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CureCoin Cryptocurrency Enters Third Year of Helping Disease Researchers (curecoin.net)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the crunch-for-the-cure dept.

Millions of people have donated their unused computer power as part of "a global movement of teams and individuals committed to Protein Folding research," according to a special anniversary update at CureCoin.net. And after two years, CureCoin is now the fourth-largest contributor to Stanford's massively distributed computing project for disease research. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: CureCoin rewards citizen scientists participating in life science research through Stanford's Folding@home... It's actually very easy to participate -- basic account setup can take as little as 20 minutes, and you're contributing computing power with a PC or Mac while earning the tokens...

CureCoin uses a blockchain token called CURE as the means of reward. There is a growing market and exchange network for the coin. Occasional market volatility puts penny stocks to shame -- which if you are risk averse, makes it fun to watch nonetheless.
Sounds more useful than that cryptocurrency which rewards its users for participating in denial-of-service attacks.

8 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Re:20 minutes to set up an account? by HBI · · Score: 1, Funny

    I wouldn't spend 20 minutes on getting laid, never mind signing up for some worthless cryptocurrency, so I can promptly make my electric bill go up.

    Maybe after my lobotomy.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  2. Folding@Home has its own scoring system. by fufufang · · Score: 1

    What's the difference between CureCoin and my Folding@Home score? Why should I bother with setting up a CureCoin account, when I have a Folding@Home account?

    1. Re:Folding@Home has its own scoring system. by davisconnorscot · · Score: 2

      It means you can pay for part or all of your electric bill and to fund your equipment and maintenance (especially if you do "merge-folding" with FoldingCoin, you can look that up). It means you can exchange CURE for BTC on three exchanges (ultimately for cash), or you can trade it for goods and services on the evolving CoinPayments.net (you can even buy a motorized scooter for it now). Unlike some other reward systems, you are not limited to the amount of CURE you can hold or exchange ... however only 7488 coins are released on a daily basis (to folders). There is an additional ~1870 coins awarded to Proof of Work SHA-256 miners to secure the network although the coin has been utilizing a larger percentage of Proof of Stake in liue of PoW to secure the network over the past year). After the first four years, those rewards will be cut in half and continue to be cut in half every 4 years for the next 100 years based on the current mining model.

      The coin has a built-in controlled supply (which roughly equates to a precious metals mining paradigm over a 100 year period) This means the more people fold for CURE, the more computational research each coin represents (therefor increasing competition for the coin!!!). You can also donate the coins to help fund additional research outside of Stanford on their website. Based on some of the latest on bitcoin talk, they are working on making those coins tax deductible. CureCoin is producing over 100,000,000 PPD (and they've only been around for 2+ years).

      So that's why you may want to 'bother'. Competition absolutely SUPERCHARGES research progress - without the need to resort to "corporate philanthropy".

  3. Re:20 minutes to set up an account? by davisconnorscot · · Score: 2

    If you're folding proteins anyway, CureCoin will not make your electric bill go up. Ask yourself how much time have you wasted online fighting political battles with invisible foes, or playing "Battlefield" til the wee hours of the morning. Even if you don't like the CureCoin idea - spending 10 minutes to just create a FAH account, and folding using Chrome NaCl could save lives in the not too distant future. But I'm certainly biased.

  4. Folding@Home and Patents by IvanTuma · · Score: 1

    Based on a previous post that now appears pulled/blocked, it did bring up a common misconception about Folding@home papers and potential patents.

    First off, all the research results are made public and referenced by over three thousand studies and academic articles all over the world (you can see it on Google Scholar, just type in Folding@home). Many of those studies don't relate to pharmaceutical research at all, but because it's all life science, they might concentrate on water desalinization, custom enzymes for testing , and even cover AI, machine learning, cloud computing studies.

    The research is just beginning to reach critical mass (remember it was conceived to be a long term endeavor), they've actually been able to take a resulting Alzheimer's drug compound up to Phase II human trials, but stopped due to unexpected toxicity. They are now working on re-purposing the compound and setting up another trial so all that research doesn't go to waste.

    Second point; any patent that Stanford is able to file based on this research MUST be sold under the rules of the Bayh-Dole act. This would help fund further research and likely attract grants for other distributed computing projects. The corporate entity purchasing patents under Bayh-Dole is required to make a best effort to bring that medicine to market (or face losing their patent). Now there are ways companies can manipulate their IP, but that's a discussion for another thread. There is a trend in the software open source industry where corporations would rather work with Universities under an open source license agreement rather than own the patent outright. This may be a new option for small pharmaceutical companies going forward.

    If I'm wrong, perhaps someone from the Pande group could further clarify ...

    The CureCoin project was created to help subsidize donor's computational power - and to create a burgeoning alternative to carbon positive crypto-currencies located in centralized mining silos in China (CureCoin retains an 18% SHA-256 mining layer to secure the network and help SHA miners transition from bitcoin mining to folding proteins). The only ASIC designed for protein folding as of 2016 is the Anton Supercomputer.

    1. Re:Folding@Home and Patents by davisconnorscot · · Score: 1

      Opinion from a bitcoin or Litecoin purist - I understand your frustration with hybrid altcoins occasionally taking the spotlight away from your investment.

      However to a lot of new investors who resist bitcoin's value proposition, CureCoin, FoldingCoin, and GridCoin make perfect sense for now. One day these may become sidechains of bitcoin or some other PoW coin "X", but for now these are the "baby steps" required to get there.

      To your other point - 80% of the coin IS actually, as you say, Folding@home+(insert centralized payment system) under v1.x. It comes from a pre-mine in the mining pool (only 18%-20% of the coin payout is PoW & PoS based on Peercoin). Curecoin indicated the future versions will have ~100% of the coins generated from certificates (eventually signed ones). How many other pump & dump clones have been able to sustain any longevity?

      Even IF these coins were simply a pump; distributed computing isn't going away any time soon - especially not now with the advent of these payment systems. Of course, it's never a good idea to put all your eggs in one crypto ... always diversify.

    2. Re:Folding@Home and Patents by davisconnorscot · · Score: 1

      > I can understand that you're upset about missing the boat on bitcoin and want a do-over

      I'm not upset about missing the wave of bitcoin. I have no delusions that science coins will miraculously take over as the predominant means of exchange. I'm concerned about the dominance of nation states like China controlling so much hashing power (according to Bloomberg, China is home to 90% of bitcoin trades and 70% of mining) This only benefits the nation state. In addition to bitcoin, China is hording precious metals faster than it can use them as a hedge against anti-trade and nationalist policies gaining popularity in the West.

      > these altcoins don't require or allow decentralization

      Before the Wright Brothers, people assumed the only way people could fly was using an airship or balloon. Innovations in blockchain technology similar to a decentralized computational AI engine being developed by NeurealAI could negate centralized control for the means of production of research data. Should science coin participants stop what they're doing, and wait for this to happen!? Or can we innovate around the limitations today, and be ready to merge with such a technology when it becomes ready in x number of years.

      For the moment, this is a unique way to attract more citizen science participation in distributed computing. Centralized rewards systems like those implemented by EVGA are noble, but very limited (they cost the company money). You can fold all you want, but only claim a limited discount on equipment from their online store. The lack of "grande" eureka breakthroughs from distributed computing (it's a mundane workman's kind of research that takes place very early in the discovery process (like potential druggable state discovery for example), has led to a slow, silent drift towards "corporate philanthropy". Google, AWS, Microsoft and others may be shifting idle cloud instances to contribute to DCNs. I doubt they are doing this without a tax incentive (nobody knows for sure) - something "folders" and "crunchers" have never been able to claim until possibly the advent of cryptocurrency.

      > made-up token that happens to make early adopters wealthier and cause price volatility

      ... sure, however it's not like these coins have been kept a secrete. They didn't *suddenly* appear. People have been boosting them around the world for over two years now. You can look up CureCoin, FoldingCoin and GridCoin and come up with a combined >300,000 hits on Google. CureCoin, for example mentions a system of integrating with retailer coupon and charitable giving systems to encourage small folder participation as well. The intention isn't to drown out casual participant, but rather to give them more incentive than they couldn't get through philanthropy alone.

      > if the public was soured on the concept of crowd-funded cures because of early exploitation

      Crowdfunded research is notoriously ineffective. Look up the words Cancer Research on Indiegogo and you'll find countless projects (even those by well known research organizations) that NEVER reach "escape velocity". I believe, with all the disclaimers and caveats (on top of every crypto wallet including bitcoin's still being beta) anyone is betting the farm on digital coins keyed to crowd-sourced computing. If these payment experiments fail, people will go back to their previous levels of participation and let corporations further encroach into crowd-sourced computing. It would be a shame.

  5. Lots of volume for science coins inc CureCoin by IvanTuma · · Score: 1

    Whatever the opinion on the future of science research based digital currencies, after 2 years of floundering between $0.01 and $0.02 US
    ... the level of interest on the exchanges has been fun to watch over the last couple of weeks:

    CureCoin: https://poloniex.com/exchange#...
    FoldingCoin: https://poloniex.com/exchange#...
    GridCoin: https://poloniex.com/exchange#...