Message boards : Number crunching : New PrimeGrid Policy - Monetization of BOINC credit

Author Message

There's been a big discussion behind the scenes about turning BOINC credit into actual money. From a PrimeGrid admin standpoint, this is not a good thing. Even with worthless BOINC credit we've seen cheating in the past. When people are able to make money on PrimeGrid, that invites unscrupulous users to join in order to cheat. That in turn would ruin the science. Anyone devising a way to fake residues on prime-finding projects could be adding years to our search if they cause a missed prime. We don't want to discover five years from now that we can't trust our results.



The science (sieving, finding primes) is why we're here. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with that, otherwise we might as well shut down PrimeGrid right now. For this reason, we've decided not to participate in any system that monetizes our credit. While this policy will apply to any and all such organizations, we know of only one at the moment, and that's Gridcoin.



We'll be asking Gridcoin to de-whitelist PrimeGrid and we won't be sharing our daily statistics with them. Gridcoin users are welcome to crunch here, but won't earn any coin for doing so. If that means those users will be moving to other sites, we'll be sorry to see them go, but feel this is a step we must take.



This decision was not taken lightly and we're not happy about the necessity. Although Gridcoin is currently the only currency affected by this policy, this is not a reaction to anything that Gridcoin has done, or has not done. This policy is about the monetization of BOINC credit, not Gridcoin or cryptocurrencies in general.



While we welcome your comments on this, please understand that this is something we feel must be done and the decision is not going to be reversed.

Totally agree with this decision. No one should benefit from any financial reward for his participation in the distributed computing.

Volunteering is the DNA of distributed computing and philanthropy, its chromosomes.

____________

Founder of CRUNCHERS SANS FRONTIERES

www.crunchersansfrontieres.org

CSF lucky number 22872882^65536+1

I totally agree on this one. We are intrinsically motivated to crunch numbers and to understand the science behind it. This should be the (only) reason to participate in PrimeGrid's conquest of prime numbers. Hopefully Gridcoin members share the same point of view. Together we can grasp the truth!

I support this decision, fantastic news. We want to crunch to find primes not dimes.

...find primes not dimes.



I have to admit that's pretty witty. You reduced the policy to four words! :)

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

I totally agree with everything written in this thread so far.

Agreed.



Given the opportunity, greed subverts science, just like it subverts other not-for-profit human endeavors such as politics and religion.

Two Thumbs Up. Decision understood completely.





great news



no more play money with primegrid

Bingowings.

JimB wrote: ... we've decided not to participate in any system that monetizes our credit. ...

Vey wise decision !



____________

"Accidit in puncto, quod non contingit in anno."

Something that does not occur in a year may, perchance, happen in a moment.

As a member of the Gridcoin team, I am very disappointed with this sudden decision, especially because we had a Member Poll (https://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8263) only few days ago and the overall consensus was that Gridcoin should stay and that there isn't "an overwhelming desire to see them go away". Suddenly, it turns out that there is such a desire, not on the forums, but among the PrimeGrid admins?



JimB's explanation that "science is in danger" is entirely made up. There is absolute zero incentive for any Gridcoin user to tamper with the residues. First of all, we are also fans of math and science, just like all of you here, and we hate to see anyone tampering with scientific results. And secondly, finding new primes doesn't yield more BOINC credits. In fact, finding new primes is actively discouraged by PrimeGrid (credit-wise), the actual prime-finding projects yield very little credits and that's the main reason Gridcoin users run mostly PPS Sieve.



Michael Goetz also wrote a lot of erroneous stuff about Gridcoin in the previously mentioned Member Poll thread, but ended up deleting it and offering us an apology for it. I am very surprised to see it happening again, in this new thread, by another admin. It looks like you guys absolutely WANT to ban Gridcoin and are prepared to invent any reason to justify it? If that's the case, there's no need for all this nonsense - just send a message to any of us: "Please, remove us from the whitelist ASAP". And we'll see to it. Easier for everybody.

Great Move PrimeGrid and Thank you. 👍

The Science, Finding Primes, The Badges, The Team Events and Most of all the PrimeGrid's Challenge Series Each Year is all I need.



"The Science" for "The Science" and not "The Science" for "The Coin".

____________



Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

just send a message to any of us: "Please, remove us from the whitelist ASAP".



This has, in fact, already been done.



...we had a Member Poll (https://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8263) only few days ago and the overall consensus was that Gridcoin should stay and that there isn't "an overwhelming desire to see them go away".



This isn't about what members want, or even what the admins want. If I was making the decision alone, I would have been happy to keep Gridcoin here based on the results of the survey. That was originally my intention. Today's action is unrelated to that. As Jim alluded to, we've been analyzing the security implications of BOINC credit having become monetized, and we have come to the conclusion that technical solutions alone are not sufficient. We are removing a large incentive for "bad actors" to want to target PrimeGrid. I am in no way calling Gridcoin or any of its members "bad actors". I'm saying the money may attract "bad actors". This is about the money, not Gridcoin or cryptocurrencies.



While I'm not going to go into any details, rest assured all generic BOINC-supplied anti-cheating methods have been in use for years, as have several of our own design. That, however, is only part of our solution. Removing this incentive is another part.







____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

I jumped back into grcpool a couple of weeks ago and noticed that primegrid was already no longer whitelisted. I was happy to continue crunching your tasks for my GRC, but so be it. As a matter of fact, when I built my 16 core i9 (with 1080Ti) earlier this year, the most exciting project for me was primegrid and I was actually doing very well in your rankings tables! I even donated to your project. The last couple of years though I've been dabbling with cryptocurrencies and was eager to see what this computer could do.



I really don't know how much would be gained by cheating though. Again on grcpool, I'm doing quite well in their rankings, but I'm only making pennies a day. Anybody cheating to such an extent they were making a great deal of coins would surely be easy to spot and disable? Maybe it's just a distrust of cryptocurrency world in general?

Hello,



Totally agree with the decision. It’s about participating to science for science.



Although I’m currently not active in this project, considering what happened to Collatz, I wouldn’t wish it happened to any other boinc project.



Regards.

...considering what happened to Collatz...





What happened to Collatz? Had a quick look on their site but didn't see anything.



I jumped back into grcpool a couple of weeks ago and noticed that primegrid was already no longer whitelisted. I was happy to continue crunching your tasks for my GRC, but so be it. As a matter of fact, when I built my 16 core i9 (with 1080Ti) earlier this year, the most exciting project for me was primegrid and I was actually doing very well in your rankings tables! I even donated to your project. The last couple of years though I've been dabbling with cryptocurrencies and was eager to see what this computer could do.



I really don't know how much would be gained by cheating though. Again on grcpool, I'm doing quite well in their rankings, but I'm only making pennies a day. Anybody cheating to such an extent they were making a great deal of coins would surely be easy to spot and disable? Maybe it's just a distrust of cryptocurrency world in general?



It's not about cryptocurrencies. It's the money.



There's 7 billion people in the world, and some are dishonest and will seize any opportunity to make free money if they think they can get away with it.



People do that just for BOINC credit, and all the credit in the world won't buy you a cup of coffee.



The bottom line is that we feel that allowing monetization of the credit we award is a significant threat to what we do at PrimeGrid.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Ah well, that's a shame. But while I ultimately do not agree with this decision, I can understand it to some extent and respect it.



I wonder, though; is the double-check system not considered a sufficient safeguard for cheaters?

____________

Long live the sievers.



+ Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives +

Totally agree with this decision. No one should benefit from any financial reward for his participation in the distributed computing.

Volunteering is the DNA of distributed computing and philanthropy, its chromosomes.



Fully agree. I hope that other distributed computing projects will make the same decision, if it is not already done.



Ah well, that's a shame. But while I ultimately do not agree with this decision, I can understand it to some extent and respect it.



I wonder, though; is the double-check system not considered a sufficient safeguard for cheaters?





A quick zoom around some forums revealed a lot of Gridcoiners abort CPU assigned Genefer21 tasks.



Ah well, that's a shame. But while I ultimately do not agree with this decision, I can understand it to some extent and respect it.



I wonder, though; is the double-check system not considered a sufficient safeguard for cheaters?





A quick zoom around some forums revealed a lot of Gridcoiners abort CPU assigned Genefer21 tasks.





This only show that they were only in it for the Coin and not the Science.

____________



Crunching@EVGA The Number One Team in the BOINC Community. Folding@EVGA The Number One Team in the Folding@Home Community.

...considering what happened to Collatz...





What happened to Collatz? Had a quick look on their site but didn't see anything.







I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/gridcoin/comments/88uaw0/no_one_curious_about_these_two_collatz_hosts/



It looks like people were feeding fake results to Collatz (which take no time to process) in order to earn more gridcoins. And weren't smart enough to also fake a more realistic run-time. The unrealistic run-time is the reason they were caught.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Ralph Brockes wrote: A quick zoom around some forums revealed a lot of Gridcoiners abort CPU assigned Genefer21 tasks.



Sorry, but I don't see the issue? Or what it has to do with my question (if it was supposed to be addressed to it).

____________

Long live the sievers.



+ Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives +

Ah well, that's a shame. But while I ultimately do not agree with this decision, I can understand it to some extent and respect it.



I wonder, though; is the double-check system not considered a sufficient safeguard for cheaters?



If there were unlimited money available, do you think someone would be able to find a way past the double checks?



There's a lot of smart people out there. Jim and I sometimes spend time trying to figure out how someone could cheat here if the wanted to. Usually, most of the "possible" ways are much too difficult for anyone to ever try just to get higher on the leader boards.



But for money? I don't want to bet that the two of us are that much smarter than every hacker on the planet. I'd much rather the big target shaped like a $$$ was on some other BOINC project's back.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Well yeah, I get that. I just disagree when it comes to the likelihood/weight of that risk in the context of GRC, plus what Ralph Brockes said about the magnitude of profitable cheating making the perpetrator quite visible. But fair enough.

