Re: PRE [ANN] CureCoin-Fold Proteins, Cure Cancer, Make Money! NOV 16 GPU+CPU+ASIC
Love the idea of this, but don't the folders get the short end of the stick here? The coins are split evenly between the asics/folders but the electricity cost is significantly higher on the folding side. Should be interesting to see how the folding side of things go over time. I just worry the incentive will always be there for the asics but not always the folders.
Good question!
The payouts are even for both networks, meaning all folders combined make as much as all ASIC miners combined. Therefore, it really depends. If most people jump on with ASICs, then folding would actually have better pay per kWh. To put this in perspective, a $300 ASIC and a $300 GPU would, theoretically, earn the same amount, however since a GPU uses more power, people are likely to, if buying new hardware, opt for ASIC-based, thereby increasing the relative profitability of that $300 GPU.
Due to the fixed bridge between the two portions of the network's computational infrastructure, there should always be some kind of balance maintained automatically by people adding hardware on both sides to compensate for higher per-capita coin availability in one network or the other.
When people say ASICs are more efficient, they are really saying that ASICs use less kWh per GH, but since we're comparing GH to PPD through a constant ratio, energy efficiency will be only one of many factors that affect the extend of both computational power's profit margins.
Wouldn't it have been better to just merge mine the coin into bitcoin and give less reward to that side? I mean the whole thing about this coin truly is the folding side of it, but instead of maximizing the incentive to fold, you cut the potential folding economy in half. The more money going to the folders the more people will fold and I believe the idea behind this to get more people to fold. Whereas if it were merge mined it would get mined regardless with a high hash rate. Maybe I'm over thinking it...
One of the purposes of the coin is to give both ASIC and consumer-hardware owners the ability to earn the coin with computational efforts, and allowing it to be merge-mined tends to devalue coins and gives it the stigma of a 'secondary' coin unfortunately. Merged mining is certainly an interesting concept for the currency, but we want it to be both a primary currency and a network of scientific computation