Why Crypto Miners Could Be Coronavirus Killers

In fact, not only the new crown virus, Folding@home has initiated many similar projects. For example, considerable progress has been made in the fight against Ebola. Therefore, the action launched this time is likely to help find valuable therapeutic solutions for the new coronavirus, and has become aCurrent Hot Topics in Cryptocurrency Mining Circles。

However, understanding the protein activity process requires huge computing power to run the simulation program, so it needs the help of external forces. “If we get 100,000 GPUs, that’s a 5-10x increase in computing power,” Pande’s team said.

Folding@home said in the official announcement regarding the coronavirus:Every simulation you run is like a lottery ticket. The more tickets we buy, the greater our chances of winning.

It is clear that a PoW cryptocurrency mining pool would be an ideal volunteer for the Folding@Home project. Under the PoW consensus mechanism, the bookkeeping rights of the blockchain are directly proportional to the computing power of the miner nodes, that is, the stronger the computing power, the greater the probability of mining.

Although the early period of computing power mining through personal computers has passed, and ASIC mining machines that monopolize Bitcoin computing power cannot participate, GPU mining equipment also has powerful computing power, and there are still many GPU miners on Ethereum , which will be an invaluable resource for Folding@Home. You must know that Ethereum is basically the largest source of GPU computing power on the planet. At the same time, if Bitcoin miners have idle old GPU mining equipment, they can also participate in contributing computing power. And some small coin miners can also participate as long as they meet the requirements.

Coupled with the fact that due to the recent stock and crypto market crashes, for small farms or private cryptocurrency miners, the cost of mining electricity for Bitcoin or Ethereum currently exceeds the revenue they can generate, soMany crypto miners have a lot of idle computing resourcessecondary title

Which blockchain projects have been involved?

Folding@Home director Gregory Bowman revealed in a recent Reddit AMA that the project currently has 400,000 computers contributing to research. "Before the pandemic started, we had about 30,000 users. In the past two weeks, 400,000 volunteers have joined Folding@Home," he said. 1200% increase in a week. At present, many projects in the upstream and downstream industries of cryptocurrency mining have joined this activity against the new crown virus.

Coreweave, the largest Ethereum (ETH) miner in the United States, has shifted the computing power of about 6,000 GPUs. Coreweave’s CTO estimates that the donated resources are equivalent to 0.2% of Ethereum’s total computing power. These calculations can earn 28 ETH per day in normal times. However, Coreweave does not care about these losses, but hopes that these GPU computing power can help find a solution to the new crown virus.

Brian Venturo, co-founder of Coreweave, said that when he first heard about the Folding@Home plan, he decided to support it without saying a word. In fact, they immediately set up a testnet and were up and running within minutes. Coreweave has already shared half of its computing power with the research of the new crown virus.

F2pool, a small bitcoin mining giant, also spared no effort to promote this event in the community. Previously, F2Pool tweeted: "Although ASIC mining machines cannot participate, any member of the community can use GPUs to participate in mining. We recommend miners to take a look at the Folding@home event." Then reprinted the Zcoin solicitation Idle computing resources on Twitter, commenting: "During these difficult times, we wholeheartedly support the transition from mining to 'folding'. You can join the Zcoin team. Our mining pool's team involved in the Folding@home project , please get in touch if you want us to share the event link."

At the same time, the blockchain platform Tezos community decided to encourage users to contribute their idle computing power to the medical research of the new crown virus. Its developer Johann Tanzer organized a prize pool, which has accumulated about 415 XTZ so far. Among them, the validator LetzBake donated about half of the amount, and the rest was donated by some individuals. This prize pool is expected to grow in value over time. After the event was released, the enthusiasm of everyone exceeded expectations. About 20 groups of Tezos miners started contributing their computing power. Tanzer stated that the award will be awarded to the best performing team on March 30, which he promised will be worth approximately 15 XTZ.

The fight against the new crown virus has also come to the field of chips. U.S. GPU chipmaker Nvidia has come up with a proposal asking all users to use its computer resources to help fight the coronavirus. Nvidia also called on other gaming industry companies to join this Folding@home, such as Steel Series, NZXT and Razer, Intel Gaming and MSI also responded to NVIDIA's post on Twitter. Although the invitation is aimed at gamers, cryptocurrency miners can also participate in the proposal due to the large number of technical and hardware resources available for mining.

There are also many other cryptocurrency projects that have participated in the Folding@home plan, such as BitCash, which establishes a reward pool for miners who participate in the contribution calculation example, and Golem, a decentralized computing network that directly donates to the plan. Curecoin (CURE) and Foldingcoin (FLDC) for continuous rewards…the list goes on and on.

Some of these cryptocurrency projects directly gave up their mining income, and instead put their computing power into the simulation of virus protein activities, trying to save millions of lives; some directly donated to Folding@home to support its hardware and software Development, maintenance, and experimental testing; some mobilize more community members to participate through innovative incentive mechanisms; there are also many projects that call on people to participate in this cause through their own influence.

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Is scientific PoW mining feasible?

Someone on Reddit proposed a bold idea to develop a cryptocurrency that can solve scientific research problems while mining.

The Pande group, which hosts Folding@home, said: "This is a lot harder than it looks. “The ideal would be to devise PoW mechanisms that are useful for scientific research. Doing this is challenging because the things we care about have to be computationally hard, but easily verifiable.” It seems impossible for people to trade Folding@home participants Each unit of work done is assigned a monetary value, since there is no such thing as a blockchain explorer that supports transaction verification and tracking.

Therefore, it is difficult to combine these three factors - scientific relevance, computational difficulty and easy verification. "The last two can be done by hashing, and the first two can be done by our research. But verification is difficult," Pande's team said.

The problem with projects like Folding@home is also that the incentives are long term and harder to quantify. Instead, the rewards for cryptocurrency miners are tangible and frequent. Humans love quick, easy rewards. The Stanford team attempted to incentivize participants with points for each unit of work completed. It invites people to create teams and compete against each other on a global scale, much like Bitcoin mining.

Even though they were doing this long before Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the Bitcoin white paper, we can still compare this approach to a mining pool. However, there is currently no good way to combine people's pursuit of profit with protein research.

Some argue that advanced mining software should be developed that allows users to split GPU processing time between cryptocurrency mining and projects like Folding@home. They can then mine while doing good with the GPU, with minimal effort.

Judging from the current situation, users and organizations participating in Folding@home are still using love to generate electricity, but isn’t this also the essence of charity? While major cryptocurrency projects with huge computing power and resources are taking the lead in participating in the global spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, as ordinary people, they can actually contribute the computing power of the devices around them.

Just like the literal Chinese translation of Folding@home "folding (protein) at home", as long as you have GPU computing power, even if it is only a tiny bit, you can easily help scientists' research at home. It may be because of your contribution that all mankind will be liberated from the suffering of the epidemic.

It is exciting to think about being able to participate in this great cause.