful CPUs are all strong contenders for folding, and will stay so for the far forseeable future.

CureCoin would be harder to stop:
It would be fairly easy for a government, group of people, company, etc. to ban Bitcoin and justify it. Banning a coin that wastes electricity seems easy to defend. However, banning a coin that contributes to scientific and medical advances, contributes to society, and pushes academic research years if not decades ahead would be much harder to justify, so CureCoin would have a better chance at fairing against bans of any sort.

The press CureCoin will receive will benefit all cryptos:
Since CureCoin will improve the public image of cryptos and show that a cryptocoin can do something aside from waste electricity and be involved in the sale of black-market items, CureCoin will generate positive press for cryptocurrencies in general, and help to make them more palatable for the general public.

Finally: It's something new.
CureCoin is a new breed of CryptoCurrencies, it's a hybrid between cryptography and computational research, and serves to further both.

That's not to say there aren't some disadvantages. Since on launch it will be based on only one research project, if that project's databases were to be compromised, it would be a pretty big deal. However, as CureCoin evolves and adopts more projects, if one project is compromised, CureCoin can simply drop that project until it's fixed, people/'miners' will lose, at most, a day of computational research, and the coin's reward scheme can avoid being compromised. However, while in its infancy, FAH being compromised would be a big deal.

Another disadvantage to CureCoin is that there are some more centralized aspects of it. However, as the coin grows larger, this centralization will naturally decrease (more research projects, more trusted pools, etc. etc.).

Before anyone goes off on a rant about how CureCoin is the same old sh!tcoin that (almost) every other alt seems to be (Litecoin, PPCoin, Primecoin being some great exceptions to this), please read this fully, and make an informed decision of whether or not you want to support this project.

I've just had to reinstall a few times on that testbed machine, trying different types of configurations and such, lol.

Have you tried quitting all F@H processes, deleting the 00 and 01 items in the C:\Users\You\AppData\Roaming\FAHClient\work folder? That will force it to acquire new work, which may download core_17-based work units.

Oh, now my long response above looks a bit silly.... Ah well.

Below preserved for old-time's sake, however some information has changed slightly, for the better!
Changes include:
-Coin now based on SHA256, so all GPUs can focus on folding, while ASICs secure the blockchain
-Mining pools (and folding of course) will both be available at launch
-The way we plan to launch the coin will make insta-mine impossible
-Backing means that the currency can be exchanged for what backs it. Curecoin isn't technically backed, because you can't trade CureCoin into reversing medical research, which simply doesn't make sense. However, CureCoin DERIVES VALUE from both cryptographic proof-of-work and the ever-growing amount of medical and scientific research that each curecoin represents, allowing the currency to act as a commodity, currency, and 'offset'. It functions as an offset similar to carbon, where people can purchase them to hold something that represents something good, without actually getting down-and-dirty. However, these act as value-gaining carbon offsets, because as time goes on and folding power increases, although the coins increase as well, this means that the amount of folding that each unit of currency represents grows. Therefore, the longer you hold onto a CureCoin, the more research it represents. As an added bonus, you can hold the currency for a period of time, contribute to the well-being of the project, and then later sell them, likely for a profit.
-The network has a push-pull effect using exchanges (both distributed and centralized) as a means of transport. Therefore, an increase of ASIC power will indirectly make the price rise (as it will become more scarce in production per Wh of power). As price goes up, folding become more profitable, so by joining the network with your ASIC, you are also helping to promote folding. Likewise, a similar effect can be seen by someone folding, as that then increases the scarcity, making ASIC mining slightly more profitable, so folding indirectly contributes to network security through this push-pull common-sense economic rule.
-CureCoin will be released fairly soon, look for it this month if all goes well.
-What does CureCoin provide to:
-->ASIC Owners: Money, ability to indirectly contribute to scientific research, ability to support network security, and the ability to gain coinage which represents medical/scientific research, currently protein folding, though more projects may be added as the project progresses.
-->GPU owners: GPU owners can directly impact scientific research, use their GPUs to earn a coin without having to waste electricity on a proof-of-work that doesn't provide anything except network security, make money.
-->Investors: Just like any other coin, it can be traded. However, certain elements about this coin contribute to a stronger value. Each coin represents a quantity of scientific research which is ever-increasing, as well as being backed by a network. It has the computational assets of CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs giving support to the system.
-->Philanthropists: You can invest money into a system which continues to return scientific value for every unit of currency through the research each unit of the currency represents. Additionally, unlike many other moral investments, if needed, CureCoin can be sold, as it is a currency and has certain properties of a commodity. Holding it for a period of time, even if its not indefinite, still helps the project significantly by increasing coinage value and encouraging more GPU-folding and ASIC-based network security. It's quite possible to put money in, hold for a period, and sell it for a significant profit margin. Like most other cryptos, an increase in mining doesn't result in an increase of coin supply. Therefore, the coin production becomes more scarce per capita, so as a general trend value will increase. However, value is also added by the scientific research each unit represents. It's quite possible to help the network significantly while turning a profit. That's unique.
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Essentially, this boils down to human nature. CryptoCurrencies are backed by something -- faith in a system. A belief that a certain system is a fair way to distribute a currency that will withstand the test of time, power, and technological innovation. If SHA256 was found to be flawed and could be reversed (which, I think, would require an addition of a subset of mathematics), then the value of Bitcoin would plummet--because the faith that backs it would be lost.

