On 9/3/2023 I set up BOINC and the Gridcoin wallet on an old laptop. The same day I signed up on the Discord Channel. I downloaded the Gridcoin wallet from the Gridcoin Website and followed the instructions there. On Discord, I introduced myself and was sent 10 GRC (gridcoins) to pay to send my beacon, from a generous member of the community. I experienced some of the typical issues getting my Gridcoin Wallet functioning correctly. Stats Export delayed me a bit, and I later found the following instructions in the Solo Guide - "Some projects require you to enable stats exports. If any of yours do, follow the steps for those projects to enable it. If you skip this step, your beacon will not validate and you will not earn GRC for your BOINC crunching. Currently required by: Einstein@home (steps to enable) NumberFields@home (steps to enable) Universe@home (steps to enable) World Community Grid (steps to enable)" I should have, but did not at first - Go to each "whitelisted" Boinc project, and log into them, verify they each had the same email address and the same password (although a security issue, it makes it much easier to make changes rapidly. I knew that I was using really old, out-of-date computer equipment, so at first I signed up for a pool to get everything working. I was only attached to the pool, until I was given GRC, and wanted to go into solo mining. I signed up with the Arikado Pool and was able to follow the setup instructions to get everything running. The pool mining guide on the Gridcoin website helps. It was a very short time, after receiving 10 free GRC as a gift, that I was able to set up to send a beacon, and I left the pool to solo mine. I added a second laptop, and two Android phones to my Boinc account, and have been using the 4 machines since. I left solo mining and returned to the pool after about 3 weeks. The reason I did this was, that after leaving the pool, it continued to pay me GRC nearly daily, although at a slowly reduced amount each time. After much thought and some calculations, I decided to return to pool mining, until my daily pool rewards were close to my solo mining daily rewards. Once my pool mining Magnitude is high enough, I will return to Solo mining again. -- Quick note -- as I am writing this, my Gridcoin wallet just staked rewards from getting a block! The rewards are 10 GRC, because I am solo mining and not paid by the wallet for "earned coins".

The rewards above are for today so far. Top to bottom - Reward block, Gridcoin Switzerland Faucet, Pool Faucet (requires +1 magnitude), The Discord Faucet, and the Pool rewards. 6. Magnitude is an interesting thing. You can find calculators online to calculate it. In general, what I have finally wrapped my mind around, is that it is not about your Boinc work. Not like when you look at your BoincStats to try to keep track of how your machines are doing. Magnitude is calculated on the work your machines have done, compared to the work others are doing, but not on a "my machine did more than yours" type of thing. Not exactly. For higher magnitude, you need to determine which projects run best on your machines and prioritize the work of different whitelisted projects based on other Gridcoin participants. So if you want higher magnitude, pick a project that does well on your machine, and that others are not working on! This can keep you busy, depending on how much time you want to spend trying to improve your mining.

The image above shows tracking the previous day's magnitude results from the Gridcoin Wallet, against the work done. The magnitude in this case suggests a result, based on who else on the network was doing similar jobs. On my machines, folding@home, got very little credit (magnitude) for a considerable amount of the work. The result was to put folding@home on a 0 priority! So I am going to end this update here. I hope this has given you some insight about Gridcoin and the Boinc system from a fresh user's viewpoint. Keep in mind, that I am using old machines, so the magnitudes are low, and the resulting GRC payments are low. For me this is fine, as I am crunching Boinc for all the good reasons, and earning GRC is just a fun "pat on the back" for helping. If you have questions, please ask!! Cheers, and happy crunching!