Dear fellows!
I would like to raise in public the possibility of opening the BOINC Stock Exchange. Because of the desire to launch a public debate on the subject I decided to create a thread on this and several other forums of BOINC teams. BOINC Stock Exchange would act in the same way as regular exchange with one difference that there would be a rotation of BOINC credits instead of money. In that case everyone could sell or buy credits of a chosen project for price set by the rights of the exchange rate.
This topic is quite controversial but I’m counting on a productive exchange of views.
I’d like to ask you also to take part in the survey. You can cast your vote supporting the idea of BOINC Stock Exchange or against it. The survey can be found at the bottom of the page
atom.oproject.info/bse/index.php#pull
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The concept of BOINC Stock Exchange is a very wide subject and it’s impossible to put it in only one post. However, I hope that the sixteen following questions and answers will bring you closer the idea. These points contain many concepts (sometimes mutually exclusive). You shouldn’t understand them as a one and only coherent vision of the BOINC Stock Exchange – these are rather different examples of problems and possible attempts of resolving them.
1. Doesn’t it kill the idea of BOINC?
At first you may think it could. However, it could turn out that a lot of new people would begin to count, what would be a plus for the projects and the BOINC itself. The fact that users will be able to sell the results of their work isn’t probably nothing bad. What’s more those people who count for ex. 8h/day may be cheered to count full 24h because by selling points they’ll be able to pay the bills.
The BOINC computing power could bounce dramatically.
Let’s just take a look at Bitcoin. People count some "empty" hashing. BOINC Stock Exchange would offer us much more. What’s the most important thing is that we would have the possibility of choosing to support a project representing scientific value. There shouldn’t be any problems in accepting the inequality: Bitcoin < BOINC Stock Exchange.
2. From where do the real money come?
Well, we can imagine that one good April day we sold 10 million credits of Enigma@Home for 1 000 $ each (that was the current rate). On the same day we buy for it 20 million credits of SETI@Home (SETI had a very weak exchange rate in that day, so thinking that there would be a boom for this project we buy it’s credits). Next day, Anderson writes that they won’t have an access for one week to the telescope from which the data for the project is collected because most likely in the near future, the project will be closed. More and more people want to gather as much credits of this project before it’ll be closed, so they switch their CPU/GPU to SETI@home to get as much as possible. Exchange rate of SETI@Home credits changes rapidly (the number of people willing to buy/sell SETI credits changes), and let’s assume that it increases x2 compared to the rate when bought credits in this project. Then we sell our credits and get 2 000 $ (that’s 2x more than 1 000 for one that we bought these credits). Now we buy 10 million credits of Enigma@Home project for 1 000 per one (because the exchange rate in this project hasn’t changed) and we are left with 1 000 $ earned.
3. Who would earn on the BOINC Stock Exchange?
Everyone could earn on BOINC Stock Exchange. However we should remember, that everyone could also lose money. From the provision taken by the BOINC platform, it would be possible to support projects and various BOINC initiatives all over the world.
For example, you can suggest that a certain percentage of the credits rotation will go to the selected project administrators, for the development of project, etc.
4. What would deposit/withdraw of money to the BOINC Stock Exchange look like?
You could make Deposits/withdrawals in same way as in online casinos. User pay a deposit, the value of which is available in the system. Then user can perform operations on transferred money (buy credits of selected projects). For example, if he sales a certain amount of credits and his deposit will increase, he will be able to withdraw the money.
5. Will all project be able to join the BOINC Stock Exchange?
No. Only the best projects that have appropriate support, and which are working long enough and have a certain inflation will be able to join BOINC Stock Exchange.
It may seem as a some kind of discrimination but it is rather a protection. BOINC Stock Exchange couldn’t be joined by a newly created BOINC projects (though anyone can set up a project). The basis in this case is trust - after all not only credits would count but also money.
6. Will BOINC Stock Exchange be open 24 h/day and will I be able buy or sell credits every day?
No. BOINC Stock Exchange as the real stock exchange would operate in determined hours and days. Regular brakes in its work would enable seamless, maintenance and modernization platform.
7. What about BOINC races? We can’t give up on them!
Rotation of credits between users on the BOINC Stock Exchange would make the competition by racing impossible. During the race user X could buy a certain amount of credits and overtake another user Y which would count credits by himself. However, that’s not the idea of racing – in the race the strongest emotions are risen by the competition of current computing power.
The races could function completely normally when the exchange would be closed (Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays).
8. What with inflation and justice in calculating credits?
As previously mentioned there is nothing to hide, that not all projects will be able to join the BOINC Stock Exchange. Project willing to get into BOINC Stock Exchange would have to meet certain requirements of inflation.
It is easy to calculate the annual inflation of Project with data from BOINCstats (total credit and credits earn per day). It may be noted that the World Community Grid will have an annual inflation rate of 20%, SETI@home about 25%, Radioactive@Home as many as 90% (due to the fact that it is a relatively new project, and the number of detectors increases). To the pool of low inflation projects won’t qualify DistrRTgen or GPUGRID.
Anyway, the fact is that the high inflation will not encourage project and what’s more its credits will be less demand on the market (even if it will get there). No one will want to buy such credits like DistrRTgen, if there will be better as you can see by the inflation like World Community Grid. The idea of was that some percentage of transactions for project credits will go to its administrators. So administrators will pay more attention in order to the inflation was relatively low, because as I said otherwise it will not be profitable for them.
