Illustrated CureCoin(Alpha) Mining Guide!

[Vorksholk]

There seems to be a lack of information on how to get folding at home running efficiently and quickly, as well as a general lack of pictures. So here are both!

Check out the team stats! We're doing great!    
http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=team&proj=fah&team=224497&sort=today

What is folding at home?
Folding at home is a project, set up by Stanford, which allows people to use their idle computing power on both classic processors (CPUs) and Graphics Cards (GPUs). This computing power is used to fold proteins, a process which gives medical and biological researchers more insight into how proteins fold to their usable state, as well as why they 'unfold', leading to a greater understanding of protein structure, how they work in our body, and, most importantly, how to fix what went wrong, from curing Cancer to Huntington's to Parkinsons. If you want a more clear understanding of the actual science behind the folding at home project, tons of great info is available on their site: http://folding.stanford.edu/ . For a quick intro video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sJx9z1uB9k.

This guide focuses on the tech aspects of F@H, and will help you to get your computer(s) folding proteins, and earning you money.

Step 1: Hardware Check
The better your hardware, the faster you can, of course, mine/fold. Many crypto-currency users already have mining rigs, most of which have very powerful GPUs.

While you could fold with low-end hardware, the heat it produces, mixed with the energy it requires, may make it not worth the effort, or may be your excuse to buy that new GPU you've been eying. For benchmarks, we will be assuming we are using Core 17, which we will cover in detail later. I will create another thread where we can work on pooling benchmarks, however here is a quick view of some of the most popular hardware.




Any ATi card from the 5xxx, 6xxx, and 7xxx series should run fine, as should any NVidia 5xx, 6xx, or 7xx cards. Titans currently have some performance issues.

An average Intel i5-2500k can hit somewhere in the ballpark of 5-6000 PPD, an i7-3770 gets somewhere around 7200PPD.

Important Note About Cores:
For optimal performance, your miner should have a core on the CPU for each GPU on your system. If you have three 7970s on one machine, that Sempron 145 will be a bottleneck. For scrypt-mining, I built my rigs with single-core CPUs and 2 7950s each, as well as some rigs with some 7970s jammed into them. One rig with a Sempron 145 Sargas + 2x7970 has times when the CPU usage zooms up to 100%, and the GPUs stop running for 10-20 seconds. It appears that some task that must be completed on the CPU is reached by one of the GPUs, so the machine spends 100% CPU time working on that CPU-specific piece of the folding puzzle. While this is going, both GPUs are starved of the necessary CPU time, and so they go idle. However, in one machine with a 2x7950 and a FX-8350, I can get great performance. It seems that 1/4 of the time (on average) is high-CPU time, so having a core for each GPU and an extra core for running high-CPU-time tasks should eliminate bottlenecking. 3 GPU systems should have a quad-core processor.

Installing The Software:
Visit http://folding.stanford.edu/



Scroll down to the button 'Start Folding':



Step through the installer, leaving everything as default until the end, where you uncheck to 'Start Folding At Home'.

Once the program is installed, you will have a short-cut on your desktop, which starts the Folding At Home program. We need to make a slight change before we launch it.

Right-click on the desktop icon, and click on 'Properties'.


The Properties window will come up. We need to change the launch arguments to include:
--client-type=advanced

This allows the client to use the bleeding-edge core_17 core, which is significantly (by a factor of 2x to 10x) faster than the core13-16 mixes, as well as being the core used for all benchmarks above.



Now double-click on the desktop shortcut. Then, find the FAHControl application, usually located here:



You will be asked about folding anonymously, click on "Configure Identity".



This will bring up a window.



Enter your desired username, "224497" for the TeamID, and then click on the blue "Click here to open the Folding@home passkey request..." link. This will bring up a window:



Enter the username you put in the previous window, along with a valid email address that you have access to. You will, soon after, receive a passkey via email. Enter that into the 'passkey' entry on the FAH Client window, and enter it again into the 'confirm' box.


Now, you can finally start folding. The machine *should* automatically detect all GPUs and CPUs. If your system has a small amount of cores (1-2), you may want to right-click on the CPU, and click 'pause':


Note: this will make your CPU stop folding. This is done to conserve CPU power to feed your GPUs on systems with very weak  processors.

Now, you need to sign-up for the pool, in order to be rewarded in FRK (Frankos).

Go to: http://cryptobullionpools.com/      in a web browser, and sign up for an account there, using the same username as you input into the F@H client.

Confirming You Are Running Core_17:
To make sure that your GPUs are using Core_17, take a look at:



and make sure that you are clicked on the job(s) that are running on GPUs. The ones on CPUs will say something along the line of "Core: 0xa3". 0x## means a GPU-type job.

Some jobs take as little as an hour and a half to complete on competent hardware, while some take 8+ hours. The picture above shows a 780 running, with a decent overclock.

Post a comment if you have any questions.

[1713580268]

1713580268

[1713580268]

1713580268

[1713580268]

1713580268

[techbytes]

Excellent guide.  Thank you!

