When installed Gridcoin-Research, everything is OK, got >10 connections, got synced. Now I'm compiling it on another machine and try it, too. I guess that you should install research, not classic one.
The only problem is with Poloniex who's deposit addresses seem not to be OK for Gridcoin-Research wallet. Maybe they have the classic wallet and the addressen are incompatible or so? This is the question for dev-team