PRE [ANN] CureCoin development continues....

[Vorksholk]

Been waiting for something like this for ages, always thought integrating Folding@Home with a coin would be excellent as so much more computing power could go to a good cause rather than mining some standard alt clone. I'd like to add this coin to my pool as well.

I'm a little confused with how folding gets counted. I see ASIC mining is as usual, join a pool and mine with cgminer et al then get rewarded by finding blocks but where's the correlation between using the Stamford client and this coin? From what I understand you use the standard Folding@Home client, how does this link into CureCoin?

Sorry if I missed this somewhere.

Folding payouts are done by our folding pool(s), which will count your stats, find what percent of total CureCoin folding efforts your folding represents, and pay out that percent of the daily 45% of the network

[Vorksholk]

Love the idea of this, but don't the folders get the short end of the stick here?  The coins are split evenly between the asics/folders but the electricity cost is significantly higher on the folding side.   Should be interesting to see how the folding side of things go over time.  I just worry the incentive will always be there for the asics but not always the folders.

Good question!

The payouts are even for both networks, meaning all folders combined make as much as all ASIC miners combined. Therefore, it really depends. If most people jump on with ASICs, then folding would actually have better pay per kWh. To put this in perspective, a $300 ASIC and a $300 GPU would, theoretically, earn the same amount, however since a GPU uses more power, people are likely to, if buying new hardware, opt for ASIC-based, thereby increasing the relative profitability of that $300 GPU.

Due to the fixed bridge between the two portions of the network's computational infrastructure, there should always be some kind of balance maintained automatically by people adding hardware on both sides to compensate for higher per-capita coin availability in one network or the other.

When people say ASICs are more efficient, they are really saying that ASICs use less kWh per GH, but since we're comparing GH to PPD through a constant ratio, energy efficiency will be only one of many factors that affect the extend of both computational power's profit margins.

Wouldn't it have been better to just merge mine the coin into bitcoin and give less reward to that side?  I mean the whole thing about this coin truly is the folding side of it, but instead of maximizing the incentive to fold, you cut the potential folding economy in half.  The more money going to the folders the more people will fold and I believe the idea behind this to get more people to fold. Whereas if it were merge mined it would get mined regardless with a high hash rate. Maybe I'm over thinking it...

One of the purposes of the coin is to give both ASIC and consumer-hardware owners the ability to earn the coin with computational efforts, and allowing it to be merge-mined tends to devalue coins and gives it the stigma of a 'secondary' coin unfortunately. Merged mining is certainly an interesting concept for the currency, but we want it to be both a primary currency and a network of scientific computation

[rumlazy]

One of the purposes of the coin is to give both ASIC and consumer-hardware owners the ability to earn the coin with computational efforts, and allowing it to be merge-mined tends to devalue coins and gives it the stigma of a 'secondary' coin unfortunately. Merged mining is certainly an interesting concept for the currency, but we want it to be both a primary currency and a network of scientific computation

Is there anything innovative about the coin itself or is it just dev coin with the numbers changed?    Gridcoin is kind of doing the same thing with BIONIC instead of folding but its actually built into the client to adjust the amount of coins someone earns (5-150) based on how much computational power they're putting toward bionic.   Neither system seems perfect yet, hopefully we see something like XPM but useful in the future.

[Vorksholk]

One of the purposes of the coin is to give both ASIC and consumer-hardware owners the ability to earn the coin with computational efforts, and allowing it to be merge-mined tends to devalue coins and gives it the stigma of a 'secondary' coin unfortunately. Merged mining is certainly an interesting concept for the currency, but we want it to be both a primary currency and a network of scientific computation

Is there anything innovative about the coin itself or is it just dev coin with the numbers changed?    Gridcoin is kind of doing the same thing with BOINC instead of folding but its actually built into the client to adjust the amount of coins someone earns (5-150) based on how much computational power they're putting toward bionic.   Neither system seems perfect yet, hopefully we see something like XPM but useful in the future.

Gridcoin's hard-coded block reward is pretty easily exploitable, a quick change in the way the code detects BOINC would give max coins every time a block is mined. Something like protein folding is nearly impossible to integrate as a central proof-of-work simply because, while they do take lots of computational work to complete, also take a large amount of computational work to confirm, so the network would be slowed down. This coin is built around a split folding/mining system. Also, a folding solution or POW built into the blockchain would cause the coin to be nearly impossible to add new computational projects to, while the current CureCoin system makes this extremely easy.

[Vorksholk]

Gonna start a newsletter signup soon, so people can get weekly or bi-weekly (twice weekly) news about CureCoin, protein folding, etc.

[CryptoBullion]

One of the purposes of the coin is to give both ASIC and consumer-hardware owners the ability to earn the coin with computational efforts, and allowing it to be merge-mined tends to devalue coins and gives it the stigma of a 'secondary' coin unfortunately. Merged mining is certainly an interesting concept for the currency, but we want it to be both a primary currency and a network of scientific computation

Is there anything innovative about the coin itself or is it just dev coin with the numbers changed?    Gridcoin is kind of doing the same thing with BOINC instead of folding but its actually built into the client to adjust the amount of coins someone earns (5-150) based on how much computational power they're putting toward bionic.   Neither system seems perfect yet, hopefully we see something like XPM but useful in the future.

Gridcoin's hard-coded block reward is pretty easily exploitable, a quick change in the way the code detects BOINC would give max coins every time a block is mined. Something like protein folding is nearly impossible to integrate as a central proof-of-work simply because, while they do take lots of computational work to complete, also take a large amount of computational work to confirm, so the network would be slowed down. This coin is built around a split folding/mining system. Also, a folding solution or POW built into the blockchain would cause the coin to be nearly impossible to add new computational projects to, while the current CureCoin system makes this extremely easy.

Unfortunately there is a major fault in gridcoin coding... And from what I see it only measures cpu % ... Which almost seems like a slightly skewed way to mine another coin while using gridcoin.

Curecoin offers a much different level of research gains in terms of total petahashes  gained since curecoin will be gpu and cpu  compatible for medical research at launch time.  The work is also much more cheat proof then the well attempted but imo failed launch of gridcoin. Anyone that can read coin source will see it has a serious flaw in the coin base ... I like the efforts of gridcoin dev... Maybe the grid coin dev would like to work with team cure coin? Any how ., team curecoin is growing. .. I don't know if anyone leaked this detail yet but we already have top of the line nividia card to reward to a curecoin user.

Sent from my GS3 phone

[verloren]

So it's based off F@H?

Would it be possible to base this on something like ICM/AutoDock?

[rumlazy]

Unfortunately there is a major fault in gridcoin coding... And from what I see it only measures cpu % ... Which almost seems like a slightly skewed way to mine another coin while using gridcoin.

Curecoin offers a much different level of research gains in terms of total petahashes  gained since curecoin will be gpu and cpu  compatible for medical research at launch time.  The work is also much more cheat proof then the well attempted but imo failed launch of gridcoin. Anyone that can read coin source will see it has a serious flaw in the coin base ... I like the efforts of gridcoin dev... Maybe the grid coin dev would like to work with team cure coin? Any how ., team curecoin is growing. .. I don't know if anyone leaked this detail yet but we already have top of the line nividia card to reward to a curecoin user.

Sent from my GS3 phone

But curecoin is just basically devcoin.. am I missing something?  Gridcoin at least actually tried to innovate something.  I mean you guys are kinda talking crap about gridcoin but this coin doesn't actually do anything at all.  Not to mention the massive 10% going straight to your pockets.

[Vorksholk]

Unfortunately there is a major fault in gridcoin coding... And from what I see it only measures cpu % ... Which almost seems like a slightly skewed way to mine another coin while using gridcoin.

Curecoin offers a much different level of research gains in terms of total petahashes  gained since curecoin will be gpu and cpu  compatible for medical research at launch time.  The work is also much more cheat proof then the well attempted but imo failed launch of gridcoin. Anyone that can read coin source will see it has a serious flaw in the coin base ... I like the efforts of gridcoin dev... Maybe the grid coin dev would like to work with team cure coin? Any how ., team curecoin is growing. .. I don't know if anyone leaked this detail yet but we already have top of the line nividia card to reward to a curecoin user.

