Gridcoin (

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

: GRC) is a cryptocurrency which rewards

volunteer computing Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop ...

performed on the BOINC network. BOINC was originally developed to support SETI@home, but has also been used for research in other areas. Gridcoin was created on October 16, 2013, by Rob Halförd. Initially using the energy-intensive proof of work, as used by

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

, Gridcoin migrated to a

proof of stake Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of ...

protocol in 2014, similar to Peercoin, in an attempt to address the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. An exploit was demonstrated in August 2017 that revealed the emails of Gridcoin users and allowed the theft of other users work. The research team disclosed the vulnerability to the developers in September 2016, and the patch for the vulnerability was released in March 2017 with version 3.5.8.7, however the implementation of the fix introduced other issues. The implementation Gridcoin-Research was created as a fork of Bitcoin and Peercoin and is licensed under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. It uses Qt 5 for its user interface and prebuilt executables of the wallet are distributed for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gridcoin Cryptocurrency projects volunteer computing