Demonetization of BOINC credit for PrimeGrid Project

There's been a big discussion behind the scenes about turning BOINC credit into actual money. From a PrimeGrid admin standpoint, this is not a good thing. Even with worthless BOINC credit we've seen cheating in the past. When people are able to make money on PrimeGrid, that invites unscrupulous users to join in order to cheat. That in turn would ruin the science. Anyone devising a way to fake residues on prime-finding projects could be adding years to our search if they cause a missed prime. We don't want to discover five years from now that we can't trust our results.

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Full thread here: http://www.primegrid.com/forum_thread.php?id=8272

I think it is a very alarmist situation and they are just riding on the tail of fear. They are one of the least likely projects to get cheated. They are also deliberately catering to people's desire for point whoring by keeping the PPS sieve app going. They have way more than enough work to keep them busy for years but only keep running it so that people don't drop the project. Quite frankly they need to stop the sieving as they have done with other apps in the past and just force the hand. People may actually start running the apps that have a possibility of finding a prime....

Gilthanis said:

I think it is a very alarmist situation and they are just riding on the tail of fear. They are one of the least likely projects to get cheated. They are also deliberately catering to people's desire for point whoring by keeping the PPS sieve app going. They have way more than enough work to keep them busy for years but only keep running it so that people don't drop the project. Quite frankly they need to stop the sieving as they have done with other apps in the past and just force the hand. People may actually start running the apps that have a possibility of finding a prime....

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I agree, but my gut tells me it is over the GC and the way they were getting their stats acting like a DOS attack and jamming their server.
They gave them time to fix it but they did not. I guess either way, over cheating or over the stats, its their project and they can run it the way they see fit.
They do have a duty to protect the data's integrity.

I do not remember, is the sieve projects double checked by a wingman?

Bill1024 said:

I agree, but my gut tells me it is over the GC and the way they were getting their stats acting like a DOS attack and jamming their server.
They gave them time to fix it but they did not. I guess either way, over cheating or over the stats, its their project and they can run it the way they see fit.
They do have a duty to protect the data's integrity.

I do not remember, is the sieve projects double checked by a wingman?

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Yes they are.

And I don't know how asking them to take them off the whitelist will make any difference since they are not actually banning them in regards to the stats pulling. Not to mention they could always just keep making other team names to sidestep things or even change IP addresses. Right now it is just being courteous and "asking" them not to do it. I like that approach. Keeps things somewhat peaceful. I agree it is their project and their rules but they also need to understand that things change and there are a lot of people that don't share the viewpoint that DC'ing is "only volunteer" using traditional definitions to boot....

They made it so you have to get approval to get the stats, maybe they did a password protect somehow?? I believe they did stop them from pulling stats right from PG servers. Think so, but I don't know for sure.
From what I read you had to ask them for the stats, they were limiting who can get them to the major stat people like FB I believe.
But can't they pull stats from FB if they really wanted to I would think.

In theory yes they could. However, it really depends on the agreements places like FB make to get approval in the first place. Some of the requirements behind the GDPR was to have consequences for the way 3rd parties behave with the data you provide. So, if say ChristianVirtual were to just start handing out the stats files he collects from say WCG, there may be consequences to his actions for doing it. I don't know for sure as I've not seen the agreements. But you are correct that they could acquire the files from elsewhere.

Now, the real question is whether "investors" would trust the 3rd party locations since that means a potential for manipulation of the coin payouts even if only on a limited time frame. I know that is kind of a concern with BiblePay that they have to keep in mind. People in the crypto market aren't all trusting of the DC projects to not be in league with others to "fake" the numbers for profit. The same would go if you pulled stats from a source other than the originator.

That would be nice model ... I can send the stats file to GC and reduce each participant by 1% (or “rounding error”) and generate coins for me ...

Not happen ...

lol