Sent from my GS3 phone

But curecoin is just basically devcoin.. am I missing something?  Gridcoin at least actually tried to innovate something.  I mean you guys are kinda talking crap about gridcoin but this coin doesn't actually do anything at all.  Not to mention the massive 10% going straight to your pockets.

The dev funds are going largely towards community things, such as folding hardware giveaways, 0%-fee pools, etc. Yes, it is a coin developed around being sustainable, part of that is having a dev fund which allows the developers to spend large amounts of time on the project, as well as of course being able to further the project by providing a multitude of things for the community. Gridcoin did certainly try to innovate something, however the way they approach is is quite short-sighted. A minor client mod allows the person to not need to do any scientific computation at all and still gets 150 coins per block. We don't want to talk crap about it, but it has a pretty large inherent flaw: users don't need to do any scientific computation. GridCoin also doesn't (currently) take into count GPU usage, which is the major general computing workhourse of today.

At the end of the day, if adopted, CureCoin will cause some pretty massive folding computation, and while doing so will create a coin backed by ASIC mining. It's not a perfect system, and neither is Bitcoin. The dev fund, sure, will in some shape pay developers, but its purpose is to make the coin a sustainable project with a strong community foothold.

[digitalindustry]

If you change the name to " panacea"

I will support it.

*** EDIT I didnt read anything about it and none of the topic.

[ralree]

I still don't think I understand why one can't just fake folding work and submit it?  Will peers be performing duplicate work to confirm?

[rumlazy]

The dev funds are going largely towards community things, such as folding hardware giveaways, 0%-fee pools, etc. Yes, it is a coin developed around being sustainable, part of that is having a dev fund which allows the developers to spend large amounts of time on the project, as well as of course being able to further the project by providing a multitude of things for the community. Gridcoin did certainly try to innovate something, however the way they approach is is quite short-sighted. A minor client mod allows the person to not need to do any scientific computation at all and still gets 150 coins per block. We don't want to talk crap about it, but it has a pretty large inherent flaw: users don't need to do any scientific computation. GridCoin also doesn't (currently) take into count GPU usage, which is the major general computing workhourse of today.

At the end of the day, if adopted, CureCoin will cause some pretty massive folding computation, and while doing so will create a coin backed by ASIC mining. It's not a perfect system, and neither is Bitcoin. The dev fund, sure, will in some shape pay developers, but its purpose is to make the coin a sustainable project with a strong community foothold.

In regards to the dev fund, 10% of any coin is a massive amount.  We have to trust that you'll do the right thing with it and nothing stops you from taking all the coins from the folding pool and spending those.  We all just have to trust you.  Not saying that's what you will do but the coin itself doesn't actually provide anything.  If we're speaking about flaws, I would say thats a much larger flaw as we're in a community were scams run rampant.  This coin uses as many buzzwords as it can to try and have success like XPM had, but the coin itself doesn't actually do anything.  If the dev coin devs wanted to support folding there's nothing stopping them from doing the exact same thing as curecoin.    In the gridcoin system, even if what you say is right and they can mod the client to lie about mining bionic, 100% of the coins still go to the person who mined it.  This coin leaves question marks.

[Wipeout2097]

Look megacoin dude, and I know this is a big tangent to your posts ... The fact of the matter is that exist 400 billion $US available to renew fucking nuclear weapons and afaik never were a few million to compensate folders or BOINC participants worldwide to help find cure for cancer (provoked by the atmospheric detonation of the weapons a few decades ago, and lots of other garbage). I'm surprised that so many paid for power, burned hardware, had hassle for the altruistic or very far-sighted self-interest of folding.

Now, none of this weakens most of your points. What I have to say is that if exploits are found or discontent arises, the coin will be dead, and the devs lost their time, money, effort and cash cow. Who wants to mine, will mine other coin; who wants to fold, will do so directly. So, the burden is already on the curecoin devs to prove themselves.

[rumlazy]

Look megacoin dude, and this is a big tangent to your posts ... The fact of the matter is that exist 400 billion $US available to renew fucking nuclear weapons and afaik never were a few million to compensate folders or BOINC participants worldwide to help find cure for cancer (provoked by the atmospheric detonation of the weapons a few decades ago, and lots of other garbage). I'm surprised that so many paid for power, burned hardware, had hassle for the altruistic or very far-sighted self-interest of folding.

