@adam
@pooktwo we're setting up a LTBCOIN vending machine accepting a bunch of counterparty tokens and the question came up should we accept FLDC. Is there any reason we should accept it? Storj, SWARM, etc. all have viable reasons why they should perform well in the long term because they give access to a network.
Do you have any plans to add redemption options or somehow give it value more directly another way?
Absolutely :)
So of the things we are working on, 3 come to mind that give FLDC direct value. It would be long to explain all so I will go over my favorite and that is "Merged Folding" being released Feb 5th. What Merged Folding is, is the ability to earn additional tokens in addition to FLDC for folding proteins. How is this done and why is this valuable?
How its done - When someone decides to fold proteins, they now will have 3 different options to obtain various tokens. All a Folder will need to do is alter the prefix that they currently use in their FAH donor name. The current system for someone to earn FLDC is using a donor name that looks like this:
- “usernameFLDC[CounterwalletAddress]”
This system will still work and using this prefix will only grant you FLDC. If you wish to collect another coin for folding in addition to FLDC, then your donorname should look like this:
- “usernameCOINSYMBOL[CounterwalletAddress]”
This system will grant you FLDC and the chosen token only. Now if you want to receive all tokens now and in the future that are on our platform, then your donorname should look like this:
- “usernameALL[CounterwalletAddress]”
Why is this valuable - Merged Folding creates value for FoldingCoin (and the respective token) on multiple fronts. I will be using POWcoin for the examples here as they will be our first token on this platform, but we are excited to be in talks with another great coin that I cannot yet comment on.
The first is value in earning TOKENS as a bonus. POW has had a hard time in gaining mining adoption as POW is only worth a satoshi or two. Nobody wants to mine something that will not give them immediate returns as most miners are in it for the profit and not necessarily the coin itself. Being on the FoldingCoin platform allows POW to distribute its tokens to an already established folding community to receive its tokens. And should the token fail, the folders will not mind, because they are still receiving FLDC and other future assets by folding.
Value for helping small startup coins. POW has had a rough road in the past. The dev over there has spent most of his time trying to maintain his POWC blockchain that is basically a fork to Litecoin. He is not the most tech savvy guy in the world, so updating and securing a blockchain is a full time job should you want your coin to succeed. But he is a crypto enthusiast which I respect, and he has a neat idea of having a coin that is used for comics. Will he succeed, depends on his dedication. But what our platform will empower is the ability for POW not to have to maintain a blockchain anymore. His time can be focused now solely on his mission of creating a comic book coin and answering forums, and so forth. He can be more directly involved in his community rather than his QT wallet.
So other traditional Altcoins having issues with hashing power or blockchain maintenance could follow in the foot steps of POW and make the move to CP harnessing our Folders participation. These coins could hold their own burns, or we could help with a burn.
Now new ideas for a coin that someone has could be explored. Someone out their might have a great idea for a coin, but doesnt want to deal with the wild west of Altcoin miners. This gives them the ability to get their coin out there without having to worry about things like difficulty fluctuation and blockchain security updates. They will grow with CP and their distribution will continue with folding power.
Value for crypto. Speaking as a Miner for the past 2 years, I was constantly mining different coins. I had all sorts of crypto switching programs and watchers that was re targeting my mining equipment every 10 minutes for the most profitable coin. Then I had instant sell outs for BTC every hour on top of the hour. This is not a system in which a coin can become established, this still goes on to this day. Like I used to do, many Miners probably don't even know what they are mining 75% of the time. What our system does is puts a stop to that. Since Folding requires FLOPS not Hashes, it is very hard to switch back and forth between the two. Also the FAH client is only partially open sourced, so coding something that would make the FAH client stop so mining could begin is currently undo-able to the average Miner.
Value for Miners. Receiving more than one coin is a dream come true for a Miner, and if you had a whole platform that allowed you to receive many coins, that could be even better. With FLDC being the flagship token, all participants will receive this token from us irregardless of the success or failure of other tokens on our platform. So this will allow Miners (now Folders) to receive many coins that they can sit on, and they could sell the FLDC they receive to pay for the cost of their mining (folding) operation (or the opposite effect could be true).
Value for mining cost. If you have ever mined (with CPU and GPUs), you are aware of the fact that hashing takes a drastic amount of energy and cooling in order to keep the cards from burning up. That is because when you Hash on a GPU, you are pushing it to its limits as hashing is not normally supposed to be done at that speed all day long. As for FLOPS are a more natural computation cycle for a GPU and CPU. The cards dont get nearly as hot, and the electricity is about half the cost. For my 34 GPU operation, I dont even use fans anymore as they are not necessary.
Better use of energy for the world. There is no direct translation from one to another, but a common consensus is 1 hash equals 12,700 FLOPS when comparing the 2 side by side. The FAH grid computing network has 46 PetaFLOPS and is known as the world's most powerful computing network outside of the Bitcoin mining network.
Now at the time before ASICs started hitting the market in April 2013, the Hash rate of the BTC network was at 72 TeraHASH’s in mostly GPU and CPU power https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate. Based on a rough comparison 12.7 PetaFLOP = 1 TeraHASH the potential computational power that could be added to FAH is
*72 TeraHASH 12.7 PetaFLOPS = 914 PetaFLOPS.**
Imagine how far along disease cures can come from this power should miners start folding. Also this doesnt count for the many people who bought GPUs after BTC became popular because they thought GPUs would make them many BTCs. And it doesnt account for when Altcoin Mining became profitable in summer of 2014 when cards were still purchased.
Venture Capalists value. Since there is no profit motive for FAH, there seems to be an untapped market for the general public and venture capitalist to become more involved. FoldingCoin Inc. looks to bring a profit motive for people to fold proteins by receiving multiple cryptos. Venture capitalists could see this as an opportunity to invest in the creation of economic sized Anton Supercomputer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_%28computer%29 which is an ASIC form of molecular protein simulating that can fold more efficiently than standard computing hardware. This very thing happened to Bitcoin mining when it became exponentially profitable, venture capitalists invested in the creation of ASIC miners to compute SHA256 at a more efficient rate than standard computing hardware.
