Donate@Home, Bitcoin and shared computing merge

[SlaveInDebt]

http://donateathome.org/

I knew the day would come.

[gnar1ta$]

Are they asking to "donate" your GPU to mine bitcoins for them as a way to raise funds?

[SlaveInDebt]

Are they asking to "donate" your GPU to mine bitcoins for them as a way to raise funds?

Pretty much, but keep in mind many already donate lots and I mean major mining rig power amounts towards gpugrid/f@h projects for free. I use to with gpu's but still do with cpu's for WCG.

[SlaveInDebt]

So they've set up Bitcoin mining through BOINC?

Yepp.



Not mine^ haven't given it a go yet.

[vapourminer]

seems theyll also gladly accept the donations of 7970 cards. heh

as I contribute to folding@home with 2 GTX285s and a Q9660, Ill pass on this..

[Littleshop]

With so many scams out there, they should make this website a subdomain under their gpugrid.org website, not as a stand alone with no reverse linking to them.  How do we know this is really connected?  There are also some spelling errors. 

Good idea though.

[PatrickHarnett]

That page looks scammy - if you want to give away to a 100% fee pool, that looks like it.

[CA Coins]

Do you think BOINC will accept my application for donatetocacoins.org? 
It's for a good cause, I think.

[PatrickHarnett]

Do you think BOINC will accept my application for donatetocacoins.org? 
It's for a good cause, I think.

If you set up a credit system on the boinc software, yes.

I posted into the GPUGrid message boards and while they are acknowledging it's an effort to fund a researcher (a person), doesn't look like they've implemented the idea too well (explanation wise).

[CA Coins]

Do you think BOINC will accept my application for donatetocacoins.org? 
It's for a good cause, I think.

If you set up a credit system on the boinc software, yes.

I posted into the GPUGrid message boards and while they are acknowledging it's an effort to fund a researcher (a person), doesn't look like they've implemented the idea too well (explanation wise).

Thanks for looking into it.  It will be very interesting to see how this project evolves.  I agree the potential for scam/abuse is great.   

[BinaryMage]

That page looks scammy - if you want to give away to a 100% fee pool, that looks like it.

I tend to agree. Who knows if the work done is even for Bitcoins? With the BOINC workunit system, WUs are often not submitted for hours or even days after they're dispensed. Unless I'm missing something, that would seem to make mining impossible due to all of the shares being stale by the time they were submitted.

[CA Coins]

That's a really good point.  BTC workunits are time-sensitive so mining through BOINC would probably have really high stales.

[Gabi]

Do you think BOINC will accept my application for donatetocacoins.org? 
It's for a good cause, I think.

BOINC accept nothing. It's just a software. If you set up a project and give us a link and a site to create accounts, tadah, you can do it.

A different thing is of course to have your project listed on the official BOINC website. But there are a lot of projects not listed there that are happily crunched by  alot of ppl


And about the "scam" and wu and stale, wake up 
You just put a miner in the WU, BOINC receive the WU and start it, it don't know WHAT the wu do. The miner start and guess what? Automatically connect to a pool (their pool i suppose) and mine. When WU reach 100% (maybe at X shares) WU is "completed" and you receive BOINC credits.

@littleshop: http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=2839
This thread is opened in the GPUGRID website by the:
Volunteer moderator
Project administrator
Project developer
Project scientist

And link to donate@home

So yes donate@home is related to GPUGRID.

Can it be a scam? Well, there is a chance they use your GPU for something else but... GPUGRID is a nvidia only project cause they had fail results with ati client. Now they have a project where ATI runs and runs much better than nvidia. What if not bitcoin mining can it be?

Sure, weird thing is that they don't have a donation address anywhere... you make ppl mine bitcoins but don't even place a simple address?

[LoupGaroux]

Donation addresses can be monitored, history can be established, scammers can be identified.

Another not so good sign.

[BinaryMage]

Do you think BOINC will accept my application for donatetocacoins.org? 
It's for a good cause, I think.

