Gridcoin and BOINC projects are autonomous systems (AS) that can operate independently. In the Gridcoin system an interesting reward mechanism for work done in BOINC projects has been implemented. It distributes part of the inflation (newly minted coins) to BOINC participants (who opted in, i.e. also have Gridcoin IDs). Implemented solution might be the first functional smart contract ( worth to check and confirm).

Project servers publish score tables. Nodes import score tables and calculate GRC rewards. Participant (cruncher) has to be identifiable by Gridcoin software in both systems. BOINC platform has an inbuilt ID system – CPID which is used by Gridcoin nodes to associate internal IDs (address, beacon) with BOINC IDs.

Inflation pool (newly minted coins) is distributed via interest and research rewards according to inbuilt smart contracts. Existing coins can be transferred between accounts, but there is no smart contract protocol or API that would allow to use them in other autonomous systems. There only exists a partial solution of rain feature that works with BOINC platform, and has several limitations.

A basic requirement for AS interoperability would be Gridcoin Identification Protocol (GIP) and Open Score Table (OST) format. For simple projects, like charity raffle, a simple plugin for popular web platforms (like Wordpress) would suffice. Second type of superblocks (SB-B) would have to be implemented. The system would work as follows:

convenor sets up AS server and registers website address in Gridcoin system

project budget is supplied by convenor or participants

participants register both in Gridcoin and external AS

AS server updates score table

score table is imported by nodes, nodes calculate GRC rewards and superblock type B is created

In general, this would work almost exactly the same as current BOINC integration does.

Potential use cases: