What is Gridcoin?
Gridcoin is an open source cryptocurrency that rewards participants for contributing spare computing power on their personal devices to help solve scientific problems and research projects. It works by integrating a cryptocurrency with the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), which is an open-source grid computing network.
Unlike Bitcoin mining, which requires dedicated high-powered hardware and immense amounts of electricity, Gridcoin mining (called "staking") works by using leftover computing resources from consumer PCs and Android devices. This makes it far more energy-efficient. Gridcoin aims to promote and monetize citizen science participation on the BOINC network.
Participants install BOINC software which allows their devices to connect to the BOINC network and download science and math projects to process in the background. For every approved contribution to a project, participants are rewarded with Gridcoin tokens. There is no centralized authority that assigns work, and contributions come directly from the participants donating their spare computing power.
By providing economic incentives, Gridcoin encourages more participation on BOINC and helps support a wide range of projects related to mathematics, physics, medicine, biology, climatology, astronomy, and more. The system is more decentralized and democratic compared to traditional cryptocurrency mining.