What is the pros and cons of Curecoin over Gridcoin?
That's a good question - up
Curecoin is a bit different. 45% folding and 45% sha-256 mining. Also gpus and asics are able to "mine". devs take 5% or so not sure yet.
Gridcoin is scrypt and boinc is the main idea there. If you look at boinstats you will find gridcoin in position #58 or so in RAC leaderboard. So a lot of computing power is towards for example helping cure cancer or malaria. It's up to you what kind of "projects" do you want to take part with. Also gridcoin has the first scrypt sleep implemented so even more processing power can be used to boinc.
Based on a message I read on the Curecoin forum I believe the percentages for ASICS / GPU's are changing to favor more power going toward folding. I don't think the piece I saw had indicated that the percents were settled but it said something like more rewards for folding but mining would still be worthwhile.
Regarding the pro's and cons of Curecoin over Gridcoin. That is something I wonder about myself. Gridcoin is also very compelling and I attempted to mine it. However, I found getting started to be difficult to say the least. In fact, I never got it going. At the time there was a tutorial but it was badly out of date and the information in the forum thread had changed a great deal as the client was advanced. I believe that has since changed although when I drop by the forums I can still see there is a great deal of confusion on how to get started which has kept me from giving it another shot at this point.
One potential concern with Gridcoin is that it appears Rob (the developer of Gridcoin) is essentially a one man show and he has a full time job outside of the coin. Don't get me wrong. He is very active in the forums and is making constant improvements to his client. There is real innovation there. It is nothing like the clone coins we see every day. He is the most active developer I have ever seen in the forums. He must not sleep! Nothing but props to him! However he is human and there is just one of him.
Curecoin on the other hand is supposed to have a full time dedicated development team of several people that will not only keep improving the client, but will also work on marketing the coin itself. It will in fact be their job to keep the coin alive and kicking. They are setting up a legal foundation to oversee the coins distribution for work done with folding.
However information from the Curecoin team is sparse to say the least. Rob with Gridcoin and others are on the forums constantly addressing issues. We rarely see anything from the dev's of Curecoin here or on their forum and if you have read this whole forum thread you will find this coin was supposed to launch months ago. So although I have seen messages on the Curecoin forum saying the official launch is very soon it is really hard to know when the launch will happen.
I believe Curecoin is also innovative and in all honesty Gridcoin and Curecoin are the only two coins I can see myself working with long term. There is real value in mining these coins unlike the vast majority of others. If Gridcoin was easier to get started with I would already be mining it. I tried over a month ago and really should go back and take another look. I have not attempted to mine during the various tests for Curecoin (paid in other coins out of the dev's own pocket I believe) so I do not know how difficult that process will be. However, I suspect due to the number of tests that have been done it will be much easier than my experience with Gridcoin was. I hope to find out soon!
I guess overall how could you go wrong mining either coin or both of them? Science is getting done and we have a speculative opportunity to get paid for our efforts. That sure sounds like a win / win to me!