My question then becomes 'what happens when project xyz comes online, using asic's, and is all about 'the Science'? Suppose Seti, for example, figures out how to optimize their Astro-Pulse units so as asic device could be used? Would that change the equation?

Mikey, if you read through the Generalized Credit Proposal:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/CreditGeneralized
... you'll see that your question has already been answered. It is one of the questions/answers at the bottom, that SETI themselves asked!

David's response is:
My feeling about this is that computing credit should measure general-purpose FLOPs, i.e. FLOPs that are usable by most science applications. FFT FLOPs are not general-purpose. So the right thing would be for SETI@home to grant both computing credit and project-defined credit. CPU and GPU jobs would be granted both; jobs done by ASICs or FPGAs would be granted only project-defined credit.

So.... A "project-specific" device, such as an ASIC, whether it mines coins or searches for aliens, would generate credit that goes into the "project-specific" bucket.

In the beginning ONLY cpu's could be used in Boinc and gpu's were for 'the gamers', then someone sat down and figure out how to utilize the gpu's specific calculating power to crunch Boinc workunits. Someone WILL figure out how to utilize an asic device, maybe a whole new app, just like when the gpu's started out, and then what?

There is nothing stopping anyone from creating an ASIC to do any type of work they desire -- protein analysis, space radio scanning, RNA sequencing... it's doable right now. It's just not cost effective. But it won't be "generalizeable" like GPU architecture. It will be a device that can only do 1 thing, very very quickly. That is why it will be a "project-specific" device that generates credit that goes into the "project-specific" bucket.

To me the genie left the bottle when cpu stats and gpu stats were combined, to now say well asic's are 'different' so they must be stripped out is kinda late. What about all those cpu ONLY crunchers, aren't their stats being blown away by those that use gpu's at the same projects...YES they are! How are asic devices any different?

The difference is a big one! The difference is that, the GPU is a generalized device that can be programmed to complete work on any project. The user is free, in a sense, to re-allocate that device to a different project. An ASIC is an "application-specific integrated circuit"; it is not generalized, and cannot be re-allocated toward another purpose.

Boinc Cobblestones are about 'numbers', nothing more and nothing less.

I look at the stats as a good way to measure how much "power" a user has, and where it's being allocated. The stats measurements, for CPU and GPU, are pretty comparable to FLOPS spent... even when comparing a CPU to a GPU. Bitcoin Mining isn't even comparable. There are rough estimates out there that try to "convert" a "hash" in a "FLOP" equivalent, but it really is apples and oranges. In fact, that describes what has become of our current stat situation - anyone that has ASIC included in their stats, has thrown some oranges into the mix. And some users would prefer to only count the apples.

If Wildlife@Home gives 15000 credits for each video watched, if StarDust@Home gave 10000 credits for each reel of video footage manually scanned for space dust, if SETI gave 20000 credits for each AstroPulse ASIC task completed, if Radioactive@Home gave 14000 credits for each day worth of analyzing radioactivity at your location, if ClimateAndWeather@Home gave 15 trillion stats for each day worth of weather monitoring at your location, if PopTart@Home gave 2 billion credits per PopTart video analyzed, and if Bitcoin Utopia gave 20000 credits for each 1.6GH/s ASIC task completed ......... they'd all be project-specific oranges.

Nobody is trying to take ASIC credits away. We are just looking for a way to categorize them, so that a user can choose to view the stats while excluding the project-specific credit!

Actually an ASIC is just a specialized FPGA and they could be programmed for any project or task given the desire to do so. It is quite possible to program, for example Seti, to run on a FPGA and hence to far outstrip the computing power of cpu's or gpu's.

I would consider getting one or two of these if I had 220 power and not 110 here at home or had access to a place with 220 power. http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/products/sp35-yukon-power-shipping-from-stock

At 5.5 TH/s, it would be a great way to build a profitable pooled or even personal bitcoin inventory. Especially if the decrease in bitcoin mining caused by the decrease of bitcoin price causes a re-evaluation of the difficulty of hashing out bicoins to a lower difficulty. I only wonder if BOINC could be installed on these so that you could mine bitcoins AND receive BOINC credits for the hashing. After all, it is Linux. I just wonder if it allows ssh access to install third party software or if it is locked down because of some proprietary software actually doing the hashing.

