Rather than mining Bitcoins (which solves useless mathematical equations to find a block) your mining power could be solving advanced mathematical computations that directly benefit science. Grid coin uses a Distributed Proof of Research algorithm that solves BIONC hosted work. Miners are rewarded based off their research contribution to BIONC which is secured via Proof-of-Stake.

"It is the first block chain protocol that delivered a working algorithm that equally rewards and cryptographically proves solving BOINC (Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) hosted work, which can be virtually any kind of distributed computing process (ASIC/GPU/CPU/Sensor/Etc)." -gridcoin.us

Miners can choose to contribute to any of the 39 BOINC projects categorized into: Mathematics, computing & games, Physical Science, Biology & Medicine, Earth Sciences, Financial Applications, Cognitive science & artifical intelligence. This means miners are not forced to contribute to all of the project if they don't want to.