____________

Long live the sievers.



+ Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives +



Mike and Jim have already given the relevant information. However, I'd like to add both that as an Admin I fully supported this decision and to offer one of my reasons for that support beyond those stated. All of BOINC (not just PG) is supposed to be run on hardware that is either owned by the user or hardware that they have permission to use. Just plain credits is usually a very low incentive for anyone to risk such actions (that might well be subject to criminal penalties) that violate this policy. Monetizing credits, however, provides a much stronger incentive for this to occur. There is no way to detect this on the PG end of things (i.e., real machines returning real and valid results, just illegally used).



Beyond the potential bad press to PG and possible subpoena of PG data and even volunteer personnel, this flies in the face of how to do science. I am a scientist in real life, and we have various safe guards to check such activity (often that come at substantial costs in time, personnel, and money). Such safe guards are beyond the capability and resources of PG, and thus, the policy against monetization of credits is the best step.



I would like to reiterate that this policy in no way reflects badly on GRC. The discussions about this have been going on off and on among admin for far longer than the recent issues/discussions regarding GRC. GRC members should in no way interpret this policy as suggesting that any of their current members are cheating or using equipment without permission. I am happy to have GRC participate in PG both as individuals and as a team both now and in the future.





Ralph Brockes wrote: A quick zoom around some forums revealed a lot of Gridcoiners abort CPU assigned Genefer21 tasks.



Sorry, but I don't see the issue? Or what it has to do with my question (if it was supposed to be addressed to it).



It's slowly coming out on this thread that many Gridcoiners are after as much credit in as short a time as possible - up to and including hacking and cheating. The Collatz project was a victim of this, and I saw that some Gridcoiners abort Genefer21 tasks assigned to the CPU because of the time taken to complete. That's the threat that primegrid sees, hence the decision.



Well yeah, I get that. I just disagree when it comes to the likelihood/weight of that risk in the context of GRC, but fair enough.



About 10 miles from me is a nuclear power plant that's been around probably since before I was born -- and I'm no spring chicken. Never in that time has there been any problem that resulted in a radiation leak of any sort.



Nevertheless, people have been trying to close it down for decades out of fear of some accident, or terrorist attack, or natural disaster causing a radiological event similar to what happened in Chernobyl or Japan, or that nearly happened at Three Mile Island.



The odds of something like that happening are pretty low. But the potential damage is immense if it does in fact occur.



That's the problem here. The risk of an occurrence may be low, but it's not zero, and the damage to us could be catastrophic.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

As an -actual- member of Team Gridcoin, I am very sad to see this project go, as it is one of the more arguably useful projects in our whitelist. The response in our community has really left something to be desired, and I am frankly disappointed in a lot of people. I will continue to crunch for Primegrid, regardless of reward. I came to Gridcoin as a foray into cryptocurrency... and have seen all the good and bad sides of it. I'm what we call a "BOINC traditionalist"...



Anywho, no hard feelings here. I respect your decision. And that invite is still open. ;D

____________



It is a good decision not to commercialize PrimeGrid. Full support.

____________



Well done to the PrimeGrid admins.



I used to wonder how GRC built up such a big team so quickly...and it's fairly obvious why - lots of members jumping on board the "let's make money out of this", instead of supporting one (or more) projects, just for the science.



After all, BOINC was built up on the basis on using "spare CPU cycles" to do some science...as opposed to 24/7/365 operation just to earn some $$$.



Monetising might have got more people interested in crunching some projects...but jumping on a band wagon for that sole reason doesn't seem right.



Personally, I like the various Challenges, pitting member vs member and team vs team...but it seems to be a waste of time when a team set up to earn money for members always (it seems) gets the #1 placing.



Just my 2c





____________

regards,

Tim



UK BOINC Team Founder

Join the UK BOINC Team: http://www.ukboincteam.org.uk/uk-boinc-team.html



The Collatz project was a victim of this, and I saw that some Gridcoiners abort Genefer21 tasks assigned to the CPU because of the time taken to complete. That's the threat that primegrid sees, hence the decision.

1. Collatz scenario cannot happen at PrimeGrid, because all results are double-checked here and always were (even before Gridcoin).



2. Aborting GFN-21 CPU tasks is obviously not cheating. Anyone can do it, aborting tasks is a legit BOINC operation. I would abort them too, why waste a CPU on a task which can be done much faster on a GPU?



The fact is: PrimeGrid is banning Gridcoin and losing ~35% of its computing power without ANY good reason. There was no actual cheating and no fake results EVER (with PrimeGrid), all such scenarios posted here were either made up or are impossible due to security mechanism which are already in place (like double-checking). The whole thing is so absurd and so devoid of any valid arguments that even aborting tasks is presented as a threat. I am very sorry to see such ineptitude here.

Vortac: That's not a very cool approach. It feels very much like mafia.



"You wouldn't want to lose our 'protection', would you?"



And this is exactly the kind of bad attitude I was talking about. As far as I can tell, we did everything we could to pressure them into a decision. If we want to reward on top of THEIR structure, we should be accomodating... all the butthurt comments I saw in the Discord the next morning. That was absolutely appalling. Our coin is being driven into the ground by narcissistic children. Plain and simple.

To repeat the salient point.



The problem is not the low probability of invalid data being accepted due to cheating.



It's the enormous impact such an event would have.



All the dedicated crunchers (you, me, everyone) will each have lost our personal investment in energy expenditures if the PrimeGrid results are compromised.



It is not a zero cost event. I am unwilling to risk that.

We're not banning Gridcoin. You're free to remain a member of that team and keep crunching here. And I seriously doubt we're going to lose 35% of our computing power. But if we do, that power is probably concentrated in the PPS Sieve subproject. I will quite literally not live long enough to see that factoring put to use at PrimeGrid. But we supply sieves to the people on the Riesel Project at mersenneforum, so it's not going to waste even now.

I think it's a great decision.

Gridcoin is an abnormality that I won't even recognise. It's not in the spirit of volunteer work if you're getting paid.



I'm actually quite happy to see Gridcoin de-whitelisted :D

____________





And I seriously doubt we're going to lose 35% of our computing power. But if we do, that power is probably concentrated in the PPS Sieve subproject. I will quite literally not live long enough to see that factoring put to use at PrimeGrid.

I've seen that argument before too. It's true, Gridcoin members mostly crunch PPS Sieve - because PrimeGrid admins decided PPS Sieve should yield most credits. If, for example, GFN tasks were rewarded equally (or more), they would be happy to crunch them too.



So, if sieving is so far ahead... why not adjust the credit system and start rewarding it with less credits? Instead, what we get is "we don't need that much computing power anyway, so good riddance to them". Makes very little sense to me.

Awesome decision! I support it 100%! I just wish it was mandatory for ALL BOINC projects and not just PrimeGrid.

So, if sieving is so far ahead... why not adjust the credit system and start rewarding it with less credits? Instead, what we get is "we don't need that much computing power anyway, so good riddance to them". Makes very little sense to me.

The credit makes perfect sense for the CPU version of the software. The GPU code simply gets the same amount of credit.

So, if sieving is so far ahead... why not adjust the credit system and start rewarding it with less credits? Instead, what we get is "we don't need that much computing power anyway, so good riddance to them". Makes very little sense to me.



I'm going to be completely unambiguous:



If Gridcoin was 90% of our computing power, AND all of those computers would leave because of this decision, AND if all of that was in our most important projects, we would have made the exact same decision.



This wasn't a decision we wanted to make. It was a decision we felt we had to make no matter what the cost.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

The credit makes perfect sense for the CPU version of the software. The GPU code simply gets the same amount of credit

Michael was kind enough to explain to us (in the Member Poll thread) that he can, as a PrimeGrid admin, adjust the credits anytime. If sieving is so far ahead, perhaps it's indeed time to adjust the credits and issue more of them to prime-finding projects, so that we can catch up on sieving? I guess credits make perfect sense in the context of actual FLOPS done, but it looks like that's not the only consideration here? Correct me if I am wrong please, my understanding of the project is surely not as good as yours.



The credit makes perfect sense for the CPU version of the software. The GPU code simply gets the same amount of credit

Michael was kind enough to explain to us (in the Member Poll thread) that he can, as a PrimeGrid admin, adjust the credits anytime. If sieving is so far ahead, perhaps it's indeed time to adjust the credits and issue more of them to prime-finding projects, so that we can catch up on sieving? I guess credits make perfect sense in the context of actual FLOPS done, but it looks like that's not the only consideration here? Correct me if I am wrong please, my understanding of the project is surely not as good as yours.





You're absolutely correct. BOINC credit is literally defined as a measure of the number of FLOPs performed, but measuring that value is, at best, an educated guess.



The original concept was simple: benchmark the CPU, measure the CPU time consumed by a task, multiply the two together, and there's your FLOPS or credit.



I could write a doctoral thesis on the ways that this was a failure.



I don't know if we have the best credit system in the BOINC universe, but that's our goal. We've gone to a lot of effort to effectively model the computational complexity of our various tasks, and assign each task the proper amount of credit.



Even so, there's major problems that don't have simple solutions.



There's some underlying properties of a credit system that we want our credit system to adhere to:



* On a given computer, the run time of specific task should be proportional to the CPU time of the task. For a GPU task, we want the credit to be proportional to the run time of the task since there's no effective method for measuring "GPU time".



* Regardless of the hardware you run a task on, you get the same credit. Intel CPU, AMD CPU, ARM powered smartphone, Raspberry Pi, or top of the line GPU, if you run task X, you'll get the same credit.



