Original Article:

Gridcoin Research 4.0 Proposals and Preliminary Polls

Discussion Recording Part 1 of 2:

Gridcoin 4.0 Roadmap Discussion, November 4th. Part 1 of 2

Discussion Recording Part 2 of 2:

Gridcoin 4.0 Roadmap Discussion, November 4th. Part 2 of 2

Discussion Summary:

Summary of Discussion - Gridcoin Proposals & Preliminary Polls

Hello again, Gridcoin Community!

The response to the 4.0-2018 Roadmap has been overwhelming! Thank you all for participating, asking question, expressing concerns, and suggesting improvements on, or alternatives to proposed developments!

This is the first progress report for the Gridcoin Research 4.0-2018 Roadmap. Below you will find brief summaries of each topic discussed in the main article. The intent here is to help facilitate the conversation's overall progression. Be sure to join the live discussion at the Gridcoin hangout this Saturday, November 11th, hosted on the BeyondBitcoin mumble. (Thank you @officialfuzzy and the BeyondBitcoin community!)

November 11th will be a standard hangout hosted by our very own @peppernrino and the floor is open to discussions regarding any aspect of Gridcoin, not just the 2018 Roadmap. Be sure to get your topics in by commenting on the hangout thread found here:

https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@peppernrino/gridcoin-community-hangout-043-repost

Otherwise, join us for the live hangout at 7pm UTC! The discussion regarding this article will be recorded and uploaded within 24 hours of the end of the hangout.

Mumble Information

Label: BeyondBitcoin - Gridcoin

Address: mumble.grcnode.co.uk or mumble.beyondboinc.net (IP = 149.210.187.155)

Port: 64738

Username: Enter your username

Password: [email protected]!t3

For Science! For Medicine! For Everyone!

Constant Block Reward

The Roadmap segment tomorrow will touch briefly on several of the proposals from the article, but will be focusing on the economy of Gridcoin through a discussion on the CBR proposal.

As it stands, investors are not encouraged to keep their GRC online. Without their help, the Gridcoin network is not as secure as it could be. In fact, the lack of participation of so many GRC is a large part of what causes all the annoying little forks in the network. Additionally, without active GRC, the network is more open to malicious actors. CBR is proposed to provide an incentive for investors to keep a balance online, to keep a true stake in the Gridcoin network. An investor with something at stake will take action to secure that investment. This rings true throughout the financial world, so why don't we encourage investors to put something at stake in order to receive rewards?

There are many things to consider when deciding whether or not to implement CBR, and when defining the parameters of that CBR implementation. First, will this switch cause an economic crash?! Not likely. We're not trying to fight whales with CBR. We're trying to secure and stabilize the Gridcoin network. That is good for everyone, even whales! It is more than likely that whales understand this and will gladly participate in the network for reward. If, for some reason, whales decide to dump because yes, we would remove idle interest earned from the Gridcoin protocol, well... honestly, that means more cheap coins for future investors (of which there are plenty). Never underestimate the utility presented by the Gridcoin blockchain, incentive structure, and network.

To implement CBR, we are going to need to explore how the Gridcoin economy works. The way I see it:

There are two ways to mint GRC from the blockchain.

Participation in securing the blockchain through Proof of Stake Participation in research by contributing computing power to BOINC

What are the priorities we want written into Gridcoin network's protocols?

Who will receive the majority of rewards from securing the blockchain through CBR-PoS? Will the people earning the CBR-PoS mint be receiving more reward than those with large volumes of processing researching with BOINC? How much GRC do we want to mint a year? What if we split the mint of GRC into 25% from securing the blockchain and 75% from research? What about 50/50? What about 33/66?

What will be the differences between an interest economy and a CBR economy? Should CBR be static, defined change -- reduce or increase reward in a predictable manner over time (like PoW block reward halving), or should it be dynamic -- based on the direct needs of the Gridcoin network at a given time?

Is it possible to combine interest with CBR?

Are there alternatives to CBR which will increase network weight?

How many worst case scenarios can we think of? Can we prevent them? Could we solve them?

These are just a few questions to get the conversation going. Let's discuss!

MRC, BM, SBD

Manual Rewards Claim, Beacon Mint, and Super Block Distribution are proposed as ways to deliver a researcher's earned rewards to their wallet in a timely manner without the use of a pool. A pool's intent, under these upgrades, would be to simplify the UX of Gridcoin. For example, I'm not going to explain to my grandma how to set up everything with BOINC and the GRC client. Rather, I'm going to install the software on her cell phone, smart fridge, or whatever, and tell her to join a pool. Otherwise, we want anyone with the inclination to be able to utilize the full scope of the Gridcoin and BOINC clients, including voting and receiving BOINC stats.

MRC involves a user requesting their rewards delivered in a coming block and for security measures, might involve claim fees, time, and beacons.

Beacon Mint increases the researchers likelihood to stake (thereby receiving their earned research rewards) as the amount owed to them but not delivered increases. Beacon Mint also brings back what v8 took from the Gridcoin network: using research to secure the blockchain (PoR).

Super Block Distribution distributes owed research rewards when a superblock is staked.

Each of these proposals has benefits and flaws and actually all 3 can seemingly synergize with one another. For more information, listen to the recordings or read the discussion summary. This will be a topic discussed in depth during another meeting. If you want to discuss it now, make a thread.

Sharedropping

Sharedropping is intended to update the Gridcoin codebase, which is fairly dated -- ask a dev. During this process we will remove the non-critical personal information held in the current blockchain. There are several paths to take with the sharedropping update. We will discuss sharedropping at length in another meeting. If you want to discuss it now, make a thread.

TCD, DWP

Total Credit Delta intends to more directly connect earning Gridcoin and computing for research on BOINC. It will make it easier to create earnings calculators while greatly reducing the need for researchers to charge their RAC before earning rewards. It also might present the opportunity to fix a problem where a project runs out of WU to distribute while some researchers are still crunching a few bunkered or time intensive WU. With TCD, we might not need to remove a project immediately after it runs out of WU, allowing those with remaining WU to earn rewards upon their completion. We will talk more about TCD in another meeting. If you want to discuss it now, make a thread.

Dynamic Witness Participation seeks to implement a more stable and secure superblock creation process. DWP is a major change to the Gridcoin codebase and we will have an entire meeting dedicated to its discussion. If you want to discuss it now, make a thread.

Again, thank you for taking the time to involve yourself with the growth and development of Gridcoin. This stuff is not easy. Luckily, we have a community filled with people with an insane array of talents and knowledge. Let's teach each other. Let's learn from each other.

If we don't see you tomorrow, have a good weekend and keep an eye out for discussion recordings, summaries, threads, and next weeks progress report.

-j