Confused newbie in the new gridcoin world.

bigfarns (32)in #gridcoin • 6 years ago

Ok, so everyone knows that newer people will be playing around with Cryptocurrency because of the headlines from the last year or more. I will admit I'm one of the newbies and I have tried to understand as much as I can but I'm admittedly lost.
I went with gridcoin because I figured if nothing else my wasted electricity was helping a cause. I used to do folding@home back in 2003 or 2004 I think or something like...anyhow, I thought gridcoin sounded like a way to do something similar and make a little on the side. I've been letting my computer (and my android phone) use boinc for 28 days now and it's time for me to just look for some help.

So, now the confusion:

I work in grcpool because I've read everywhere that I can't go solo until I'm in the thousands of coins. I've made 10 coins and have another 20 sitting in the pool waiting to be paid. So far so good. I also understand that my wallet should say INVESTOR which is currently is. The first confusion though is around the whole proof of stake and staking. I just don't get it. Is it better to pull coins out of grcpool as quickly as possible in order to increase my chance to "stake"? Or just leave them there until I have enough to get a good size pay out which would enable me to research solo?
Why the heck do I seem to continuously get on a fork? I've increased my max connections to 16 in order to have a chance to always get the proper chain. Am I doing something wrong leaving my wallet online and staking right now?
By unlocking my wallet for staking, am I even doing anything for the network or is that just a waste of time?
grcpool has had a network fork issue for days now. Is my BOINC work doing any good on the gridcoin network or will I lose everything I've done in that pool?

I'm sorry if these are basic or even uninformed questions. I've tried to read so many things and honestly I only understand enough to know I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

6 years ago in #gridcoin by bigfarns (32)

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ragnarokdel (58) 6 years ago (edited)

You should withdraw as soon as you have a decent amount. Your personal wallet is more secure then a pool's because it has less chances of getting attacked. Withdrawing and putting it on your wallet will also make it so that you earn interest on the coins faster whereas right now when it sits in a pool, it earns interest for the pool. (unless the pool somehow calculates this in your rewards which is possible)

There is currently a bug that is being worked on and should be resolved in the next wallet release. Quite frankly you are better off leaving your wallet offline until the issue is solved. As for interest (proof of stake), your wallet will still earn it while offline. this is something someone who knows more can probably confirm or not but my understanding is that if you are on a fork and you keep your wallet on, you are contributing to the fork.
Yes you are helping secure the network.
your work is still earned. As long as it's staked within 6 month, which since you are on the pool, will always happen.

PS: Welcome to gridcoin :)

$0.89

11 votes

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h202 (46) 6 years ago

Right, the forking problem doesn't affect rewards. I had been staking on a fork a couple days ago before I decided to go offline until the fix was released. Since the fix was released earlier today, those rewards have been rolled back and replaced by new rewards from a block I staked today. So no problem at all. Even transactions should get rolled back with no loss (Please avoid doing this though.)

Staking with a small balance is not going to help the network much. So don't feel like you have an obligation :) It's true it would be nice to stake a block every now and then to earn interest, but again, with so few coins the odds are pretty small. I wouldn't worry about this aspect of things until you've built up a balance :)

$0.03

2 votes

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h202 (46) 6 years ago (edited)

*And yes, interest rewards do build up even when your wallet is offline. (I will note, however, this feature may change in the coming year to encourage people to keep their wallets online more frequently.)

$0.03

2 votes

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steemitboard (66) 6 years ago

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rbrahn (31) 6 years ago

Definitely mine in the pool until you've got maybe 1k+ coins before going solo. The more coins you have the more often you'll stake when you're solo, but data from me a few other suggests that you can very easily stake within the 6month timeframe with less than 2k coins. Now, how often to withdraw from the pool: You'll need to balance the pool withdrawal fees against your withdrawal amount, as these are fixed amounts. I personally ramped up the withdrawal amount in proportion to my RAC, peaking at about 20, but this'll depend on how often and how large you want your payouts to be.
This is unique to this week with an update that's had unintended effects. The current wallet version 3.7.7 appears to have sorted that out so upgrade if you haven't and use 'download blocks' to try and remedy the situation.
As others have stated, this is always beneficial to secure the network.
Absolutely. Your BOINC work will be rewarded whether your wallet is open or not.

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bigfarns (32) 6 years ago

Thanks to everyone for the replies and the welcome to the community. I've very glad to know that this forking issue is an anomaly. I will upgrade my wallet and see what happens.
It is fun learning about cryptocurrency in general and gridcoin in particular. The more I learn, the more interesting it becomes and it's good to see a community of people on this platform who are knowledgeable and talking about this.

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