FAQ
Ответы на часто задаваемые вопросы.
Основные вопросы
Я майню на пуле, но мой кошелёк сообщает о режиме INVESTOR и показывает нулевую магнитуду. Это нормально?
Да, это нормально, при майнинге на пуле вы пользуетесь аккаунтом пула, и получаете награду от пула. По этой причине вам не нужен собственный CPID и у вас нет магнитуды.
Я майню на пуле, но моя работа почему-то не учитывается, что делать?
Убедитесь, что вы удалили все проекты из BOINC manager перед синхронизацией с пулом. Проекты должны быть добавлены через интерфейс пула и последующую синхронизацию.
У меня есть соединения с сетью, но число блоков не растёт, что делать?
Если соединения есть, то всё в порядке. Кошелёк сам разберётся.
У меня была магнитуда, а потом она вдруг упала до нуля, что произошло?
Тут может быть два варианта, либо проект, в котором вы участвуете был исключён из белого списка, либо нужно заново отправить advertisebeacon с помощью команды execute advertisebeacon из консоли.
Gridcoin и наука
Что делает Gridcoin (GRC) особенным?
Гридкоин вводит новый алгоритм консенсуса под названием "доказательство исследования" (Proof of Research) чтобы направить вычислительные ресурсы майнеров на полезные вычисления. Почти вся вычислительная мощность (до 98 %) может быть направлена на научные и медицинские исследования напрямую в процессе майнинга гридкоинов.
Смотри так же список Преимущества и возможности.
Как может "полезная" работа для криптовалюты быть проверена без повторения вычислений на центральном сервере?
В гридкоине задания выдаются серверами проектов BOINC, которые используют свой независимый способ вычисления наград участникам. Гридкоин сравнивает относительное количество очков, заработанных в BOINC чтобы измерить производительность отдельного пользователя по отношению к сети.
BOINC содержит систему вознаграждения (очками) за выполнение заданий с 2003 года. В случае если управляющий проектом решит начислять больше очков, то это повлияет только на доли участников внутри одного проекта. Максимальное количество гридкоинов на проект окажется тем же самым. Кроме того проект может быть исключён из белого списка голосованием.
Безопасность в сети gridcoin происходит от механизма Proof of Stake криптовалюты Blackcoin. Позднее этот механизм был переделан в доказательство исследования (Proof of Research), криптографическим образом защищающим процесс производства валюты, подписывая код ассиметричным ключом BOINC.
Security in Gridcoin is derived from Blackcoin's industry-leading Proof-of-Stake. This has been further developed into Proof-of-Research, which cryptographically secures a minting process in which nodes asymmetrically sign BOINC work units as approved by distributed BOINC credit nodes.
Майнинг (исследования)
Как начать майнить?
First, Get some coins, then see Mining setup.
My CPID is not in the neural network, What do I do?
If you are in the pool, this is normal. If you are attempting to solo-stake, go through the following:
If you have just begun your BOINC journey it is quite possible your work units haven't been verified by the necessary servers. Don't Panic, Gridcoin is a game of patience. Just relax, take a day or two, and see if the problem persists. If so, proceed to the following steps.
To ensure your wallet is fully unlocked, lock your wallet with a passphrase (make it LONG, a password manager like KeePass is recommended) and then unlock it with "for staking only" UNticked.
Next, go to Help -> Debug Window, go to the Console tab and type "execute advertisebeacon" without the quotes.
This will (if successful) send a small transaction at the cost of -0.00011 GRC. This should add your CPID with the next superblock.
To see if your CPID is included, go to the Console and type "execute beaconreport". If your CPID is present, sync the Neural Network by typing "execute syncdpor2" in the Console. If successful, the output should be '"syncing": 1'.
If your CPID is not included, wait for the next superblock. In case your CPID isn't included after a few superblocks, try resending your beacon ("execute advertisebeacon").
Lock your wallet again, but this time unlock it with "for staking only" ticked.
How long does it take to start receiving Research (mining) credit?
This depends on several factors. You must have some coins to begin with, some have started with as few as 100 coins. You must send a "beacon", this is how your information is populated into the Neural Network which controls payments, see Mining setup. You must have over 100 RAC on at least 1 whitelisted BOINC project before you can send a beacon to receive Research credit. After your CPID is in the Neural Network, all research credits you earn will accrue in a "savings account" for a rolling 14 day period. You have up to 2 full weeks to stake a block without losing any research credit earned.