---

1 Corinthians 9:16 "For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!"
Ephesians 6:18-20, please ;-)
http://tbc-pa.org

Why should anyone really care about points? If you're doing any kind of DC for points than you have the wrong motives IMHO.

You are right, but there are such people.
When I realized that the BU project (and donate at home also) actually selling BOINC credits for BTC, I was shocked by the immorality of it.
This shock haven't passed.

For your information:
I've just sent the following letter to this mailing list:

The BitCoin Utopia phenomenon

I’m new to this list so this post could be a bit unusual, just as its subject.

We’re discussing this subject for two months on my main project’s forum, and Jacob Klein advised there that I should post my point of view to this list.

Currently there are two indices of the contribution:
1. Computational (Cobblestones)
2. Monetary (USD, EUR, …)

The computational index has two purpose:
1. to measure the throughput of a project, or a given set of projects
2. to motivate donors to support their chosen project(s)

The monetary contributions are handled separately by the projects.

BitCoin, and the BitCoin Utopia project linked these two indices together, as this project is awarding BOINC credits for BitCoins mined by the project’s participants.
The amount of BOINC credits awarded by the BU project is reduced on a regular basis as the hashing difficulty rises. This practice confirms this project’s commercial attitude, as otherwise the credits awarded should be in direct ratio with computational performance. Regardless of this practice the project made up an exchange rate between real world currencies and BOINC credits (it comes from the nature of this project), which is unprecedented. The current average exchange rate is about 130 million credits per USD. By pronouncing this exchange rate I’d like to express that this project raises much more severe questions than turning the stats’ sites upside down (however that event made most of us notice them).

The way of money donation before the BU project was the following:
1. the donor earns the money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project puts the donor’s name and the amount on their homepage.
In this case value moves only in one direction, so it’s a donation.

The way of money donation through the BU project is the following:
1. the donor earns (mines) money
2. the donor sends the money for the project
3. the project awards the donor BOINC credits for the mining.
4. the project takes its share, and sends the rest to the destination project
In this case value moves in both directions, so it’s commerce.

Fund raising is a very sensitive problem for every project, yet none of them sold BOINC credits to collect their funding, until the BU project showed up.
The problem of awarding BOINC credits for mining BitCoins is that the system awards the same thing twice: once for the donor who earns (mines) the money receives credit, second the project which receives the money.
To put it in another way: the award for mining is BitCoin itself, it shouldn’t be awarded again.
The present situation is unfair, as the real money donations are not rewarded like BitCoin donations (i.e. with credits).
The nature of the BU project caused a moral problem by merging BOINC credits with money.

Under the present credit system there are two ways of resolving the change the crypto currencies have brought:
1. accepting it, and let the other projects collect funding by rewarding money donations with BOINC credits
2. denying it, and forbid the BU project to award credits for mining money
If we accept it, then there should be some authority which sets the price of BOINC credits, which is a very difficult and debatable task.
I’m on the side of denying it, but it would be unfair to the participants of BU (and would induce harsh reaction) if the credits they’ve earned would be lost.
However, it would be fair to the other projects, if contributions made through the BU project would be kept in BTC, USD, EUR or whatever convertible currency, as BOINC credits are not such a thing.
In that way the participants of the BU (or any fund raising project) could easily check if the TCO of their mining equipment makes it profitable or not.

I think it wasn’t worth it to turn the cross project stats upside down in exchange of a couple of thousand USD, making years of CPU/GPU crunching look obsolete.
A temporarily solution could be reducing the amount of credits awarded by the BU project – regardless its computational capacity – to a level on which it doesn’t fool common crunchers by acting as the Holy Grail of BOINC.
From the replies on GPUGrid’s forum I can tell that the astronomical amount of BOINC credits the BU project awards made a lot of people blind, and it’s very hard for them to see the BU project as it is: fund raising – not science.
Should the BU project go like this in the long term, their impact could be even adverse on the overall scientific contribution of BOINC, as that much disparity in the awarded credits could make people to sell their expensive crunching hardware to buy more and more cheap hashing ASICs as they might think that they serve better the aim of BOINC when they earn more credits. This is not the same situation as when the GPU crunching caused similar credit shock as there’s much more aspects to consider. Some people think that the other projects could use these minig-ASICs in the future for their own (scientific) purpose.

