New 11/14/2013 - Conference call with devs of curecoin and Stanford university on Tues 19th of Nov
Curecoin launch as of now is going to be delayed. Plans to work with Pande Labs at Stanford university will soon be discussed between Pande Labs team and Curecoin devs!
I will post on update asap when I get more news.
Network security from hashing is good. Making money is great. Curing Cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, preventing viruses, and designing next-level pharmaceuticals is awesome. What if we could put these together, to build a coin secured and run by crypto, mined with SHA256, and supported by cancer-curing research?
Announcing Curecoin!
What benefits does it provide? Most currencies are either in the CPU/GPU stage, or in the ASIC stage. CureCoin can be earned with both. Folders use high-end GPUs and CPUs to fold proteins, earning a proportional portion of coins set-aside automatically by the minting process for their contributions. Miners mine with SHA256 ASICs as usual, securing the blockchain for the CureCoin network. Whether you are heavily-invested in ASIC equipment or still have GPUs and CPUs, you can participate. Due to the nature of folding (diverse, constantly changing, not easily predictable), GPUs and CPUs will both always be relevant, so an investment in consumer hardware isn't wasted.
How is it different? 
CureCoin allows owners of both ASIC and GPU/CPU hardware to earn. CureCoin puts ASICs to work at what they are good at--securing a blockchain, while it puts GPUs and CPUs to work with work items that can only be done on them--protein folding. While still having a secure blockchain, it supports, and thus is supported by, scientific research. While it isn't technically 'backed' by scientific research (there's no central authority you can visit to trade coins for scientific research) the coin has intrinsic value as both a currency and as a system of purchasing a tradeable representation of medical research. Similar to the idea of carbon offsets, someone with money can buy some CureCoins which represent a proportional amount of scientific/medicinal research, while someone with tech know-how can also contribute to the folding effort, doing the hands-on work, and gain profit. The value imbued into each unit of the currency from the folding network it represents would add additional traction and inertia to the coin's trading value. As time goes on and the amount of folding done for the network increases, the amount of research that each coin represents grows.
How does the network maintain balance?
Since the daily total from network output from both mining and folding are the same, an increase in miners will subsequently raise the scarcity of the currency (per capita), resulting in folding becoming even more profitable and in-demand. Vice-versa, an increase in folding power will likewise indirectly cause a delayed increase in the network security. Pegging the reward of each type of work to a constant value allows the change to hit a brick wall in changing the currency distribution, which causes other parts of the equation to expand--mining/network security, and folding/coin value. This value in medical research and network security both act to influence the USD/CUR trading value. As the folding and hashing efforts grow, the currency becomes more scarce per capita, creating a general increasing trend of monetary value. Just like any other crypto, CureCoin is a currency, but in this case, one that has more adding to its value than cryptographic security.
Is CureCoin limited to only protein-folding? 
No! As the network evolves, additional scientific computing projects can be easily added, in which case the folding reward would become a scientific-computation reward, and would be split fairly between various projects (including CPU-only ones!), and could be done so in either a way to encourage people to balance the projects, or in such a way that people can do whatever project they wish, and receive the same or very similar profits.
What are the details? 
Mining: 32 coins per block (start)
1 block per minute
Block-halving every 1,051,200 blocks (for an increase in value)
Folding: 32 coins per minute (start)
Reward-halving every 1,051,200 blocks
Rewards processed on a daily basis, based on points earned
How does this benefit someone with GPU/CPU power?
Rather than mining alt currencies with a (in comparison to ASIC and FPGA equipment) very inefficient hash-generator which uses large amounts of electricity, you can do protein folding (which uses less electricity), earn great returns, contribute to a variety of great computational scientific research, and decrease the wear-and-tear on your precious hardware. Indirectly, you also cause increases in ASIC mining power through network rebalancing.
Additionally, NVidia cards are great at folding! How does this benefit someone with ASIC power?
As someone with ASIC mining power, you can help increase the network security of CureCoin, earn good money from your work (through the proof-of-work block reward of CureCoin), and indirectly support folding efforts through network rebalancing.
How does this benefit an investor or speculator? If you are going to invest in a crypto, CureCoin is a great choice, as it has more intrinsic value than any other alternate currency based on its pseudo-backing (support) from computational scientific research, and allows you to profit by supporting life-saving computational research. Due to CureCoin's mission, CureCoin will grow quickly, and will likely attract positive media attention.
How is the currency divided up?
CureCoins go to three main areas: Folders, Miners, and Developers. The folders and miners both get 45% of the coins in the network. The other 10% is dedicated to CureCoin developers, and will be used for paying for development costs (such as hiring professional programmers, paying for infrastructure, etc.), and for giving back to the community (folding hardware giveaways, faucets, covering 0% mining pools, etc.).
We will have a team of at least 3 people standing by for tech support if you need help folding for the first time.
Current folding support members include experienced folders including Vorksholk, Yeltz, and myself, CygnusXI.
TBA at launch time
Where do I start?Wallet Windows binary:
Wallet Linux binary:
Wallet Mac OS X binary:
Wallet source code:
Launch ready mining pool #1: will be hosted by crypto-expert
Launch ready mining pool #2: will be hosted by decoinpools
Folding pool: TBA
Folding getting-started guide:
http://curecoin.us/index.php?topic=9.0Forum:
http://www.curecoin.usIRC Channel:
Block Explorers:
Exchanges:
Profitability Calculator:
Development Blog:
Video Tutorials:
Folding@Home Explanation:
Folding@Home Research:
Folding Team Statistics:
Signature advertisement banners:
Website advertisement banners:
Bounties:
