Looking at the results i got from running the calculator is a scary thing with the current price it may take many years to roi on my 2 gtx if ever.
Yes, a little scary but also paints a disheartening picture of the crypto currency and gamer community(ies). The critical mass which has yet to be reached deals with obsolete GPU equipment formerly used by scrypt miners re-directed at folding. Instead (IMHO) many scrypt miners simply sold their GPUs to Gamers who, unlike old PS3 owners who created a true paradigm shift for folding@home, actually have a lower than expected interest in participating in research. For that matter, a lower than expected interest in building a futuristic
"Epistemic Standard Economy" around research instead of precious metals or credit default swaps.
The
calculator was put out there to underscore the value of our collective participation. Many in the crypto-community either don't realize the actual costs of folding proteins (the long-time folders know this quite well), and that it follows Moore's Law too. Some of the research results from 7 years ago are just beginning to affect drug advancements today. What's really required is an exa-scale computational effort (10x the current level of participation in folding@home today). This is one of the paradigms that CureCoin want's to change as more people learn about the system.
There is (what I believe) a mis-conception that CureCoin is a clone (like many others), which is mined independently of the actual molecular calculations (thereby burning 2x the energy). Outside the 19% SHA-256 layer set aside in 1.0 to secure the network and allow traditional miners to transition into folding proteins, this assumption is simply incorrect. Misconceptions (IMHO) are still due to posts by naysayers dating back to early days in 2014 or even pre-ANN that are still floating out on the internet.
There are, hrrrhmm, "entities" who criticize CureCoin participants for profiteering from medical research philanthropy, yet have no qualms about promoting parallel BTC mining to support other DCN projects ... a hypocritical viewpoint if there ever was one.
Finally, another community who seem to be totally missing the boat is the Sci-Fi fan community. Despite repeated efforts to garner interest in CureCoin (or Folding@home in general) on Sci-Fi fan social media sites, they are more likely to contribute $500000 USD to crowdfund
Star Trek Axanar than to load an NaCl job in a Chrome browser. A celebrity endorsement would probably go a long way here, but they are too concerned about being hacked through the FAH software. It may seem funny, but that's not speculation, that's first hand information from people I know in Hollywood.
One simple thing I can suggest is more mentions of #curecoin on social media. Post your points output, tell people about Folding@Home and the over 120 published scientific papers. There are only a handful of CureCoin team members who post periodically about their CureCoin and Folding@Home experiences. Statistics show that media attention to DCN research projects dramatically increases participation. Without the "pop" of huge breakthroughs from the research, media attention has been waning in our instant gratification culture. I've had friends ask "So who am I going to be 'curing' if I do this?'" The truth is, not only does the research cover molecular biology across over 500 active projects, but additionally helps advance big data, machine learning and deep learning research.