Now, none of this weakens most of your points. What I have to say is that if exploits are found or discontent arises, the coin will be dead, and the devs lost their time, money, effort and cash cow. Who wants to mine, will mine other coin; who wants to fold, will do so directly. So, the burden is already on the curecoin devs to prove themselves.

I asked some honest questions and they started attacking gridcoin.  I'm not trying to attack curecoin but if they think gridcoin is flawed they need to take a look in the mirror.  All it takes is 1 awol dev to kill this coin.  Lots of centralization here.  I believe this could be a good project, but the coin itself is most likely your standard clone coin with a massive amount going to the devs.

[mkmen]

I think this is a great idea, but if the folding part could be gamed it won't last long.. also I'd say the 10% of all mined supply for devs is a bit too much

[yeltz]

In regards to the development fund, I can't blame anyone for raising an eyebrow. In addition to the explanation Vorksholk provided above, I believe that everyone involved with the coin (myself included) wants to see it succeed. For me, this means that being transparent is important - both in terms of the devs holding each other accountable, and keeping people informed with how funds are used. For what it's worth, Vorksholk and I went in on buying a beefy nVidia card to give away for folding (keep your eyes peeled for details) - I hope that such is a sign of dedication and backing behind the project.

So far as what the coin offers, it's important not to lose sight of the larger picture. That is, creating an economic incentive to fold. Look at how successful the beta folding team was - we rocketed up through the ranks in a matter of a couple weeks. After launch, I wouldn't be surprised to see the CureCoin folding team out-ranking every one. And sure, it would be great if everyone would fold out of the goodness of their hearts to advance research on treating terrible diseases, but if we're able to attract people to folding with the incentive of a coin, then everybody wins - that is, we all get to be a part in creating a better future for humanity. I suppose what I'm saying is that the coin is more than the coin itself, it's everything that comes with it.

[rumlazy]

In regards to the development fund, I can't blame anyone for raising an eyebrow. In addition to the explanation Vorksholk provided above, I believe that everyone involved with the coin (myself included) wants to see it succeed. For me, this means that being transparent is important - both in terms of the devs holding each other accountable, and keeping people informed with how funds are used. For what it's worth, Vorksholk and I went in on buying a beefy nVidia card to give away for folding (keep your eyes peeled for details) - I hope that such is a sign of dedication and backing behind the project.

So far as what the coin offers, it's important not to lose sight of the larger picture. That is, creating an economic incentive to fold. Look at how successful the beta folding team was - we rocketed up through the ranks in a matter of a couple weeks. After launch, I wouldn't be surprised to see the CureCoin folding team out-ranking every one. And sure, it would be great if everyone would fold out of the goodness of their hearts to advance research on treating terrible diseases, but if we're able to attract people to folding with the incentive of a coin, then everybody wins - that is, we all get to be a part in creating a better future for humanity. I suppose what I'm saying is that the coin is more than the coin itself, it's everything that comes with it.

I agree that the folding system is nice and that giving folders an incentive to fold is a good one, I just question the ways you guys did it.

1. What systems are in place to prevent a dev needing money (say a family member needs a surgery) from stealing all the money from the folders?  
2. What systems are in place to show the people folding that you guys aren't siphoning more money off the top?  
3. Why 10%?  10% of all mined currency is VERY high.  What made you guys choose that number?  This is essentially a very massive premine.  One of the largest in recent memory.
4. All the magic that happens with this coin is all on the pool instead of the coin itself.  What happens if the guy who pays for that server dies or goes missing?  Not trying to be morbid but there seems to be a lot of weak links here.  
5. What happens if the pool gets ddos'd or hacked?
6. What happens if the folding server over at Stanford gets hacked or ddos'd?

And don't forget while there's a bigger picture with this coin, it's still a coin and we're on a cryptocoin forum, not a folding forum. This coin is probably a standard clone coin pretending to do something amazing but all it's doing is subsidizing potential miner profits over to folding. (and we have to trust that you'll actually do that)

I'm still going to mine this coin (I mine just about everything when it's new) but there's a lot of sketchy things about it.  One of the major draws to crypto is it's decentralized nature and you guys have almost removed that completely. I'm not trying to troll this project, rather get some questions answered and addressed.