Those two goals often conflict with each other. For example, LLR tasks run much faster on modern Intel CPUs than on modern AMD CPUs. Because of this, the speed ratio of sieve tasks to LLR tasks will be different on Intel and AMD CPUs. If we adhere to the first rule above, we can't adhere to the second rule.



Compromises need to be made, so the credit system we have isn't perfect. There is no perfect system.



Michael was kind enough to explain to us (in the Member Poll thread) that he can, as a PrimeGrid admin, adjust the credits anytime



That was speaking hypothetically, in the context of an unscrupulous admin who wanted to cheat. There's a difference between "could" and "would".

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Totally aree to that decision. We are here as volunteers not for cash.



Mike and Jim have already given the relevant information. However, I'd like to add both that as an Admin I fully supported this decision and to offer one of my reasons for that support beyond those stated. All of BOINC (not just PG) is supposed to be run on hardware that is either owned by the user or hardware that they have permission to use. Just plain credits is usually a very low incentive for anyone to risk such actions (that might well be subject to criminal penalties) that violate this policy. Monetizing credits, however, provides a much stronger incentive for this to occur. There is no way to detect this on the PG end of things (i.e., real machines returning real and valid results, just illegally used).



Beyond the potential bad press to PG and possible subpoena of PG data and even volunteer personnel, this flies in the face of how to do science. I am a scientist in real life, and we have various safe guards to check such activity (often that come at substantial costs in time, personnel, and money). Such safe guards are beyond the capability and resources of PG, and thus, the policy against monetization of credits is the best step.





Could you please comment on a couple interesting assertions currently floating around some of the message boards?



-One or more Primegrid Admins are also Admins of Charity Engine, one of the largest contributors (And therefore earners) on Team Gridcoin

-The fact that Primegrid will be removed from the whitelist will benefit Charity Engine even further by increasing its magnitude from other projects

-There is no mention of Gridcoin anywhere on CharityEngine's website.



https://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/list/8/0/118094994

https://www.charityengine.com/about/how-it-works



Reading into this has left me feeling like this might be a conflict of interest. Could someone here clarify?

The whole thing is so absurd and so devoid of any valid arguments that even aborting tasks is presented as a threat. I am very sorry to see such ineptitude here.





My point was the slowest tasks might be perceived as prone to hacking due to the high amount of credit.





Mike and Jim have already given the relevant information. However, I'd like to add both that as an Admin I fully supported this decision and to offer one of my reasons for that support beyond those stated. All of BOINC (not just PG) is supposed to be run on hardware that is either owned by the user or hardware that they have permission to use. Just plain credits is usually a very low incentive for anyone to risk such actions (that might well be subject to criminal penalties) that violate this policy. Monetizing credits, however, provides a much stronger incentive for this to occur. There is no way to detect this on the PG end of things (i.e., real machines returning real and valid results, just illegally used).



Beyond the potential bad press to PG and possible subpoena of PG data and even volunteer personnel, this flies in the face of how to do science. I am a scientist in real life, and we have various safe guards to check such activity (often that come at substantial costs in time, personnel, and money). Such safe guards are beyond the capability and resources of PG, and thus, the policy against monetization of credits is the best step.





Could you please comment on a couple interesting assertions currently floating around some of the message boards?



-One or more Primegrid Admins are also Admins of Charity Engine, one of the largest contributors (And therefore earners) on Team Gridcoin

-The fact that Primegrid will be removed from the whitelist will benefit Charity Engine even further by increasing its magnitude from other projects

-There is no mention of Gridcoin anywhere on CharityEngine's website.



https://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/list/8/0/118094994

https://www.charityengine.com/about/how-it-works



Reading into this has left me feeling like this might be a conflict of interest. Could someone here clarify?



I will not comment on the memberships/administrative roles/other private matters of other admin. I will note that I have no involvement with CharityEngine now or in the past.



I will, however, say that should any such conflict be in place, any PG admin would recuse themselves from the decision making regarding that matter. PG admin decisions are based on what is right for PG, and PG only.



If you have questions regarding CharityEngine, those questions should be directed to that project.





I applaud you for this decision and hope other projects follow your courageous lead!



____________





My point was the slowest tasks might be perceived as prone to hacking due to the high amount of credit.

Well, it's another wrong point then. GFN tasks are issued with much less credits (proportionally) than shorter tasks like PPS Sieve. And even if someone managed to hack them, it would be a wasted effort because such hacked tasks cannot pass double-checking then.



My point was the slowest tasks might be perceived as prone to hacking due to the high amount of credit.

Well, it's another wrong point then. GFN tasks are issued with much less credits (proportionally) than shorter tasks like PPS Sieve. And even if someone managed to hack them, it would be a wasted effort because such hacked tasks cannot pass double-checking then.





... until many people do it the same way an the dc has the same wrong/cheated result



Expanding on my somewhat knee-jerk one-word reaction earlier, everything Michael, Jim & Scott have said in my opinion is very clear, unambiguous & thorough. Supported my end to ensure our personal efforts & investments are not in any way wasted.



GRC should remain a separate entity, just like other projects are. They can clearly get enough credits from elsewhere, but can still help us in the same specific way others do i.e focusing on LLR of choice.



To think some people were trying to do CPU GFN21 thinking they are going to get "paid" at the end is absolutely mind-boggling. They clearly didn't understand what they were doing.

My point was the slowest tasks might be perceived as prone to hacking due to the high amount of credit.

Well, it's another wrong point then. GFN tasks are issued with much less credits (proportionally) than shorter tasks like PPS Sieve. And even if someone managed to hack them, it would be a wasted effort because such hacked tasks cannot pass double-checking then.







...why are you attacking so much?! I'm in team Gridcoin just like you and refer you to my original post...





http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8272&nowrap=true#121886



...and futhermore I do not agree with primegrids decision, in case you think I'm defending them. The world of science is full of capital investment in research, grants, etc., etc. so this benevolent and altruistic nonsense is somewhat mystifying. Sure, for the vast majority of us providing our spare computer time is a hobby, but there is nothing wrong with getting a reward for it.



Will PG still accept GRC donations?

____________





Tonight's lucky numbers are



555*2^3563328+1 (PPS-MEGA)



and



58523466^131072+1 (GFN-17 MEGA)

Could you please comment on a couple interesting assertions currently floating around some of the message boards?



-One or more Primegrid Admins are also Admins of Charity Engine, one of the largest contributors (And therefore earners) on Team Gridcoin

-The fact that Primegrid will be removed from the whitelist will benefit Charity Engine even further by increasing its magnitude from other projects

-There is no mention of Gridcoin anywhere on CharityEngine's website.



https://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/list/8/0/118094994

https://www.charityengine.com/about/how-it-works



Reading into this has left me feeling like this might be a conflict of interest. Could someone here clarify?



It is no secret that Rytis Slatkevičius, PrimeGrid's founder, is associated with Charity Engine. You need look no further than Charity Engine's corporate "About" page for that information: https://www.charityengine.com/about/us



Nobody else here has any connection whatsoever to Charity Engine, and Rytis recused himself from this discussion and did not participate in the decision.



Charity Engine in no manner influenced our decision. They were not consulted, nor did anyone from Charity Engine contact us in any way. We have never spoken to anyone from Charity Engine in any context, except, of course, for Rytis. It would never even occur to us to ask Charity Engine what their opinion might be.



If they do in fact have substantial Gridcoin holdings as you claim, I would think this decision is no more to their liking than it is to any other Gridcoin participant. But that's just speculation on my part.



Any rumors and conspiracy theories out there are just that, rumors and conspiracy theories without any foundation in fact. In no way, shape or form was Charity Engine a part of this decision.



(Honestly, of all the flack I thought we'd get from Gridcoin about this, a conspiracy theory involving Charity Engine never even crossed my mind. This is about as far from reality as you can get. There's not even a shred of truth here.)

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

until many people do it the same way an the dc has the same wrong/cheated result

More wrong points. Even if half of the crunchers managed to 'hack' their tasks, that still means 50% failure rate on the double checks.



Really, it's very unfortunate that people are so quick on supporting bans, but apparently don't understand even the basic principles of work validation.



Will PG still accept GRC donations?



That's an interesting question. I don't know.



Do you think people will be donating Gridcoins to us?

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1





I'm going to be completely unambiguous:



If Gridcoin was 90% of our computing power, AND all of those computers would leave because of this decision, AND if all of that was in our most important projects, we would have made the exact same decision.



This wasn't a decision we wanted to make. It was a decision we felt we had to make no matter what the cost.



I support this decision.

I don't think there's any conspiracy so much as there were curious observations that some felt needed to be addressed. I think a PG Admin being involved with CE was quite noteworthy. Regardless, thanks for clearing it up.

why are you attacking so much?! I'm in team Gridcoin just like you and refer you to my original post

You wrote here http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8272&nowrap=true#121899

It's slowly coming out on this thread that many Gridcoiners are after as much credit in as short a time as possible - up to and including hacking and cheating. The Collatz project was a victim of this, and I saw that some Gridcoiners abort Genefer21 tasks assigned to the CPU because of the time taken to complete. That's the threat that primegrid sees, hence the decision.



That's nonsense and FUD. There is absolutely no threat in aborting tasks and all work is double-checked with PrimeGrid, so it's impossible to hack the tasks like they did at Collatz. Get your facts straight.

I for one (as a Gridcoin team member) am taking no offence from PG's decision. I just wondered if PG would still accept GRC



I am amused that there is such an uproar



This is solely PG's decision, if people don't like it they can leave, I doubt 'arguing' with the Admins will make much difference

____________





Tonight's lucky numbers are



555*2^3563328+1 (PPS-MEGA)



and



58523466^131072+1 (GFN-17 MEGA)



This is solely PG's decision, if people don't like it they can leave, I doubt 'arguing' with the Admins will make much difference



Exactly. :-)

I for one (as a Gridcoin team member) am taking no offence from PG's decision. I just wondered if PG would still accept GRC



I am amused that there is such an uproar



This is solely PG's decision, if people don't like it they can leave, I doubt 'arguing' with the Admins will make much difference



Well said dad, rock of sense my man! :)

____________

My lucky numbers 10590941048576+1 and 224584605939537911+81292139*23#*n for n=0..26

A note to all the "PG defenders": Please try to be kind to the people who feel like they have been wronged.



