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.