On the other hand, I do appreciate BU’s effort in gathering funds.

Allowing the BU project to reward BOINC credits in exchange of monetary contributions was a fatal mistake, which couldn’t be seen in advance and it would be very hard to take back. Thus it made the reform of the BOINC credit system more urgent.

I would like to make an addition to the “generalized credit” proposal.
There should be a fifth kind of credit, which is money.
This is viable as a separate resource even for fund-raising projects, because they can’t use only one project defined credit to track the cumulated hashing done, and the total currency collected as the hashing difficulty is continuously rising. Besides, knowing the amount of money generated by others, new donors can make profitability calculations before purchasing and running mining equipment. (This is a very important factor in this case.)
If money would be the fifth resource it could help projects to build their own mining pool, leaving BU (and it’s share) out of the way of donating money.

Zoltan

100% agree.

There is hope to save spirit of scientific BOINC:

BOINC combined
BOINC combined without ASIC

In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.

---

POLISH NATIONAL TEAM - Join! Crunch! Win!

In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.

Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.

Would those who hash for BU donate directly SETI and Milkyway if these projects would give 100 million BOINC credits in exchange for one dollar donation?
Then why wouldn't let we these projects do what BU does on their behalf? ("what they want")
Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.
For whom the end is lawful, the means are also lawful (i.e., the end justifies the means)

This thread has 94.200 views.
This number is increased by 20858 since 18 Dec 2014.

Bitcoin Utopia is currently running fundraising for multiple Boinc projects incl Seti and Milkyway as well as helping out Boincstats...I say don't throw rocks in a glass house. Let them do what they want.

Would those who hash for BU donate directly SETI and Milkyway if these projects would give 100 million BOINC credits in exchange for one dollar donation?
Then why wouldn't let we these projects do what BU does on their behalf? ("what they want")
Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.
For whom the end is lawful, the means are also lawful (i.e., the end justifies the means)

This thread has 94.200 views.
This number is increased by 20858 since 18 Dec 2014.

Most projects give special badges to those who donate, Seti used to give gold stars, I don't know if they still do or not, that would show up next to your name for all to see. The exchange rate for Bitcoins fluctuates soo much that an accurate number isn't possible, but more or less 155 Million Credits ~ 1 USD at Bitcoin Utopia. So it ends up being more of a 'it's new so let's do it' type of project for the individuals. TOGETHER though great things have been done, several Boinc Projects have been assisted as well as one of the stats sites, and some non Boinc things have been helped as well. A list is on their home page, if you click on the campaign number you can see exactly what it was about and how much was actually donated. Three campaigns are currently underway with two more possibly coming on line soon, one of the three has almost reached it's goal in a much earlier than expected time frame.

It's kind of like you said in the other thread "horse for courses", what works for one person doesn't work for everyone. BU gives people another option and since it is a Boinc Project and can use highly specialized hardware it gives out more than the standard credits. DR A has said he is reviewing the amount of credits being given out, but thinks that some of them may actually be TOO LOW for the amount of work being done when compared to the standard model that projects follow. DR A has NOT come back with his final assessment yet that I am aware of though.

In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.

Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!

We can throw out 90+% of the BOINC Projects that have been run then ...

No where in the BOINC Name does it say Scientific Work

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

it just says Network Computing for those that want to Volunteer their Computers ... If people want to Volunteer their Computer to the BU Project then so be it. When the time come that a few dictate to the many what they can or can not run then that's the time to stop Volunteering my Computers.

In my opinion points should be granted only for scientific projects or statistics should be split between scientific and non-scientific projects.

Woo boy that's ANOTHER whole HUGE can of worms there!!! Hopefully another thread too!

We can throw out 90+% of the BOINC Projects that have been run then ...

True.