For some of them, this may cost them non-trivial amounts of money. For others, it's a repudiation of something they're very passionate about. Either way, it's easy to empathize with their positions.



So cut them a little slack, please. Vortac, for example, is not perhaps the epitome of etiquette today, but I think we can still afford to treat him the way we ourselves would like to be treated.



This isn't about who's right and who's wrong. Everyone should have an opportunity to express their opinions. Today this is even more true.



Thank you!!!

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

why are you attacking so much?! I'm in team Gridcoin just like you and refer you to my original post

You wrote here http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8272&nowrap=true#121899

It's slowly coming out on this thread that many Gridcoiners are after as much credit in as short a time as possible - up to and including hacking and cheating. The Collatz project was a victim of this, and I saw that some Gridcoiners abort Genefer21 tasks assigned to the CPU because of the time taken to complete. That's the threat that primegrid sees, hence the decision.



That's nonsense and FUD. There is absolutely no threat in aborting tasks and all work is double-checked with PrimeGrid, so it's impossible to hack the tasks like they did at Collatz. Get your facts straight.





Dude. Chill out. Right now I'm happily crunching away on grcpool. In the future maybe I'll come back to primegrid and crunch 'just for the fun of it'. I never said aborting tasks was a threat. I said the implications of it could be perceived as a threat. Ultimately I guess I see primegrids point of view, but I don't agree with it. Nuff said.





A note to all the "PG defenders": Please try to be kind to the people who feel like they have been wronged.



For some of them, this may cost them non-trivial amounts of money. For others, it's a repudiation of something they're very passionate about. Either way, it's easy to empathize with their positions.



So cut them a little slack, please. Vortac, for example, is not perhaps the epitome of etiquette today, but I think we can still afford to treat him the way we ourselves would like to be treated.



This isn't about who's right and who's wrong. Everyone should have an opportunity to express their opinions. Today this is even more true.



Thank you!!!



100%. Bang on. Let's step back and breath a little. The reason is considered. The fall out is unfortunate. But hey. Let's ALL chillax and accept. As Jim said. Everyone's still welcome. There's no reason to blow a fuse. Let's not fall out over this. If you want to Primegrid then stay and have fun. No judgement. We're all friends here. Chill guys. Seriously it's not necessary. Let's just get on.

____________

My lucky numbers 10590941048576+1 and 224584605939537911+81292139*23#*n for n=0..26

A note to all the "PG defenders": Please try to be kind to the people who feel like they have been wronged.

For some of them, this may cost them non-trivial amounts of money. For others, it's a repudiation of something they're very passionate about. Either way, it's easy to empathize with their positions.

So cut them a little slack, please. Vortac, for example, is not perhaps the epitome of etiquette today, but I think we can still afford to treat him the way we ourselves would like to be treated.

This isn't about who'se right and who'se wrong. Everyone should have an opportunity to express their opinions. Today this is even more true.

Thank you Michael, for your kind (albeit somewhat patronizing) words. But really, I must say, I am not visiting PrimeGrid forums so that people can empathize with me. Nor does anyone here need to worry about my financial situation, thank you very much. I usually visit PrimeGrid forums to engage in technical discussions, so I think there's no need to cut me some slack, especially if I am wrong about a certain technical issue.



The truth is, I am a PrimeGrid defender too and, any way you cut it, the project is about to lose some of the support it enjoys now (even if it's less than 35%). Shouldn't all true defenders be worried about that? Or shall we congratulate each other?

...the project is about to lose some of the support it enjoys now (even if it's less than 35%). Shouldn't all true defenders be worried about that?



Absolutely it's a concern. But big or small, it's our opinion that it's a price we have to pay.



For obvious reasons we won't go into details, but we consider the potential threat, even with double checking, to be significant enough to leave us no choice but to take this action.



...patronizing...



Sorry about that. I was getting complaints and was trying to find a better way of de-escalating things than simply removing posts. The patronizing wasn't intentional.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

To be fair, after the cheating on Collatz, I'm surprised it has taken this long for a project to decide that the risk is not worth the gain. I wonder if Collatz will now follow and other projects that don't want to have to go through what Jon went through putting his project back together.

I've had to hide a bunch of posts that were talking about specific ways to cheat on BOINC projects.





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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

My main project is Seti. I do a little PG here and there but will crank it up a bit more.

Excellent decision. You have my support.

____________





As founder of BOINC@AUSTRALIA I agree and will support you for this decision and hope other projects follow your intrepid lead!

____________



Proud Founder of

Have a look at my WebCam

My best Prime 46776558131072+1

Hearing this news is excellent. Given the scale of the endeavor, ensuring that the people who contribute to PrimeGrid are doing it for the sake of PrimeGrid's goals and not for monetization should have a positive impact on the integrity of the work done here.

I've had to hide a bunch of posts that were talking about specific ways to cheat on BOINC projects.



MANY years ago when I was a forum admin at another project we used to give those people 'time outs' and refer them to the next level up admins to see if it really was possible, so they can stop it, and to see if anyone was already using those hacks.

...the project is about to lose some of the support it enjoys now (even if it's less than 35%). Shouldn't all true defenders be worried about that?



Absolutely it's a concern. But big or small, it's our opinion that it's a price we have to pay.





My concern, it's your project and you do with it what you want, is the new lack of 'validators' or even 'first finishers' so all my workunits will now take longer to get their credits. For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.

for me. i dont mind making money. with boinc. if those credits went to a charity.

...the project is about to lose some of the support it enjoys now (even if it's less than 35%). Shouldn't all true defenders be worried about that?



Absolutely it's a concern. But big or small, it's our opinion that it's a price we have to pay.





My concern, it's your project and you do with it what you want, is the new lack of 'validators' or even 'first finishers' so all my workunits will now take longer to get their credits. For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.

That's relatively moot though. You know exactly how much credit you will have once all of your tasks validate (assuming that you don't return bad results), so you can switch to another sub project once you pass your goal quite easily. Personally, I like seeing how much pending credit I can rack up--I view it as an assessment of how much better my computer is at crunching than others'.



____________



Bravo Primegrid. Help with buying new equipement and the electricity bill would be welcome, but community computing is just that, the community helping others. My pension is miniscule and running four machines is a bit tight sometimes, but I'm always impatient to see the results each afternoon.

____________



Great! We'll keep on crunching here, I too suffer from a small ($450/month) pension so the electricity costs are my prime (joke) concern, but the heat from the computers means I don't have to use the gas central heating, so what the hell? Good decision won't change anything here.

____________



User ID #765 here, I agree with the decision. Money involvement only opens the door for unwanted manipulation and possible legal issues that I am sure nobody here wants. Been with PG since early on, and I don't think the risk to the integrity of the project is worth it. I'm sure integrity is currently high, but things can (and do) change.

____________



Not to 1 up Skligmund ;), user 227 here, and I agree with JimB!

____________



I'm a little bit disappointed, but I can totally see the reasoning behind this.



Personally the reason for me to be a part of team Gridcoin was to help divert computing power from the ecocatastrophe that is Bitcoin, to a more useful enterprise. I am saddened that monetization brought the worse out in so many people, which led to this situation. I still hope gridcoin would succeed, but I think PG's (totally justified) decision will not help.



Even though I found Primegrid through Gridcoin, I will definately stay with Primegrid from now on, without Gridcoin.



Are any teams recruiting members? ;)

RagnarokDel

Send message

Joined: 11 Mar 18

Posts: 2

ID: 989318

Credit: 25,119

RAC: 0



Joined: 11 Mar 18Posts: 2ID: 989318Credit: 25,119RAC: 0 Message 121984 - Posted: 5 Nov 2018 | 10:35:21 UTC - in response to Message 121893.

Last modified: 5 Nov 2018 | 11:13:01 UTC

Ah well, that's a shame. But while I ultimately do not agree with this decision, I can understand it to some extent and respect it.



I wonder, though; is the double-check system not considered a sufficient safeguard for cheaters?





A quick zoom around some forums revealed a lot of Gridcoiners abort CPU assigned Genefer21 tasks.





This only show that they were only in it for the Coin and not the Science.

Or their CPU are already occupied with other projects. There's no point keeping tasks that are going to expire before they're even started. I do WCG on CPU and collatz on GPU personally.



================================



I dont really care personally. I wasnt crunching Primegrid anyway but it was clear from the get go that Michael Goetz had a severe hatred for Gridcoin mixed in with a lack of knowledge related to some claims he's made. Now that this decision is made, I'm sure you'll remove GRC from your donation page, right? Or is the hypocrisy small enough for you to swallow it?





If there were unlimited money available, do you think someone would be able to find a way past the double checks?



There's a lot of smart people out there. Jim and I sometimes spend time trying to figure out how someone could cheat here if the wanted to. Usually, most of the "possible" ways are much too difficult for anyone to ever try just to get higher on the leader boards.





Again, you dont know enough about Gridcoin to make an educated statement on this and end up generating FUD. There's a hard limit of how many GRC can be minted in a day. (Most days, it's not reached.) in the past 24 hours, 28k GRC were minted split evenly between the 22 whitelisted projects. ~1200 GRC were or rather would have been generated on Primegrid had it not been greylisted. Now how many people do you think would go out of their way to cheat the system for 12$/day?

I'm a little bit disappointed, but I can totally see the reasoning behind this.