Besides - it can only serve to improve the quality of credits calculation. In this system, we can get rather less credits, than more that we should.
9. What about the division of points for the CPU/GPU?
There will have to be maintained division between projects (subprojects) CPU and GPU.
10. Let’s assume that as a member of the team I’ll sell my credits. Will the achievement of my team be reduced by my sold credits? Should credits trade between teams be available?
This case is not so simple. In the current system, which works in most BOINC projects (points calculated in the team stay in it even if user changes team) some additional complications appear.
Let’s assume that we have a user X. Who counts 12 hours a day for the team T1 (800 credits), 6 hours for the team T2 (400 credits) and 4 hours for the team T3 (300 credits). Then he wants to sell the 1000 credits another team member. If we decide that the credits will be transferred not only from user to user but also from team to team, then from which team should the credits be taken?
If we want to take away some credits it’ll be probably the last team in which that user was, so: 300 credits from T3, 400 credits from T2 and 300 credits from T1. We can’t take away all 1000 credits from T3 team because user doesn’t have even such a contribution there.
The BOINC server doesn’t know anything about it. Statistics by the way, but to make a decisions about that, we need in the worst case the statistics from whole lifetime of the project. Probably it will complicate a lot.
We can actually leave the teams in peace and let everything as it was (stock exchange operations will not affect them). We can also do, that the total credit of a team would always be equal to the sum of their members credits (credits are transferred with user from team to team - as I mentioned before) and then extend the stock operations on teams.
It seems that the extension of the stock operations on teams may turn into plus for the. This starts an additional plane of competition between teams.
11. Trade between the teams is a terrible idea. Another team will pay and outrun my team a few times in the statistics. Is there any advice?
It is difficult to predict and after the introduction of BOINC Stock Exchange anything could happen. Every stick has two ends, however - if one team will buy (receive) credits, then some other team must sold credits (lose). Number of credits in the market remains the same (not counting those that are earned counting) and there isn’t any miraculous multiplication. So thanks to the fact, that team X will buy a certain amount of credits from team Y, team Z may not only fall in the ranking in compare to X but it may also be promoted in compare to Y (because it will lose credits).
12. How to solve the issue of credits obtained in the sub-projects? Is there any way you could buy/sell credits of sub-project not a whole project?
In the BOINC subprojects could be treated in the same way as projects. If the chosen project would have a sub-projects, then to the stock exchange would be classified credits of specific sub-projects (user could buy credits to his interest). However, if the project wouldn’t have any sub-projects, then to the market would be classified credits from the projects’ "total credit".
13. BOINC will lose its meaning. If you’ll be able buy credits, then no one will be counting, everyone will buy them.
But if someone want to buy credits, then someone would have to sell them, and to sell he would have to get them, by counting (or, buy at a lower price). There's no such thing that everyone would stop counting, because they could buy credits.
14. Could it be possible to find a "golden mean" between users who want to perform stock operations, and those who wouldn’t ever perform them?
BOINC accounts could be divided into those that could benefit from the BOINC Stock Exchange and those that could not perform any operations. User would decide during the account set-up to which group he wants to belong. The decision on membership of a particular group would be irreversible (it can’t be changed - one could buy X credits and then change the type of account to the one on which the operations are not allowed).
Or maybe better like this: account without access to the BOINC Stock Exchange can always be changed to the account with access to the BOINC Stock Exchange, but the account with access to the stock market, won’t be allowed to be changed into one without access to it.
Creation of such a division of accounts is simple to implement. Thanks to that, even after the revolutions in the world of BOINC, there would be a place for the opponents of the BOINC Stock Exchange - they could count on the old rules. It would be possible to create a ranking of BOINC accounts without access to the stock exchange operations.
15. What if the market will be entered by a few users with billions of credits who want to sell them at a very low price – less lower than the cost of electricity for their generation? After all, it could destabilize the BOINC Stock Exchange, and new users will not be profitable to enter.
This is a serious problem of BOINC Stock Exchange. You can try to solve this problem in different ways.
We can set a minimum credit rate for ex. 75% of the cost of producing it. The Cost of production would be calculated on the basis of the best available calculations kit and some fixed prices for electricity and it would be different for a different projects on BOINC Stock Exchange.
You can also set a limit of inserting the credits earned during the day. It’s not about a fixed limit but it applies to the limit based on the average daily amount of credits in the last week.
Example: Within 7 days, user earned 7000 credits, divide it into 7 (number of days per week) came to 1000 per day + 20% (gradual release of what already exists) that would give 1200 and it could be delivered into stock exchange daily. We can also think about mechanism counting the absence of exchange and automatically enable adding to the BOINC Stock Exchange the following number of credits: credits daily average multiplied by the number of days without the presence of the stock market.
Plus of such a mechanism is that it would make impossible the supply of a large amount of credit that are currently stuck somewhere on users accounts, it would also block those who already have stopped playing and would like to just drop the existing credits (by forcing them to re-count to be able to sell what they have).
16. Will there be anyone willing to use the BOINC Stock Exchange?
It's a very difficult question. It's hard to say. Everything depends on us and whether the idea has a chance to make it through. BOINC Stock Exchange is not dedicated only to users in one forum or people from a particular country, it would be an international creation. When we’ll put all potential users of BOINC Stock Exchange from around the world and those who will join it after the opening - their amount may be sufficient.