I have been looking forward to this project for a long time, just a bit disappointed in the execution.  I'll try to shut up now and I wish you guys the best.

[TheOtherOne]

As yeltz said, it's important not to lose the larger picture on this. There are always people cheeting the system
on the folding side but this doesn't matter. These people have to deal with their conscience and karma in doing so.
Moreover, a system like curecoin should withstand this like every real society do. Moreover I am confident the most
people will do right, which is sufficient to give curecoin a serious reason to exist.

Abstract spoken, the miners are paying the folders to fold and this is fine, even if the folding computation part
is much lower, it is a least VERY usefull, this structural connection makes a lot of sense. You can bet the miners
will look into the folding part and watching the computation power over there. Even if they can't estimate how much
of this is cheeting, the relation in whole of this number counts, at least for me and I guess other miners agree
with this.

Thus said, I will throw 40 arm core's to the folding site, fitting nice into the whole - it makes sense - concept
due to the energy efficiency of these. One last question to the creators, I have had a look to use fpga's for folding
but found only an old paper, stating ist doesn't work well. This statement is a for sure  outdated (2007?) and based
on very small units (20K LE/ little bram). There are tons of capable fpgas out there able to handle this.
It would be a waste, using them for the mining part. Small asic's are better for this.
I would recommend to create a serious bounty to develop a suitable bitstream for all these free available fpga's
floating around. There are some very talented verilog/vhdl coder in this community, able to archive this.
Creating a bitsream for curecoin would not only unlock tremendous computational power at a low energy footprint,
it would also send a clear message to the traditional folders outside this coin community - besides the media benefit. 

I am in and waiting for the launch...

[Magic8Ball]

Sounds quite interesting, but the 10% cut seems like too much. Paid pools could have been used instead which would also allow the flexibility to change the fee quite easily.

[cryptohunter]

Sounds quite interesting, but the 10% cut seems like too much. Paid pools could have been used instead which would also allow the flexibility to change the fee quite easily.

I think 2 % is not enough initially for the devs, however of course 10% of all mined coins is going to be a sticking point and also that is going to create bad publicity for the coin in the media. If the coin takes off it will immediately spark questions of why the devs cut is so large when it is all in the name of helping cancer patients etc.  

The 10% will hurt the coins image it is a crazy percentage and other coins would have immediately been called out on this.  However the devs do need incentive to work and keep things going.  I mean if the coin takes off even 1% of all coins could be a huge amount of money.
  
If it's not going to be all open source then pools that start off at 10% but then decrease to a more reasonable 0.5% when the value of the coin is high on the exchanges would be more suitable.

The devs need to address this in their answers since it is largely being ignored although i see many people bringing it up.  The media will be fast to jump on this if it gets big enough. If you are asking people to make barely more than their electricity to help cancer research but taking a fortune in fee's?? that is not going to sit well.  Give aways is not a good thing, compared to fair earnings generated from the work people are doing.  

Asking people to trust you to do the right thing with 10% is a big stretch.  

There needs to be some flexible way to fund the devs a reasonable amount and if they want more they have to mine like everyone else.  

Look at the ranting other devs have taken over 2% premine.  I agree that taking it out over time is better than a premine but even so already i see the 10% is getting some people upset and will i think eventually ruin this coins great potential.  

Dev's looking at 10% you are either saying you believe the coin will totally flop or else you want to make a fortune out of it or you want people to trust you to do the right thing with the fee's. Either way it's not a great idea.

Nobody wants devs to work for nothing since it leads to neglect. How about work out a sensible wage for hours of work, then have pools that extract that with flexible percentages that can be adjusted as the coins value goes up and down. Also some of the devs have reasonable size mining farms so you can mine the coin also.

Really taking 10% does not effect people all that much individually and does give the devs huge incentive to make the coin work. I mean even if only 2% was taken that is only 8% difference for the individual or even 4% if they are just folding or mining not both. However, it just looks bad on paper and will certainly throw up questions about it, if people here are already unhappy the media will slap down on it hard. Having flexible pool rates will work much better.