Now I can use my hardware to its full potential.   


-tb-

[fendlestick]

Very impressive guide!

[cygnusxi]

+1

wow man this guide is better then the ones stanford has on their site 

[apbyte]

Are you sure about PPD for those cards? I have tried running my 6870 and it got barely 8,000 ppd. I understand that 7xxx series should be higher, but 32,000 doesn't seem realistic

[ig0tik3d]

sapphire hd7850 2gb


hd 7660D

[Vorksholk]

Are you sure about PPD for those cards? I have tried running my 6870 and it got barely 8,000 ppd. I understand that 7xxx series should be higher, but 32,000 doesn't seem realistic

Were you on Core_17? 8,000PPD sounds like CORE_16 speeds.

[Vorksholk]

+1

wow man this guide is better then the ones stanford has on their site 

Thanks!!

[apbyte]

Are you sure about PPD for those cards? I have tried running my 6870 and it got barely 8,000 ppd. I understand that 7xxx series should be higher, but 32,000 doesn't seem realistic

Were you on Core_17? 8,000PPD sounds like CORE_16 speeds.

yep 0x17

[cygnusxi]

User limit on alpha folding pool increased to 250. Currently ~140 members

[Vorksholk]

Plenty of accounts and points to go around! (:

[mnyonpa]

This is a guide to folding with Folding@home, not mining CureCoin.

Mining CureCoin is wasting CPU power on scrypt hashing to create a block chain where half of the block reward goes to the guys folding in your team.

I still cannot see how mining the coin helps the folding project.

Wouldn’t it be better for anyone if we just threw away all that coin-related stuff and use the CPU power to do more folding instead of securing the useless blockchain?

[Vorksholk]

This is a guide to folding with Folding@home, not mining CureCoin.

Mining CureCoin is wasting CPU power on scrypt hashing to create a block chain where half of the block reward goes to the guys folding in your team.

I still cannot see how mining the coin helps the folding project.

Wouldn’t it be better for anyone if we just threw away all that coin-related stuff and use the CPU power to do more folding instead of securing the useless blockchain?

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.

[CryptoBullion]

This is a guide to folding with Folding@home, not mining CureCoin.

Mining CureCoin is wasting CPU power on scrypt hashing to create a block chain where half of the block reward goes to the guys folding in your team.

I still cannot see how mining the coin helps the folding project.

Wouldn’t it be better for anyone if we just threw away all that coin-related stuff and use the CPU power to do more folding instead of securing the useless blockchain?

compared to the uselessness of most coins... id say the electricity will be better spent mining or folding for curecoin. Its no secret that bitcoin mining is a rather large waste of electricity already. Not sure why you decide to worry about it now. This way, at least half of the electricity will go to folding. better then the contributions of every other coins minus the exclusive primecoin.

like previous post , curecoin needs the oldschool hashing to secure the block chain. From what details i have there has been more work put into this coin then any other (maybe minus primecoin).

[mnyonpa]

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.

And what are the benefits of producing a currency? (which, like every cryptocurrency, is not backed by anything and can’t get value without additional effort) Why not mine BTC and give rewards to those who are folding in an established currency that already has value instead?

[CryptoBullion]

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.

And what are the benefits of producing a currency? (which, like every cryptocurrency, is not backed by anything and can’t get value without additional effort) Why not mine BTC and give rewards to those who are folding in an established currency that already has value instead?

@mnyonpa

This troller has not even passed bitcoin 101.

oh wow, i was gonna take you seriously, then i read your previous posts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=134156;sa=showPosts  -- this users previous posts....

you sir , are a troll. i urge people to get a laugh from reading the nonsense this user posts.

[Vorksholk]

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.

And what are the benefits of producing a currency? (which, like every cryptocurrency, is not backed by anything and can’t get value without additional effort) Why not mine BTC and give rewards to those who are folding in an established currency that already has value instead?

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.
-


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!

[Vorksholk]

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.

And what are the benefits of producing a currency? (which, like every cryptocurrency, is not backed by anything and can’t get value without additional effort) Why not mine BTC and give rewards to those who are folding in an established currency that already has value instead?

@mnyonpa

This troller has not even passed bitcoin 101.

oh wow, i was gonna take you seriously, then i read your previous posts.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=134156;sa=showPosts  -- this users previous posts....

you sir , are a troll. i urge people to get a laugh from reading the nonsense this user posts.

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

[CryptoBullion]

Vorksholk explains things much clearer than i do...  

- edit - i feel a bit silly for my lack of response.  i did start a technical rant until i got 2 or 4 pages into skimming his previous posts.  so i erased it due to knowing this particular user knows nothing about crypto.

this is pretty user friendly explanation of the complexity of curecoin. Is Vorksholk the hidden Satoshi mind behind curecoin? mystery....

[amytheplanarshift]

For some reason I cannot use core 17. I have version 7.3.6 of the FAH software and a GTX 680 but it is using FahCore 15 for some reason. How can I make it use 17?