Personally the reason for me to be a part of team Gridcoin was to help divert computing power from the ecocatastrophe that is Bitcoin, to a more useful enterprise. I am saddened that monetization brought the worse out in so many people, which led to this situation. I still hope gridcoin would succeed, but I think PG's (totally justified) decision will not help.



Even though I found Primegrid through Gridcoin, I will definately stay with Primegrid from now on, without Gridcoin.



Are any teams recruiting members? ;)



Team Storm is always open to new members :)



Edit: I've been waiting for an opportunity to say that...... forever :) You'd be most welcome to our little team :)

____________

My lucky numbers 10590941048576+1 and 224584605939537911+81292139*23#*n for n=0..26

""ecocatastrophe that is Bitcoin"" .......))))))))))))

from 1946:

http://www.ipb.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/briefing-paper.pdf

Virtually no part of the world is untouched by environmental hazards generated by the

US military

http://demilitarize.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The_Militarys_Contribution_to_Climate_Change.pdf

https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-polluter-2408760609.html

...find primes not dimes.



I have to admit that's pretty witty. You reduced the policy to four words! :)



This project is #primegrid, not #dimegrid. :)



...the project is about to lose some of the support it enjoys now (even if it's less than 35%). Shouldn't all true defenders be worried about that?



Absolutely it's a concern. But big or small, it's our opinion that it's a price we have to pay.





My concern, it's your project and you do with it what you want, is the new lack of 'validators' or even 'first finishers' so all my workunits will now take longer to get their credits. For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.

That's relatively moot though. You know exactly how much credit you will have once all of your tasks validate (assuming that you don't return bad results), so you can switch to another sub project once you pass your goal quite easily. Personally, I like seeing how much pending credit I can rack up--I view it as an assessment of how much better my computer is at crunching than others'.



But see I KNOW my pc's are slower than yours are, and most other peoples too, I just have more than 100 cpu cores available to me so do it by quantity not quality.



And yes your suggestion is how I do it now, but waiting for the credits is a royal pain, sometimes taking months for the longer works units, and this decision won't make that any better. Now were any GridCoin folks crunching the longer workunits I have no idea but I guess we will find out in the near future.



Maybe not many / not all of the people who spoke in support for GRC in the poll thread also spoke here, so I'm mostly posting to offset the imbalance of the cheerful crowd, not because I feel like this is really an important comment.



The backstory behind GRC is not "hey, this thing is not monetized, let's monetize it!".



The backstory behind GRC is "hey, stupid bitcoin [and many other cryptocurrencies] is doing wasteful crunching as a proof of work. How about we instead base things on useful crunching?". So the idea is motivated to make the world better. And projects shutting that down is making the world worse, then. Also, it's not proof of work, it's proof of stake, which works a bit differently and it's consequences and threat vectors are much less obvious. To be fair, I never looked enough into it to say I fully 100% understand it.



The argument that money will eventually bring in bad faith actions/actors is obviously sound and correct. But such logic is also in "if you're going outside, there's a chance to get mugged, so let's never go outside". And in real world a person holding that opinion would be considered troubled or even crazy. Because there are benefits of going outside that outweigh risks. So the benefits of going outside in this case, the existance of a decentralized currency based on "useful" crunching, is it worth it?..

[this was re: let's have all other projects go this way.]

[I don't actually have an answer for myself for this question.]



But anyway, all of this is moot, this is totally the current project's admins area of responsibility and decision is obviously final and there's nothing more needs to be said about it. C'est la vie. At least, there's always gapcoin. And also burstcoin, i guess, which doesn't even have crunching.

For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.



I doubt that's because there aren't enough wingmen. Assuming it's not just a coincidence (e.g., someone just came online and grabbed a lot of tasks that will take days to process), it sounds more like someone just disconnected and abandoned a lot of tasks. If so, that should sort itself out as the tasks time out and then everything will go back to normal.



45 tasks every 40 minutes is 1620 tasks per day and we're doing over 30 thousand SGS tasks each day. Give it a week and see if your pending goes back to whatever is normal for you.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

This has probably already been said, but if someone wants to use their computer purely to make money, they are not running BOINC.



I understand the reasoning but I think this is a bad decision and as an active cruncher in about 40 projects, not all of which earn GRC, this will just mean I crunch PrimeGrid less often.

____________

https://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/434794/projectList

I'm a little bit disappointed, but I can totally see the reasoning behind this.



Personally the reason for me to be a part of team Gridcoin was to help divert computing power from the ecocatastrophe that is Bitcoin, to a more useful enterprise. I am saddened that monetization brought the worse out in so many people, which led to this situation. I still hope gridcoin would succeed, but I think PG's (totally justified) decision will not help.



Even though I found Primegrid through Gridcoin, I will definately stay with Primegrid from now on, without Gridcoin.



Are any teams recruiting members? ;)



Team Storm is always open to new members :)



Edit: I've been waiting for an opportunity to say that...... forever :) You'd be most welcome to our little team :)



On a per-capita basis, team Storm is probably the luckiest team at PrimeGrid. Just sayin'.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Maybe not many / not all of the people who spoke in support for GRC in the poll thread also spoke here, so I'm mostly posting to offset the imbalance of the cheerful crowd, not because I feel like this is really an important comment.



The backstory behind GRC is not "hey, this thing is not monetized, let's monetize it!".



The backstory behind GRC is "hey, stupid bitcoin [and many other cryptocurrencies] is doing wasteful crunching as a proof of work. How about we instead base things on useful crunching?". So the idea is motivated to make the world better. And projects shutting that down is making the world worse, then. Also, it's not proof of work, it's proof of stake, which works a bit differently and it's consequences and threat vectors are much less obvious. To be fair, I never looked enough into it to say I fully 100% understand it.



+1



Gridcoin's motives were never in question.



____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

I'm a little bit disappointed, but I can totally see the reasoning behind this.



Personally the reason for me to be a part of team Gridcoin was to help divert computing power from the ecocatastrophe that is Bitcoin, to a more useful enterprise. I am saddened that monetization brought the worse out in so many people, which led to this situation. I still hope gridcoin would succeed, but I think PG's (totally justified) decision will not help.



Even though I found Primegrid through Gridcoin, I will definately stay with Primegrid from now on, without Gridcoin.



Are any teams recruiting members? ;)



Team Storm is always open to new members :)



Edit: I've been waiting for an opportunity to say that...... forever :) You'd be most welcome to our little team :)



On a per-capita basis, team Storm is probably the luckiest team at PrimeGrid. Just sayin'.



Thanks Michael :) hopefully we'll get a few new members on the strenght of that alone. Cheers

____________

My lucky numbers 10590941048576+1 and 224584605939537911+81292139*23#*n for n=0..26

Primes not Dimes.





Outstanding Quote and should be the Motto going forward.

Science for Science.

The Lightning Rod could have made Ben Franklin a millionaire.

The cure for Polio likewise could have enriched Jonas Salk.

But instead it was freely shared.



____________



My concern, it's your project and you do with it what you want, is the new lack of 'validators' or even 'first finishers' so all my workunits will now take longer to get their credits. For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.

I am doing around 2000 SGS per day and have more than 1000 pending WU. Your figures are are line with mine and don't show anything unusual.

This is just the way BOINC + PG double checking works. It is designed to cope with failing tasks and will ensure that every WU is processed correctly by resending it after each timeout, error or abort. That could require several trials and errors before it gets processed correctly. If you do SoB, for example, you could wait for 3 or 4 months before it gets completed. I believe that very old tasks are handled on a case per case basis by the admins who process then without waiting.

There is no lack of wingman, unless you are able to process more than around 30% of all tasks of a project, in which case tasks throughput sent to you is reduced, as you cannot be your own wingman. SGS project is running at more than 13k tasks in progress, so it would have to drop ten-fold before you would start running out of wingmans (if my math are correct). Even 35% less would not change your pending task volume.

The "issue" is that some computers timeout (too slow, too many tasks, stopped), or produce errors (overclocking, faulty hardware, insufficient cooling...).

I agree with the decision and can fully understand the reasons. However, the way with the previous discussions may not have been the best.

Similar to others, I also have a small pension that arrives at the end of each month which is dedicated as much as my means allow to crunching.



I also support the admins in their decision. If someone is interested in crunching at PG and concentrating on PPS Sieve, for example, they can do so without Gridcoin.

GRC is up 5.6% in the last 24 hours!

I'm happy with the new status. I would not like to see the disruption that collatz suffered repeated here.



Personally I believe greed and altruism go together well .. to the almost invariable detriment of altruism.

Unbeknownst to many, Euclid also proved that there are infinitely many dimes. However, the proof uses his Postulate of Price Inflation. /JeppeSN

So glad you decided against monetization!

Also so glad to see so many new faces coming out the metaphorical woodwork, especially those who have been here for An Longe Time & this being their first post. Welcome.

...but it was clear from the get go that Michael Goetz had a severe hatred for Gridcoin...



Let's look at the timeline of events...



On September 18th, shortly after midnight local time (04:00 UTC), I noticed I was having trouble connecting to PrimeGrid with my web browser. I noticed that there was a lot of outgoing traffic on the server's Internet connection. After a few minutes the problem went away by itself. I also observed that this problem seemed to have been occuring every day for quite a while.



With JimB's help, we determined that thousands of users, all of whom belonged to the Gridcoin team, were downloading exceptionally large statistics files, all at the same time. These are files used by websites such as BOINCStats or Free-DC, but are not needed nor typically accessed by individual users.



It appeared as if some bizarre sort of DDOS attack was being launched via Gridcoin against PrimeGrid.



What action, in my unbounded hatred for Gridcoin did I do?



Did I immediately cut off Gridcoin's access in order to protect PrimeGrid's server? No, didn't do that.



Did I cut off everyone's access? No, I didn't do that either.