No where in the BOINC Name does it say Scientific Work

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

it just says Network Computing for those that want to Volunteer their Computers ... If people want to Volunteer their Computer to the BU Project then so be it. When the time come that a few dictate to the many what they can or can not run then that's the time to stop Volunteering my Computers.

Ture.
And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

It's kind of like you said in the other thread "horse for courses", what works for one person doesn't work for everyone.

Well, this is the best answer so far. It's all psychology then. But BU's psychology and their success could be easily transferred to other projects: The donors receive a special workunit for every dollar they've donated, and the project gives them 155 million credits for each special workunit they've processed. Then there's no need for BU at all. Problem of funding solved once and for all.

BU gives people another option and since it is a Boinc Project and can use highly specialized hardware it gives out more than the standard credits.

I thought that BOINC (besides its being a tool, or framework) is a community, and I think that it is exactly what its participants made of it. The more we crunch for science projects, the more it's a scientific community. I am deeply worried because the disparity between the credits given by the BU project for fund raising distracts the crunchers from science. Excuse me for being a little personal only for one sentence, and please don't get me wrong I don't want offend anyone for the project they crunch for, but Ste\/e is one of the perfect examples of the effect I'm afraid of. I'm really appreciate that he donated so much money for different projects through BU, but he ceased to crunch for GPU projects since the ASICs entered the BU project. His selection of projects are perfectly reasonable under the given circumstances, and I don't want to change his mind about his selection. I want to change the circumstances.

DR A has said he is reviewing the amount of credits being given out, but thinks that some of them may actually be TOO LOW for the amount of work being done when compared to the standard model that projects follow. DR A has NOT come back with his final assessment yet that I am aware of though.

From my point of view (i.e. there should be no BOINC credits awarded for donation at all regardless the means of donation) it's indifferent whether the ratio of the hashing done and the BOINC credits awarded is right or not.

Back to my idea of the special workunits for 155 million credits:
Wouldn't be the non-donor crunchers of a project upset as I am upset about BU, that a donor can take their place on the top list for much less money than what the non-donor spent on electricity and hardware? It's obvious why a BOINC project couldn't sell BOINC credits for money, so it's better that we have a separate BOINC project for this purpose. Well it's a contradiction, right? BU is a living paradox.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

Of course.
I thought that someone would give me a link to some wiki page of BOINC which actually contain the rules of credits and donations and their relations.
It is explicitly forbidden to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then BU shouldn't be a BOINC project.
It is explicitly allowed to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then every project could do that, and BU shouldn't exist.
There is any rule about selling BOINC credits at all, or this practice was so out of the question that nobody thought it should be regulated?

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

Of course.
I thought that someone would give me a link to some wiki page of BOINC which actually contain the rules of credits and donations and their relations.
It is explicitly forbidden to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then BU shouldn't be a BOINC project.
It is explicitly allowed to sell BOINC credits for money?
If it would be the case, then every project could do that, and BU shouldn't exist.
There is any rule about selling BOINC credits at all, or this practice was so out of the question that nobody thought it should be regulated?

Being open source and freely available to anyone and everyone rules like that would be hard to enforce. That being said in the past 'some' people did seem to be selling their credits, who knows what for, as their credits went with them from team to team. This was changed a while back when any credits earned on one team do NOT transfer to another team, the user ALWAYS keeps his credits, but team credits earned while on a team stay with the team when you leave. Your new team starts getting any credits earned from that point on.

You could see teams jump from 10,000th place to first place, and vice versa, when someone with a ton of credits switched teams. The rumor was money was changing hands, but I have no clue if that was true or not. I have not changed teams since I joined Boinc, except for very recently when I moved some pc's on some projects to a 2nd team for testing purposes. I will probably end up moving back to my normal team in the not so distant future though as the test, while working, doesn't seem worth it.

And where does BOINC rules say that a project can't give 100 million credits for one dollar donation? (maybe there is some rule, but I am too lazy to invalidate my own rhetorical-intended question)

That's just wishful thinking on your part, Donate a Dollar & get 100 Million Credits without all the expense of investing in Hardware.

OH BOY, with the money I give to the power company every month I could be MUCH closer to number one!! But without all the fun!!