BOINC accept nothing. It's just a software. If you set up a project and give us a link and a site to create accounts, tadah, you can do it.

A different thing is of course to have your project listed on the official BOINC website. But there are a lot of projects not listed there that are happily crunched by  alot of ppl


And about the "scam" and wu and stale, wake up 
You just put a miner in the WU, BOINC receive the WU and start it, it don't know WHAT the wu do. The miner start and guess what? Automatically connect to a pool (their pool i suppose) and mine. When WU reach 100% (maybe at X shares) WU is "completed" and you receive BOINC credits.

@littleshop: http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=2839
This thread is opened in the GPUGRID website by the:
Volunteer moderator
Project administrator
Project developer
Project scientist

And link to donate@home

So yes donate@home is related to GPUGRID.

Can it be a scam? Well, there is a chance they use your GPU for something else but... GPUGRID is a nvidia only project cause they had fail results with ati client. Now they have a project where ATI runs and runs much better than nvidia. What if not bitcoin mining can it be?

Sure, weird thing is that they don't have a donation address anywhere... you make ppl mine bitcoins but don't even place a simple address?

Strangely enough, I actually do know what I'm talking about. BOINC workunits do not connect to the internet during execution, a different client would be required for that. Workunits are certain collections of number crunching that are downloaded, processed - often without a constant internet connection - and re-uploaded when some number are complete.

The thread you linked to seems legitimate, but none of the posters seem to have a clear idea of exactly what bitcoin mining is. (and one thinks Bitcoins are used mainly for online gambling) The OP seems like he didn't actually create the website, he just discovered it. Still smells very, very fishy to me.

[Sukrim]

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/LowLatency

Seems to work for Bitcoin mining...
Still I'd like to see the sourcecode for that BOINC clinet first, before I run it.

[Gabi]

BinaryMage:

we have found an interesting side project for gpugrid

Means that they have found something interesting for gpugrid AND they used it to make the side project donate@home

aka: they discovered bitcoin and said "wow, what if we make a side project and ask ppl to mine there to help fund us?"

Posters have no idea cause like no one of them, normal partecipants, know what bitcoin is. GDF is the project administrators and he know what it is of course.

How can this be fishy? GDF is the administrator of GPUGRID, and opened a thread on the GPUGRID forum.

As for how it work, the screenshot of slaveindebt clearly show how the application specify "internet connection required"


I still think this: you say that WU doesn't connect, but why not? WU just start a .exe application that crunch them. What the .exe do is not related to boinc or the wu. If the application happens to be a miner with the info to mine for a pool, it will just mine. Once wu reach 100% boinc shut it down and send it back for credits

[BinaryMage]

BinaryMage:

Means that they have found something interesting for gpugrid AND they used it to make the side project donate@home

aka: they discovered bitcoin and said "wow, what if we make a side project and ask ppl to mine there to help fund us?"

Posters have no idea cause like no one of them, normal partecipants, know what bitcoin is. GDF is the project administrators and he know what it is of course.

How can this be fishy? GDF is the administrator of GPUGRID, and opened a thread on the GPUGRID forum.

As for how it work, the screenshot of slaveindebt clearly show how the application specify "internet connection required"

I still think this: you say that WU doesn't connect, but why not? WU just start a .exe application that crunch them. What the .exe do is not related to boinc or the wu. If the application happens to be a miner with the info to mine for a pool, it will just mine. Once wu reach 100% boinc shut it down and send it back for credits

Fair point. I didn't look that screenshot over carefully enough; my own research on their website didn't pull up anything indicating that a constant net connection was required, but if it is, I can see how this would work. I stand corrected, thanks for illuminating me.

I don't think it will have large adoption, though. I crunched for BOINC before I discovered Bitcoin, and the general attitude is quite anti-Bitcoin. Some believe it a scam, many don't know much about it - but most importantly, a vast majority consider it "unethical" compared to computing for science, which they do. On the GPUGRID thread, many responders were criticizing GPUGRID for associating with Bitcoin. I think likely that the majority of crunchers would rather just donate directly than run this project.