Did I ban Gridcoin? Nope.



Did I notify the FBI's Cybercrimes division and/or whatever entity in New York State investigates and prosecutes Cybercrimes? No, didn't do that either. (Because I did not consider this to be intentional.)



What I did do was reach out to the one person I knew that was involved (somewhat) in Gridcoin's development ecosphere and asked him to contact whomever the correct people might be, and ask them if they knew what was happening, and if so, to please correct the problem.



I got a very pleasant, cooperative, and professional response in reply stating that they considered this a major problem and would fix it quickly.



Fantastic!



(Queue the theme music from "Jeopardy!")



Fast forward to October 4th, 16 days later.



Nothing has changed.



The daily DDOS attack is still ongoing.



I conclude that Gridcoin is either unwilling or unable to fix the problem. Certainly, for whatever reason, it's a fact that it has not yet been fixed. Do I immediately cut off Gridcoin's access? No. Ban the Gridcoin team? No.



The following day, we give notice that in one week we will be restricting access to the statistics. The purpose is to stop the DDOS attacks, which Gridcoin itself has not stopped despite having had more than two weeks to work on the problem.



I personally reached out to the two Gridcoin related entities I was aware of to make sure they would have access to the statistics under the new restrictions. As long as the access was limited to Gridcoin servers, and not the Gridcoin client software that had caused the DDOS attacks, Gridcoin was welcome to keep operating at PrimeGrid



On October 12th, we locked down the statistics, finally stopping the DDOS attacks.



It's true I lost my temper on the forums, and I've apologized for that. But looking at the way I've dealt with Gridcoin from the time I first noticed the DDOS attack, I don't think it's fair to conclude that I hate Gridcoin. Or, at a minimum, if I did in fact hate Gridcoin, I certainly didn't act upon that hatred. I think I've been more than fair in the way I've treated Gridcoin.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Total RESPECT primgrid!!!

Very good Choise :-D

Michael Goetz wrote: Let's look at the timeline of events...

Perfect !





____________

"Accidit in puncto, quod non contingit in anno."

Something that does not occur in a year may, perchance, happen in a moment.

In the name of my team Rechenkraft.net, we totally agree with this decision. You have our full support. :-)

I have been crunching on primegrid for a couple of years, this is my first post



I have been an active participant in BOINC for a decade or so, mainly on SETI in the early days



Just little old me on a couple of PCs and laptops accumulating a credit of 47million



Recently I took advantage of Gridcoin, thinking at least I am not wasting computer time on bitcoin and the larger and more public the gridcoin community becomes the more people will be doing something useful with their spare computer time. The GC has been and will be used for small donations to worthwhile projects



I didn't realise my contribution was a dagger pointed at the heart of the PG project and that my motivation should be regarded as unpure and selfish



Quite frankly the rather churlish way this has been presented and the po-faced comments on this thread means that I will end my association with this project



7 APs discovered and 27 checked



I will take my computer cycles elsewhere, hopefully my contribution will be accepted in the spirit with which it is offered



Good luck with the project

Good luck with the project



Good luck with whatever endeavours life may bring your way. I'm sorry to see you go.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

So in the first post, post Message 121859 it is saying that the decision is over monetization of the project, and worrying about cheating.



In post Message 122031 it seems to be clear this was a problem over the way GC hit the servers hard like a DOS attack when getting statistics. Seems like there was enough time given to fix the issue, but it was not fixed. So the best way to fix the issue is to have GC not use PG as a project then they will not need the stats, problem solved.



If the major threat was someone cheating to make money. Better stop all the PG challenges too. People will cheat to get ahead in the standings or for their team to place higher.

People cheat all the time, even when there is no money involved. It is a pride thing.

Athletes take steroids and other drugs to enhance their performance. Why not cheat on a PG challenge? I have seen people go to great lengths to get ahead in come BOINC challenges. Running a couple thousand VMs on one system to get more tasks and points. Not cheating, but come on, what's the next step.



I had feared folding@home would be hurt with curecoin/folding coin. Thought for sure there would be widespread cheating once F@H was monetized, I was wrong, it wasn't.

F@H is going strong as ever with a new massive amount of computing power.

They too use a wingman on every task to make sure the data is good.





Agreed. I just saw this a few moments ago on my BOINC notices. Very disappointing. I'm here for the science, too. I can't put into words how awful it feels to be considered some greedy miscreant simply because I'm on the Gridcoin team. Consider the fact that it costs thousands of dollars to build specific machines with numerous gpu cards just to crunch scientific projects. This doesn't even count the kilowatt hours of electricity over the years. I do this because I've got extra money to spend and I'm a big nerd. This was never about making money on the projects. I've just removed PrimeGrid from all of my machines. I think your project is worthy and I wish you all the luck in the world. I just don't want to participate in a project where the politics of greed is in question. Good bye.

So in the first post, post Message 121859 it is saying that the decision is over monetization of the project, and worrying about cheating.



In post Message 122031 it seems to be clear this was a problem over the way GC hit the servers hard like a DOS attack when getting statistics. Seems like there was enough time given to fix the issue, but it was not fixed. So the best way to fix the issue is to have GC not use PG as a project then they will not need the stats, problem solved...







I would ask that you read the posts a bit more carefully. Mike's comments regarding the DDOS and responses were to show evidence of his patience when dealing with this matter to counter the claim of his supposed hatred for GRC.



To be clear, the DDOS matter was not related directly to the discussions leading to this decision. The discussion regarding monetizing credit and its potential effects have happened among admin for some time (although often interrupted by other more pressing matters). If anything, The DDOS was merely a conduit to bring this issue back to the admin group overall.





Agreed. I just saw this a few moments ago on my BOINC notices. Very disappointing. I'm here for the science, too. I can't put into words how awful it feels to be considered some greedy miscreant simply because I'm on the Gridcoin team. Consider the fact that it costs thousands of dollars to build specific machines with numerous gpu cards just to crunch scientific projects. This doesn't even count the kilowatt hours of electricity over the years. I do this because I've got extra money to spend and I'm a big nerd. This was never about making money on the projects. I've just removed PrimeGrid from all of my machines. I think your project is worthy and I wish you all the luck in the world. I just don't want to participate in a project where the politics of greed is in question. Good bye.





I am sorry to see you go, and I wish you the best of luck as you move on to other projects. Please note, however, that no members of PG admin have stated anywhere that Gridcoin team members are "greedy miscreants". The Gridcoin team and its members are welcome at PG for as long as they prefer to crunch here, as are members of any other teams or non-team independent crunchers. We simply will no longer be exporting statistics to groups for the purpose of monetizing credits.





So in the first post, post Message 121859 it is saying that the decision is over monetization of the project, and worrying about cheating.



In post Message 122031 it seems to be clear this was a problem over the way GC hit the servers hard like a DOS attack when getting statistics. Seems like there was enough time given to fix the issue, but it was not fixed. So the best way to fix the issue is to have GC not use PG as a project then they will not need the stats, problem solved.



That is not what I said.



We effectively blocked the ongoing DDOS attacks on October 12th when we put password protection on the /stats/ directory. As I said, Gridcoin's developers were working to use the new password-protected access we provided to them in order for them to continue using PrimeGrid. This was entirely in their hands; I do not know the details of what was causing the delay. As far as I was concerned they could have, and should have, resumed access immediately after the 12th of October. You'll have to ask them why it didn't happen.



The decision to ban monetization of credit really had nothing to do with Gridcoin itself. This was a decision based on internal discussions amongst the entire PrimeGrid administration starting around November 1st. The only link between the two is that monetization was below our radar prior to the problems with Gridcoin. One of the side effects of all the recent activity is that we decided to give the whole concept of monetization a closer look. As part of that process, Jim and I did an exercise where we tried to find a way to cheat at PrimeGrid. We discovered that, although it would not be easy, it could be done if you were willing to put enough effort into it. We concluded that if our BOINC credit was convertible in money, that might provide enough incentive to put in the effort. I was aware at this time of the events at SRBase, and that certainly influenced my take on this. I was not aware of the attack on Collatz at the time.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Agreed. I just saw this a few moments ago on my BOINC notices. Very disappointing. I'm here for the science, too. I can't put into words how awful it feels to be considered some greedy miscreant simply because I'm on the Gridcoin team.





I have made it abundantly clear that we don't consider Gridcoin itself, or its members, untrustworthy or dishonest. What I've said is that the money may attract people who are dishonest, and that posses a risk that we're not willing to accept.



I can't control what other users say or feel, but I assure you that is not opinion of myself or the other administrators.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

It is not what you said, but it appears to be what happened.

I totally agree with you that they should of fixed the issue right away. You have the right and even the duty to put an end to it. There was plenty of time given, no doubt.



IMHO if it was for the DOS and jamming the servers, you did the right thing.

If it is worrying over cheating, I am not so sure, just being hones here.

You guys know better than I of what can be done to screw with the system.

I don't wan't to know how, don't need to know. Your project, your rules and you have the right and duty to protect the integrity of the data .

One of the best run projects in BOINC, and have the most fun challenges. No shenanigans, tasks only count after the start and before it ends. You have my support, for what its worth.

+1 for team Storm



(if you'll have me - I do have a Mega under my belt!!!)

____________





Tonight's lucky numbers are



555*2^3563328+1 (PPS-MEGA)



and



58523466^131072+1 (GFN-17 MEGA)

+1 for team Storm



(if you'll have me - I do have a Mega under my belt!!!)



:) Mooooooore than welcome Dad :) Great stuff!

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My lucky numbers 10590941048576+1 and 224584605939537911+81292139*23#*n for n=0..26

I have been with Primegrid (and others) for years. All that crunching takes electricity which has a significant cost. (there is also the amount of heat generated - okay if you live in a cold climate - I don't) I am at the point of switching off!