Mining BTC and giving to those who fold would be a great idea, however due to human's propensity towards greed, people are not likely to simply give away Bitcoins to strangers for doing cool stuff. The person who creates a cure for AIDS isn't gonna be rich (monetarily speaking), unless he turns it into a product. Not only do humans have a tendency to hold tightly onto money, but they also would likely seek a different cause if they were to donate some coinage, as there are many worthwhile charities that accept both Bitcoin and, to a lesser extent, Litecoin. The creation of CureCoin solves two problems--No one has to give away money for the folding to happen, and there is a somewhat-centralized system that controls the distribution of the coin to miners/folders. People like to yell a lot about decentralization, but every network is, in some form, centralized, and there are times when putting limited power into the trusted party proves beneficial. Anarchy is as close to decentralization as society becomes, and look how far that has got us. Don't get me wrong, CureCoin is still a decentralized coin, but it centralized a common goal: folding in order to learn more about some of the world's most horrible diseases, and work towards a cure!

The purpose of CureCoin is twofold: be a currency, and do meaningful computation. Depending on how you define 'meaningful computation', you will likely find yourself looking at projects like Folding@Home, WCG, CollatzConjecture, SETI@Home, DSRTGen, and more, similar such projects. These projects take a lot of CPU time (or GPU time) to compute, however the fundamental difference between throwing computing power at hashing and at folding is that hashing is trying many iterations of a problem to find what the right answer is, folding is doing computation to arrive at the correct answer. For this reason, each piece of hashing work can be done extremely quickly, making it a very easy-to-check proof-of-work. CryptoCurrencies are built on a foundation of hard-to-find, easy-to-check proof-of-work schemes. However, with folding, if it takes x amount of computing power to arrive at an answer, unless the underlying software is optimized, then it will take x amount of computing power to recompute the workunit and ensure that the computation was done correctly. Another critical issue that lacks in distributed computing projects through BOINC and FAH/F@H is the ability to change difficulty. CryptoCurrency/CryptoCoins are able to adjust the difficulty by making less resulting hashes (or in some case ciphers.....) a fair answer. For example, if a hash of coinZER looks like ab3c8c04c9930148bab0e09f, then we can make spot 0 have to be a '1', thereby making only 1/16th of the hashes possible solutions. Of course, that's not good enough. That's too easy. What if the first eight characters have to be '1' though? Then, only 1/(16^8) hashes will be a correct answer, which is a much higher difficulty, however that winning hash is just as easy to confirm. While it's true that the difficulty of workunits can be increased, it can't (very well) be put into a pooled system (unless it is the type of work that can be broken up into smaller units easily, such as DSRTGen), and the time to confirm transactions increases linearly with block difficulty. Finally, the block hash plays an integral role in the core functions of a cryptocurrency, which I can go more in-depth if you have the time and interest.

