The untapped potential of volunteer computing

The article doesn't mention what I suspect is the biggest reason for the decline in popularity - improved power management. When these projects were new they really were using computing power that would otherwise have gone to waste. Idle power consumption was very similar to power under load, so it made sense to keep your CPU busy. But now idle power is much less wasteful, and everybody participating in these projects pays for it in higher electricity bills. This is unsurprisingly less popular than helping at no additional cost.

I'm curious about the perceived (or not!) adverse effects of running cpu heavy computations on a MacBook or phone for years? This article doesn't discuss the downsides of running something like BOINC if there are any... But that may be a real issue that shouldn't be ignored...?

The article really should mention <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridcoin.us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gridcoin.us&#x2F;</a> A Crypto currency awarded for actual BOINC work units.<p>I was a big fan of Folding@home back in the day, but now that I have the wonderful responsibility of the electricity bill, I&#x27;ve stopped all work. I wonder if Gridcoin could become a suitable offset for those bills in the future?

&gt;There may be a time when we think of computer power as money — Bitcoin is pushing us that way — and we give back by donating a few calculations at a time.<p>Actually, can&#x27;t we think of a low&#x2F;competitively priced resource as a donation? Why can&#x27;t contributors be compensated? Not thoroughly accounting for value contributed to networks is part of the reason for decreasing employment prospects. Users are taking risk (by spending their time creating value) and uploading it without compensation.