Along comes Gridcoin which offers reward for doing science. But the reward is tiny in comparison to actual electricity cost so in essence I am still making a significant loss. (In fact I my Gridcoin total worth has gone backward given current prices)



If you are in Gridcoin to make money - you are on the wrong track!

Given that Gridcoin will not make you rich from doing science, I don't see a problem with Gridcoing supporting science. Those Sciences not supporting Gridcoin will no doubt lose followers who aren't already financial enough to donate crunching hardware, time, power, cooling and all of their associated costs.



Don't punish the whole community becasue of the criminal deeds of a few.



My decision to continue crunching has become financial - even Gridcoin may not be enough to save my continued crunching.



____________



Mike, you should write decision and make post closed for discussion.





Why, because any discussion is pointless.

We all here miss start point of ALL BOINC project, not just Primegrid .



Is anybody , in whole community was forced to do any project on Boinc ( I repeat not on Primegrid, on all BOINC project)



Answer is negative .



And since answer is negative rest of discussion is pointless.



Any of us can in any time

left Primgrid

stop doing any project

without any problems.



So why you complaining about? Are you forced to be here, are you forced to do any job on Primgrid?

Is anybody every give you any reward except points. No.



If 35% of computer power will left Primegrid: then should be it. Even if we now stop generating all sieve project, we still have works for many years of LLR-ing.



For your point of view, I live in county that have at least 2 times more cost of electricity , and you must buy CPU or GPU to be "in game". Primegrid is not forcing me to do anything of that , I do it with my own will. So if you dont like it, dont do it. Please left Primegrid.

And still with 2 x more in cost of electricity I dont complain.

So Mike and all others of admins and support stuff thumbs up for this decision.

____________

314187728^131072+1 GENERALIZED FERMAT :)

93*10^1029523-1 REPDIGIT PRIME

31*332^367560+1 CRUS PRIME

Proud member of team Aggie The Pew. Go Aggie!

We discovered that, although it would not be easy, it could be done if you were willing to put enough effort into it. We concluded that if our BOINC credit was convertible in money, that might provide enough incentive to put in the effort.

Well, that attack you have discovered is almost certainly possible even without Gridcoin. I mean, simply not sharing statistics data with a third party surely won't mitigate such a dangerous threat? Meaning that, even without Gridcoin, PrimeGrid is still vulnerable?



Because, let's be frank, $12 per day is a negligible incentive and, as RagnarokDel has pointed out, that's all one could earn here, even if he hacks PrimeGrid completely and grabs all credits for himself. This whole discussion is hardly worth $12 per day, let alone hacking PrimeGrid through this new, undiscovered method.

Well, that attack you have discovered is almost certainly possible even without Gridcoin. I mean, simply not sharing statistics data with a third party surely won't mitigate such a dangerous threat? Meaning that, even without Gridcoin, PrimeGrid is still vulnerable?



Absolutely correct.



This isn't about hardening our defenses. (We've done that too, of course.)



It's about making us a less tempting target.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

$12 per day is a negligible incentive

That's based on current pricing. Using the max price GDC has ever been it would be more like $270.

What happens if GDC takes off and becomes the next bitcoin? At what price point would you agree that the incentive is no longer negligible? Who all has to agree to that particular price point? Do you freeze access to PG if it goes over and then allow access again if it falls below?



The point is that the most efficient response is to not participate at all, with GDC, any future cryptocurrencies or any other type of monetization.

That's based on current pricing. Using the max price GDC has ever been it would be more like $270.

Well spotted. The incentive was $270 per day at one point in January - and no attacks on PrimeGrid were made (as far as we know). There were even no concerns about monetization in general. Surprisingly, things came to a head when incentives shrank to $12 per day.



Well, one has to strike a balance between user participation and incurred risks. Smaller incentives=less participation, but also less risk of cheating. Maximum security is achieved with zero users, but that's obviously impractical. PrimeGrid admins are apparently fine with less participation, although zero attacks were made with 20x larger incentives. To users not fully familiar with BOINC security (like me) that decision looks a bit too restrictive, but again, it's their project and they can decide to reduce those incentives even further, if they want so.

That's based on current pricing. Using the max price GDC has ever been it would be more like $270.

Well spotted. The incentive was $270 per day at one point in January - and no attacks on PrimeGrid were made (as far as we know). There were even no concerns about monetization in general. Surprisingly, things came to a head when incentives shrank to $12 per day.



Correct again. In retrospect, we really should have done this long ago.



Emphasis is mine.



There were rather sloppy attacks against SRBase and Collatz, but just because those were poorly executed and relatively easy to detect doesn't mean that smarter people haven't also been looking to take advantage.



As I recall, either SRBase or Collatz was attacked back in January, when the prices were higher, and the other not long after. I think of those as softer targets than PrimeGrid. I don't want PrimeGrid to only be a harder target; I also want it to be a less attractive target.



You don't have to be faster than the bear; you only need to be faster than the other people in your group.





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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

dukebg wrote: The argument that money will eventually bring in bad faith actions/actors is obviously sound and correct.

But such logic is also in "if you're going outside, there's a chance to get mugged, so let's never go outside".

And in real world a person holding that opinion would be considered troubled or even crazy.

The chance of getting mugged is the same whether you happen to be carrying $10 or $10,000,000.

The mugger's effort is the same. The consequences differ for the victim.

It's not crazy to use extra security when the stakes are higher.

Ralph Brockes wrote: GRC is up 5.6% in the last 24 hours! Scarsity pricing?



composite wrote: Ralph Brockes wrote: GRC is up 5.6% in the last 24 hours! Scarsity pricing?



The most logical assumption is that PG was a drag on GRC, and with its' elimination the price can rise ..

There was no price increase, those are just usual daily oscillations. The price is steady at $0.01.

100% agree with that decision !!



There are other teams :



Byteball.org (https://byteball.org/)

BiblePay (https://www.biblepay.org/)



They are on top of the currently going WCG Thor Challenge.



(and probably more)



Some way to identify them and list is going to be necessary...

For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.



I doubt that's because there aren't enough wingmen. Assuming it's not just a coincidence (e.g., someone just came online and grabbed a lot of tasks that will take days to process), it sounds more like someone just disconnected and abandoned a lot of tasks. If so, that should sort itself out as the tasks time out and then everything will go back to normal.



45 tasks every 40 minutes is 1620 tasks per day and we're doing over 30 thousand SGS tasks each day. Give it a week and see if your pending goes back to whatever is normal for you.



Thank you as of just now I'm up to 411 waiting to be validated by a wingman.

My concern, it's your project and you do with it what you want, is the new lack of 'validators' or even 'first finishers' so all my workunits will now take longer to get their credits. For example I do 45 SGS workunits at a time and they take around 40 minutes each but I already have 311 tasks pending. That's over 12,000 credits towards my next badge.



I am doing around 2000 SGS per day and have more than 1000 pending WU. Your figures are are line with mine and don't show anything unusual.

This is just the way BOINC + PG double checking works. It is designed to cope with failing tasks and will ensure that every WU is processed correctly by resending it after each timeout, error or abort. That could require several trials and errors before it gets processed correctly. If you do SoB, for example, you could wait for 3 or 4 months before it gets completed. I believe that very old tasks are handled on a case per case basis by the admins who process then without waiting.

There is no lack of wingman, unless you are able to process more than around 30% of all tasks of a project, in which case tasks throughput sent to you is reduced, as you cannot be your own wingman. SGS project is running at more than 13k tasks in progress, so it would have to drop ten-fold before you would start running out of wingmans (if my math are correct). Even 35% less would not change your pending task volume.

The "issue" is that some computers timeout (too slow, too many tasks, stopped), or produce errors (overclocking, faulty hardware, insufficient cooling...).



Thank you very much for that very informative post, I did not know all those details. And yes I went thru the SOB tasks waiting for wingmen too while I was getting my Gold badge.

There are other teams :



Byteball.org (https://byteball.org/)

BiblePay (https://www.biblepay.org/)



Perhaps I'm missing something. Are these capable of using generic BOINC projects?

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

There are other teams :



Byteball.org (https://byteball.org/)

BiblePay (https://www.biblepay.org/)



Perhaps I'm missing something. Are these capable of using generic BOINC projects?



Biblepay uses similar reward structure that Gridcoin does IIRC, but neither of those projects do Primegrid.



Edit: It would be a bit trickier preventing them since they can be used without being a part of a team.

I agree with the admins decision. Even a minor possibility of bad data makes a slower progression/lower participation worth it. For some BOINC admins this may be their career and data reputation is paramount.



100% agree with that decision !!



There are other teams :



Byteball.org (https://byteball.org/)

BiblePay (https://www.biblepay.org/)



They are on top of the currently going WCG Thor Challenge.



(and probably more)



Some way to identify them and list is going to be necessary...



I also was wondering about the other organizations that pay for credit in crypto.



So say we all!

____________



Edit: It would be a bit trickier preventing them since they can be used without being a part of a team.

What do you mean ?

Michael and the other admins have always put data security and scientific correctness ahead of other concerns. This new decision is in line with that ongoing tradition. The consequences of corrupt data would/could be catastrophic. You only have to look at the time it takes to double check previous work that was not 100% trustworthy.



A question from someone not informed about GRC: where does the money come from? Who actually pays the GridCoin team members for crunching distinctive projects? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is there?

Edit: It would be a bit trickier preventing them since they can be used without being a part of a team.

What do you mean ?



If the blockade is done on a team level it doesn't apply on monetized projects which do not have a team requirement. However, I realized that my mind was elsewhere when I wrote that as the restriction is on the scraper level, not on the team level (not sure what I was thinking). My comment is moot.

Edit: It would be a bit trickier preventing them since they can be used without being a part of a team.

What do you mean ?