By allowing the coin to run on the tried-and-true hashing-based cryptocurrencies, we can have all the benefits of a crypto-coin (controllable block speed, ability to pool-mine, good use for ATI cards, block security, block-chain security, a fairly good source of entropy (like giveaways using the last 8 digits of the block hash as a seed for a procedural random number generator, etc.), a distributed transaction system, and a public transaction ledger). Additionally, by splitting the block into three subsidy groups, we can set a coin to a purpose--providing funding for worth-wile research. Around half of the electricity spent on this project will be put towards folding proteins, helping to find cures for everything from cancer to TB to Alzheimer's. As well, it acts as a commodity, or even a currency with true backing. Just like carbon offset credits can be traded, CureCoins can be bought and sold, and the holder of a CureCoin can know that that CureCoin represents some amount of computational research. Additionally, it provides a system for people with padded wallets to contribute to such projects without getting 'down and dirty.' By buying CureCoins, they of course increase the CureCoin trading value. This increase in value will lead more people to mine and, more importantly, fold, in order to acquire the coin. The success of the coin also carries with it the success of the folding project(s) that CureCoin currently or in the future participates in.

In short: The Coin provides a means of subsidizing the costs, and even providing profits, for people who do folding projects. It doubles as a currency and as a sort of 'buy folding' system, through which an increase in value, instead of just lining the pockets of smart investors, also helps to find cures for common diseases. It makes it so that the normal electricity used by mining is put to some good use, and even those who mine help not only to secure the network, but to imbalance the scale as to encourage more to fold, as folding profitability vs mining profitability would then increase.

By providing such a service, CureCoin will be the first cryptocurrency to be backed by scientific research AND people's trust in provably-secure cryptographic functions. By altering the existing codebase of cryptocurrencies, a system can be created to act as a currency and as a system by which people who don't want to fold, but would like to support the research, can purchase into the coin, raising the value, and causing a ripple effect encouraging more people to fold.

There is third purpose that CureCoin presents, one which isn't present in ANY current cryptocoin. It evens the table between AMD and NVidia GPUs. Not only does it make it so the NVidia fanboys in our community can have some fun, it also brings the other half of the gaming community into folding. "You mean I can use my NVidia GPU to make money while I SLEEP? Oh mah... how do I even?" Getting more of the general audience into a cryptocoin is always a good thing, and will help both CureCoin and the precious Bitcoin to grow. NVidia owners are finally able to get Bitcoins for the folding that they're cards do well, and can participate in the crypto communt(y/ies).


Finally, the fourth purpose CureCoin presents is that of good press. How could anyone be against a coin that works to establish cures for terrible diseases? It alleviates many of the common general-public complaints about Bitcoin. Bitcoin seems like something that's a bit scary, it's decentralized, it's digital money, it wastes electricity! However, CureCoin uses that electricity and puts around half of it (perhaps a bit more or less, depending on the day and the hardware giveaways) into something useful. Additionally, it adds some level of centralization to members of the folding community, helps develop that community further, and introduces an entirely different crowd of computer enthusiasts into the CryptoCoin scene.

If you need reasons to back CureCoin, I'll hand them out like candy.

• Supports Meaningful Research
• Improves public image of CryptoCurrencies
• Allows miners to choose to do something productive with their hardware
• Takes advantage of NVidia hardware
• Introduces folders to cryptocoins
• Introduces the other half of gamers to cryptocoins
• Pushes scientific research years ahead, could end up saving your life
• Makes cryptos more palatable to the general public
• Would be harder for someone to justify attacking or banning (You BANNNED research into cures for diseases? You MONSTER!)
• Produces a system by which those with computer and folding expertise can be paid for their work
• Produces a system by which those with plenty of money but no desire to actually fold themselves can support the cause

Beyond just being a cool Alt-Coin, this currency is truly an improvement over Bitcoin. Some of the things that have plagued Bitcoin (waste of electricity!, useless POW, bad public reception, fairly slow blocks, backed by nothing, hyper-outdating of hardware (GPUs to ASICs....) have been (or will be...) solved or greatly improved by this coin! No one is going to make a folding ASIC, so GPUs will always be relevant to the project. Due to the new project types and such constantly being released, an ASIC would be a very tricky and expensive task. If one were to somehow be made, though, the scientific implications would be fantastic! CureCoin plans to use blocks that are faster than 10 minutes (if I remember correctly), so transactions will confirm a bit faster, and the massive slowdowns that Bitcoin occasionally experiences (1 hr between blocks during bad luck) will be reduced, as the chance of an hour passing with no blocks is much more common with 6 blocks an hour target, rather than 12 or 18, etc. The electricity will now be being put to a good use and will serve humanity a purpose! Finally, CureCoin is backed by both cryptographically-sound hashing functions and scientific computing, which provides greater backing than Bitcoin currently has. And it improves the public image of cryptos. Cheers!