From my point of view (i.e. there should be no BOINC credits awarded for donation at all regardless the means of donation) it's indifferent whether the ratio of the hashing done and the BOINC credits awarded is right or not.

This idea was thrown out in the very beginning, even before Boinc, when Seti gave one credit for every workunit crunched. Now with the multiple ways of awarding credits, open source tends to have multiple solutions, that horse left the barn and it's WAY to late to close the doors now.

One idea was floated, and rejected, of being more like sports stats, where you keep a running total of your best achievements, but every year you start over from zero with your credits. So while Messi is a great soccer/football player, he has only scored X number of goals this year. His stats this year do not reflect his past goals, but the total is kept for posterity on a stats site. Essentially we would all start over every year equal, so Ste\/e, Retvari and I would be tied, YAHOO, for about 3 seconds before you both pulled away.

Not a good day for bitcoins here in the United States:

Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity, According to the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission

CFTC Orders Bitcoin Options Trading Platform Operator and its CEO to Cease Illegally Offering Bitcoin Options and to Cease Operating a Facility for Trading or Processing of Swaps without Registering

Bitcoin now classed as a commodity in the US

One idea was floated, and rejected, of being more like sports stats, where you keep a running total of your best achievements, but every year you start over from zero with your credits.

This is completely off topic, but my idea is quite different: the credits earned should have "interest-rate", to make the credits earned in the past numerically comparable to the credits earned in the present. If you do reverse thinking about crunching, you'll never start it, because on the hardwares of the near future it will be much easier to earn this much credits, thus it's not worthwhile doing now.

I've read back this thread, and I decided to post what I wrote almost a year ago, because I consider it to be too good to be sitting on my desktop any longer - even though I feel that I'm beating a dead horse.

This is nice, we do have a dialogue started.

Sometimes I have the feeling that we keep on repeating our separate monologues in this thread, which doesn't necessarily result in a dialogue.

While I was thinking about how we tried to convince each other previously, I came to the conclusion that we see the BU project in a different way because we have different emotional relations to this project. I'd like to think of myself as I am neutral, but it's quite obvious that I don't like the way this project changed the character of the BOINC community without the knowledgeable consent of the participants / founders.

A scene came to my mind from one of my favorite movies: "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
You should watch it before you read on, it's very suggestive (both the clip and the whole movie too).
Because I could not get this quote out of my head for days, I did a little transcript of the dialogue in the clip I've linked, and I share it with you:

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does this project do, the BitCoin Utopia?
Clarice Starling: It's hashing numbers.
Hannibal Lecter: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing it does? What needs does it serve by hashing?
Clarice Starling: Mining cryptocurrencies. sir...
Hannibal Lecter: No! It donates. That is its nature. And how do we begin to donate, Clarice? Do we seek out things to donate? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin donating by earning money every day. Don't you earn money to buy the the things you want, Clarice?

I've read back this thread, and I decided to post what I wrote almost a year ago, because I consider it to be too good to be sitting on my desktop any longer - even though I feel that I'm beating a dead horse.

While I was thinking about how we tried to convince each other previously, I came to the conclusion that we see the BU project in a different way because we have different emotional relations to this project. I'd like to think of myself as I am neutral, but it's quite obvious that I don't like the way this project changed the character of the BOINC community without the knowledgeable consent of the participants / founders.

Actually the original creator of Boinc, Dr Anderson of UCBerkley, didn't say anything at all about what Boinc was to be used for EXCEPT as an experiment to get lots of diverse, unknown to each other people using his creation. Dr Anderson's original grant request was for the money to setup and run Boinc on alot of pc's, that's all. Now him working at Seti may have been in his mind, but he didn't express that in his request. He is still part of the team of people upgrading and maintaining Boinc to this day, although since all outside funding has been cut the Team is more part-time than full-time.

That being said Bitcoin Utopia has been in contact with him and has proposed some additional funding, but apparently Boinc is still tied directly to UCBerkley and they have some specific rules on what happens when you donate. The Admins are all working on it, in the background, and I am NOT a part of the process, so don't know anything but what is said in their forums by the Admins.