Belonging to a team really has noting to do with this.



As far as I know, any organization rewarding BOINC crunchers with any sort of currency, including cryptocurrency, would need to read the statistics files provided by the BOIC project.



These statistics are no longer publicly available from PrimeGrid, so any such system would need to devise another method of determining how much work each person has done. You can't trust the client itself, or the user, to self-report the amount of BOINC work it's doing.



While not impossible, it's much more difficult to do without the stats files, so you have to wonder why any organization would put in the effort to circumvent the restrictions at a project that is trying to block them. These are generally cooperative agreements rather than adversarial.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

A question from someone not informed about GRC: where does the money come from? Who actually pays the GridCoin team members for crunching distinctive projects? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is there?



Nobody pays anyone directly. A set number of coins are minted every day and are distributed equally per project. Depending on your project RAC you get your... sub-slice of that project slice. The value is up to the market to decide based on development progress, utility, potential etc. So there is no overseeing entity which profits from this setup as all the rewards go to the project contributors.

A question from someone not informed about GRC: where does the money come from? Who actually pays the GridCoin team members for crunching distinctive projects? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is there?



(I can't believe I'm going to actually take this side of it. Funny day today is.)



Currencies, economies, and markets are all so-called "non-zero sum games". The total value of any of those can grow or shrink for many reasons, or for no reason at all.



The US dollar, perhaps the most stable currency in human history, used to be backed by gold reserves. Then silver reserves. Today it's backed by nothing at all. The US Dollar has value because people believe it has value. If people suddenly thought the Dollar was worthless, it would be worthless.



That's a bit hard to think of as actually happening, but a more easy to understand concept is FDIC. If people suddenly lost faith in their banks, everyone would rush to take their money out of their banks. That would be a problem because the banks don't have the money to give to everyone. If a few people want their money, which is what usually happens, there's no problem. But if everyone wants it all at once, the banks can't do it. They don't have the money available because they've lent it out to people who want to borrow money.



The FDIC guarantees that even if the bank can't pay, the US Government will step in and make sure everyone gets their money. Now, nobody has to fear the bank can't repay them, so there won't be a run on the banks.



The FDIC (almost) never has to actually rescue a bank. Just knowing it's there is enough to keep all the banks safe. That's how powerful belief is.



What's the heck does this have to do with Gridcoin? The answer to your question is that actual money ($$$) comes from people purchasing Gridcoins for dollars, with the expectation that their value will go up. If people have faith in Gridcoin, they'll be willing to purchase Gridcoins for dollars, which enables people to sell Gridcoins for dollars. If faith in Gridcoin decreases, fewer people will be willing to buy Gridcoins, and for fewer dollars.



For the most part, all alternative currencies work like that. There's no inherent source of "normal" money. All the money comes from people willing (or needing) to convert their dollars into the crypto currency.



This was particularly popular with Bitcoin in part because it was an untraceable currency not controlled by any government. It was therefore appealing to drug traffickers and other criminal types. Honest people would also buy Bitcoins because the demand for them created an opportunity to (legitimately) make money.



Other cryptocurrencies have tried to replicate Bitcoin's success. Note that none of these currencies have any intrinsic value other than what people believe it to have. That might sound bad -- but the same is true of "real" money such as the US Dollar.



All of that comes down to:



"Gridcoin has value because people believe Gridcoin has value."



But that doesn't make any sense without the background information.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Gee Michael you made my day ! :) I've learned many things today !



Back to the (direct) subject, does your decision with PG and "coin teams" means you'll have to actually list and follow up such teams o a regular basis, or are the measures you took (stop publishing technical result about credits ?) sufficient to "let it be" ?

Gee Michael you made my day ! :) I've learned many things today !



Back to the (direct) subject, does your decision with PG and "coin teams" means you'll have to actually list and follow up such teams o a regular basis, or are the measures you took (stop publishing technical result about credits ?) sufficient to "let it be" ?



I answered that in my previous message: https://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8272&nowrap=true#122144

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

I asked becaise you wrote "While not impossible, it's much more difficult to do without the stats files" so now I understand that you consider that this technical measure is self-sufficient and you will not particularly track those projects. Ok.



And will not the "normal" boinc statistical websites be impacted by this measure too ?

I asked becaise you wrote "While not impossible, it's much more difficult to do without the stats files" so now I understand that you consider that this technical measure is self-sufficient and you will not particularly track those projects. Ok.



And will not the "normal" boinc statistical websites be impacted by this measure too ?



I think you misunderstand.



All that was necessary with Gridcoin was to ask them to remove us from the whitelist. No technical fix was required.



Similarly, if, say, some new organization Crypto-Ball-X came to us and asked, we'd tell them no, and I'd expect that to be the end of it.



We ended anonymous access to the stats to kill off the DDOS attack, but that also makes it difficult for a cryptocurrency to operate here without us knowing about it. That wasn't its purpose, but it is an effective block to anyone we want to keep out.

____________

My lucky number is 75898524288+1

A question from someone not informed about GRC: where does the money come from? Who actually pays the GridCoin team members for crunching distinctive projects? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is there?

I'll give a bit different answer than those given before me.



All the "crypto"-currencies are decentralized things that require some system (in a very generic meaning of the term) in place for them to run with required properties, with the proof-of-work/stake/whatever and all other stuff. Running it takes resources, so people doing it have to get incentive. The decentralization means it's not a bank/government running this system, but the scaled-up immense vast of ordinary clients. Miners.



So, basically, miners who "mine" the blocks / produce the "ether" / etc. etc. are rewarded for making the system run.



Who pays the reward? Well, any person making a transaction in this system.



Bitcoin literally has an extra fee that you have to add to any transaction to have miners include it in the system. That's additional to the "bounty" reward of creating the block that miners get (if they're lucky). The bigger you make it, more likely/quickly it'll get into the system.



I don't know if there's a fee like that in GRC. Doesn't matter, anyway. Just agreeing that the crunchers are rewarded by the distribution of the minted currency is already pretty much spending money. And you agree by using the system, making a transaction.



"I agree to this currency system and that User X gets paid 1 galactic credit in it" = "I pay User X 1 galactic credit". If you don't agree, don't believe, as Michael described, then to you User X didn't get anything.

@Michael : OK clear.



But if we consider your very first assumption " When people are able to make money on PrimeGrid, that invites unscrupulous users to join in order to cheat" (and I very much agree with that), I'm not very sure that these people will play by the rules that you are trying to define here (*). Unless GC actually act as you wish and based on their system, they won't generate anymore the money with PG.





(*) I don't say at all that "all GC members are people like that", I like to think that it is the other way and that actually most of their members are nice people, but I also think that "those not nice existing people will more probably be part of a team like GC than a regular boinc team, statistically". Because of the money, even if tiny, it is money.

@Michael : OK clear.



But if we consider your very first assumption " When people are able to make money on PrimeGrid, that invites unscrupulous users to join in order to cheat" (and I very much agree with that), I'm not very sure that these people will play by the rules that you are trying to define here (*). Unless GC actually act as you wish and based on their system, they won't generate anymore the money with PG.



There's no reason to expect the organizations or the people that run them to be dishonest.

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My lucky number is 75898524288+1

Yes, this is what I added in my (*) but you made the decision that you made precisely because the risk is inherent to the nature of coins teams :)





...Because of the money, even if tiny, it is money.





Yes, it is tiny, but like all cryptocurrencies the possibility exists for the value to increase considerably - look at Bitcoin, and Litecoin, and DASH, and Ethereum... I purchased almost 10000GRC myself in the last couple of weeks on an exchange. I encourage all other cryptocurrency fans to do the same :) Unlike a lot of the other lesser coins, at least GRC stands for something. Too bad it's reputation has been sullied somewhat by greed.

For some, money generates greed, this is (part of) human nature :)



Great decision!

Manipulation of credits, indeed, does take place. It's not just collatz.



I mentioned it on Perfect Cuboid in yoyo@home, when using ubuntu boosted credit of atom z3735 to Xeon e5560 https://cryptocurrencytalk.com/topic/49396-yoyohome/ bug looks like was just ignored by gridcoin community, yoyo admin "fixed" it by limiting maximum credit (using double check didn't help, all your needed was your wingman running ubuntu too).



Another example is when someone managed to boost his Celeron G1620 (2 threads) RAC to 26000 (~4x Xeon(R) CPU E7- 4870 @ 2.40GHz (80 threads)) in Rosetta@home, won't post link to his profile here, but you can find him in top participants if you want, he crunches for biblepay.

Monetize everything, pave the earth. If you don't like it, wake up...

Another example is when someone managed to boost his Celeron G1620 (2 threads) RAC to 26000 (~4x Xeon(R) CPU E7- 4870 @ 2.40GHz (80 threads)) in Rosetta@home, won't post link to his profile here, but you can find him in top participants if you want, he crunches for biblepay.

Why can't you name him ? I can. He is the KoACAaBtE (*). The 1st one (and maybe the 3rd ?) of the list does have a weird RAC indeed... compared to other machines.



He is host #17 in the hall of fame, just above a machine with 64 threads.



(*) King of All Celerons Below and Above the Earth

I am not sure, as I never ran BOINC behind a proxy, but my understanding is that the proxy could get the credit for all computers behind. That could also explain why some computers show very credits.

sunk818

Send message

Joined: 8 Nov 18

Posts: 1

ID: 1077018

Credit: 8,734

RAC: 0



Joined: 8 Nov 18Posts: 1ID: 1077018Credit: 8,734RAC: 0 Message 122304 - Posted: 9 Nov 2018 | 5:11:29 UTC - in response to Message 122228.

Another example is when someone managed to boost his Celeron G1620 (2 threads) RAC to 26000 (~4x Xeon(R) CPU E7- 4870 @ 2.40GHz (80 t