Great idea, now that I look at it again after reading that, I feel that 'curecoin' is kinda lopsided, in that most coins have text all the way around.

Technically yes, this is how to do folding to 'earn' curecoin, however the word 'mining' makes more sense to most people in this forum.

Mining the coin serves the benefit it does for every other coin; security, and producing a block chain around provably-fair cryptographic hashing functions. It would be better if everyone threw all their power at folding (at least for the folding project), however it would then not produce a currency.

Plenty of accounts and points to go around! (:

Figured such would be the response, guess I was overly-hopeful xD

:\

Hello everyone! I was browsing around for deals on buying multiple GPUs in bulk. I came across AliExpress, and they have some sick pricing. However, from what I've read on the internet about them, some dealers are legit, some are not. It's like a Chinese ebay... does anyone have experience buying GPUs from them? I'm specifically looking at these two links (NVidia, because folding ):
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Brand-New-GeForce-GTX-TITAN-6GB-GDDR5-384bit-Graphics-Cards-06G-P4-2790-KR/1080872821.html
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Brand-New-GeForce-GTX-780-SuperClocked-3GB-GDDR5-384bit-GTX780-Graphics-Cards-03G-P4-2783-KR/1035322418.html

Any experiences?

MCXNOW and cryptsy, as well as CryptoTrade (or somethin' like that).

The other teams with the same PPD have, on average, over 700,000,000 points. We have 7,000,000.

Is this still for sale?

Oh, quick question, do you have a kill-a-watt? If you do, I'd love to know the power draw on a system with a titan folding

Awesome!!

Yeah, a shrink-wrapped GPU box is so tempting though xD

You can trade GLC over at cryptsy.com, they're not worth much gurrently though
https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/76

I have one installed, one sitting in a box. I purchased it with the expectation of a CUDA primecoin miner, which never really happened. So I left the card in-box, waiting for either CureCoin's public release if it turns out to be really profitable, or to sell it on ebay and get my money back. Personally, I find ATi systems seem to give better PPDPD, but worse density. I have some of my scrypt machines (the rest are waiting on wifi cards, I can't for the life of me find where I put my spare pci-e wifi cards, but they're only $10/pop, so I ordered some more) pointed, and the 7950, which is around $270 now, hits a good 80,000 PPD, while my 780 hits a solid 110,000, at a price of $660. However, the nvidia card uses less power. Figures.

Oh, cost estimate stuff is in the post above, I did a quick edit

True Also, titan will probably hold resale value a tad bit better. I'm gonna go see which is more profitable considering the titan's higher density.

EDIT: For people looking into building a high-end folding machine, a 3x titan machine would cost $3626 a pop (with a platinum PSU, 4-core processor (need), 4GB RAM, etc), and would produce around 420000 PPD (Wow!).

A 3x780 machine would cost a more modest $2640.18, while producing around 330000PPD. So, the 780 machine would achieve around 125 PPDPD (Points Per Day Per Dollar), while the titan machine would clock in at 115.83 PPDPD. Close enough to make titans possibly worthwhile, either for space efficiency, slight energy efficiency bonuses, or the higher resale value of components.

If you decided to go extreme and do a 4-GPU system, however....:
4x780 build (80+Gold PSU, 4GB RAM, 4-core Vishera cpu, etc.): ~$3,600.
4xTitan build: (same as above): $4905.90

With that in mind....
4x780 will achieve around 440,000 PPD, while 4xTitan will achieve around 560,000 (WOW) PPD.

For PPDPD values.....:
4x780: 122PPDPD
4xTitan: 114PPDPD

So, I guess 3-card and 2-card builds are likely the way to go....

The titans are great if you have just a few PCI-e slots and want to make the most of them, however if you're just going for PPD per dollar, then you might want to consider the 780s. (Although the titans are more well-geared towards 24/7 computation).

Just go to C:\Users\<Your Username>\Appdata\Roaming\FAHClient\work and delete 00, 01, 02.... then restart your computer, or manually force-quit the FAH processes.