What is Project Rain?

'Project Rain' is the practice of distributing crypto assets to BOINC users based on their verified BOINC computation; it was initially devised within the Gridcoin network and has been expanded to multiple cryptocurrencies and all BOINC teams through this BOINC project.

BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) is an open-source volunteer oriented computing grid that combines the processing power of all individual users for the purposes of scientific research.

Think of Project Rain as a massive new share-dropping vector that doesn't require your end-users to handle their wallet private keys nor require proof of IRL identity.

I discussed Project Rain in episode #172 of BeyondBitcoin: https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@officialfuzzy/guest-signups-beyond-bitcoin-hangout-172-9-9-16-rsvp-to-friday-s-hangout-refer-projects-for-rewards

Why would I 'Rain' an UIA upon BOINC users?
Similar to 'share dropping', Raining an UIA (or even a small % of the total supply) upon BOINC users both distributes your asset potentially further than an ICO or mining phase and purchases an user base with significant computing power at their disposal (Some BOINC users have thousands of cores and/or hundreds of GPUs).

There are approx 500k+ active BOINC users & 4 million+ registered users. There's serious potential to far exceed the scale of distribution that Auroracoin achieved.

Can I make a BOINC project?
You certainly can, anyone can create a BOINC project (there's no central authority behind BOINC project creation).
You could potentially 'rain' an UIA onto your volunteers/workers to encourage further computation or to assign voting weight for project decisions.

Have an idea for a project? Check out this steem thread (now frozen, damnit!): https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@cm-steem/brainstorming-new-boinc-projects-anyone-can-create-a-project-and-reward-their-users-with-gridcoin

What cryptocurrencies are supported?
Currently, 29 cryptocurrencies including Gridcoin, BTS, Peerplays, Heat Ledger & Steem are supported. More cryptocurrencies can be supported before launch if you request soon!

Here's a couple Steemit posts on Project Rain:
https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@cm-steem/project-rain-update-regarding-development
https://steemit.com/boinc/@cm-steem/project-rain-distributing-crypto-assets-to-boinc-users-based-on-their-verified-boinc-computation
https://steemit.com/steem/@cm-steem/gauging-interest-would-you-be-interested-being-able-to-tip-boinc-users-your-crypto-asset-of-choice

Thoughts?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on 'Project Rain' and ideas of how you could utilize this functionality.

P.S. Attention of BTS witnesses!
BTS witnesses, please support the 'GRIDCOIN' MPA by publishing price feeds, please! https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22733.msg298931.html#new

*bump*

Any thoughts regarding my BTS liquidity bot BOINC project idea?

Are you able to buy MUSE? Cryptofresh/coinmarketcap shows $29 having been traded the last 24hrs but I cannot see it on the BTS market..

Found where I can buy muse, I've put up a fair offer of 1 SAT/MUSE.

Hey,

I'm running the latest Bitshares light GUI (version 2.0.160813).

I'm trying to change my MPA's variables, but the following variables can't go lower than 1%?
"PERCENT OFFSET OF FORCED SETTLEMENTS"
"MAX FORCE SETTLE VOLUME (PERCENT OF TOTAL SUPPLY PER HOUR)"

I can't put 0.01 directly into the field, it prevents it, I have to put 0.1 in then put the 0 before the 1 afterwards.

If I put 0.01 in, it results in '1', but if I put in 0.005 (0.5%) it results in 0.

Is this a glitch in the GUI? Can I get around this via CLI?

Cheers

EDIT: I tried sumitting 0.005 for "PERCENT OFFSET OF FORCED SETTLEMENTS" despite it returning '0' in the confirmation page, and it returned an error "stack: TypeError: Illegal value: 0.5 (not an integer)".

Edit: I've misinterpreted the overview/confirmation page. 0.01 resulting in 1 isn't 1% but rather 0.01% so attempting to set 0.005 would have been 0.005%, still interesting the error popped up.

@pc is correct. Market Pegged Assets against a thinly-traded token are a recipe for disaster and abuse. I would not recommend having this price feed managed by the elected Bitshares witnesses.

When you say not managed by witnesses, would you be more comfortable with it being managed by a committee instead?

Can you provide links regarding black swan scenario & how MPAs handle them?

I'd really appreciate the bitshares documents on MPA's being updated to provide information regarding limitations surrounding low-volume assets - I've been hyped for the last 2 months since creating this MPA trying to get it live lol, at least we'll have our OPEN.GRC UIA in the near future.

Quote from: crypto123 on August 09, 2016, 12:00:26 am

Ok, so only those shorting the Gridcoin MPA would potentially be affected, not those holding the MPA (because they'd be saved by forced settlement) ?

In the scenario I described, yes, for some definition of "only".

But an attack in the opposite direction is also possible:

* Attacker short-sells a lot of bitGRC near the feed price.
* Then, he dumps the GRC price to (for example) 10% of its normal value.
* He creates another (small) short with minimum collateral, i. e. about 20% of the normal GRC price.
* Then, he pumps GRC to >20% of its normal value. This will trigger a black swan, and bitGRC holders are forced to settle at about 20% of the normal price.

You'd need to sustain such a manipulation of the external trading value for the full length of the 'Force settlement delay' setting though right, which for the 'GRIDCOIN' MPA is 24hrs?

What if we increased the 'Force settlement delay' to like.. 168hrs so that market manipulation would need to be sustained for a full week before forced settlement occured?

Likewise, what if we significantly reduced the 'Max force settle vol' variable? That too would reduce the impact of an attacker manipulating price feeds, right?

https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@cm-steem/brainstorming-new-boinc-projects-anyone-can-create-a-project-and-reward-their-users-with-gridcoin#@cm-steem/re-cm-steem-brainstorming-new-boinc-projects-anyone-can-create-a-project-and-reward-their-users-with-gridcoin-20160812t153824382z

Thoughts? The major difficulty would be providing the liquidity software to volunteers without providing said volunteers the ability to steal funds from the liquidity software. If this difficult issue was solved, then we could easily distribute liquidity software to several thousand individuals from all around the world.

If a BOINC project was created for this purpose, you could go a step further and distribute UIA against those running the liquidity software: https://steemit.com/steem/@cm-steem/gauging-interest-would-you-be-interested-being-able-to-tip-boinc-users-your-crypto-asset-of-choice