Is it true that someone would not lose reward if blocks are created on a fork?
YES! If you find a block on a fork your "owed" balance will be reduced on that fork but it won't be reduced on the main block chain because that block wasn't really found by you on that fork. So once you sync back up with the main chain you will see the block you found change to an orphan (with the ?) and the balance in your research savings account will increase by that amount so that when you find a block on the main chain you will be paid for the research you are owed. This is what makes this method so much more fair, than the old PoW system. With Proof-of-Research as long as you find enough blocks in a 2 week window to be paid your full reward within the payout rules you will receive all the rewards you earned in the same period.
What should I put in my config-file for Gridcoin-Research?
Please find gridcoinresearch.conf in your %appdata%\roaming\gridcoinresearch folder and insert a line for your BOINC email address if it is empty:
email=YourBoincEmail addnode=node.gridcoin.us
These lines should already suffice. Else, find more at gridcoinresearch config file
I did a 'list rsa' to find out how much reward I can expect from PoR. What does it tell me?
This information is partly outdated and will be updated once the Research Age feature is live. This should be the case in the end of September 2015
"RSA Report" : "Research Savings Account Report - Generated 1422562593"
"Payment Window" : This is the look-back period
"CPID" : This is your CPID, the Cross Project Identifier within BOINC network
"Magnitude" : This is your current Magnitude and will be reported the next PoR block you post
"Payment Magnitude" : This is your Magnitude as it appears to the network based on your reported magnitude in the look-back period
"Payment Timespan (Days)" : This the age of your CPID, the lower of the look-back period or when the first PoR block with your CPID appears in the blockchain
"Magnitude Accuracy" : This is the number of times the network checked your magnitude against netsoft*
"Long Term Owed (14 days)" : Magnitude * Magnitude Multiplier * 14
"Payments (14 days)" : What your CPID has been paid in the look-back period
"InterestPayments (14 days)" : In addition to your PoR payment any interest you are owed on stakeable coins is paid, this is a sum of those payments in the look-back period
"Last Payment Time" : the last time you were paid a PoR payment
"Total Owed" : Long Term Owed (14 days) - Payments (14 days) with a cap of the current maximum payment amount in the PoR Payment Schedule**
"Next Expected Payment" : 50% of Total Owed with a cap defined in the PoR Payment Schedule
"Daily Paid" : Payments (14 days) / look-back period
"Daily Owed" : Long Term Owed (14 days) / look-back period
"Registered Payment Time" : depreciated
- Magnitude Accuracy is how many times other nodes verified your magnitude by actually parsing the XML as a 3rd party. This creates a weighted magnitude the consensus agrees on.
- Total Owed is not your RSA balance, the RSA balance is not listed in the report but can be found by Long Term Owed (14 days) - Payments (14 days)
How can I tell if I've mined a block?
First look at the transaction list for "PoR" payments.
If you don't have any PoR yet, do a "list mymagnitude" in the debug console and look for the savings account balance "owed". That will be what you accrue for your first payment. It has to be higher than the subsidyschedule max block / 10, IE 40 right now in order to actually generate.
Reward calculation: what is RAC?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_Credit_System#Recent_average_credit
Reward calculation: what is magnitude?
The reward calculation is based on the relative contribution of a user to the total contribution of team Gridcoin. This is being calculated within every project and the sum of the relative contributions is the magnitude which is being used to calculate the reward. Besides the research rewards, each mined block contains interest.
Is it possible to join a pool?
Yes, there is a pool on http://grcpool.com/
I am BOINCing nonstop but my magnitude is very low. What can I do?
Regarding your magnitude: You should have an eye on your RAC and the project total RAC within team Gridcoin. Be aware that BOINC RAC is measured weekly, with the most recent week being higher weighted, the next week being weighted at half of the recent week and so on, it therefore takes a number of weeks of consistent BOINC work on a specified project, for RAC to increse to sustainable levels.
Have a look here: http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?result&t=Whitelisted_Project_Leaderboard . If your hardware is not strong or compatible, you should keep away from some projects. For example, GPUGRID is very popular for high end GPUs so the team RAC is high. My GTX 770 got me RAC way above 10k but the magnitude was smaller than 10. So I decided to let others work on that project.
There are also overrun CPU projects or projects that do not provide constant work unit (WU) flow.
Try different projects and see whether your hardware can keep up a high magnitude. You can review your outcome magnitude in the Neural Network. Go to Advanced -> Neural Network and search for your CPID. Then you can double click to drill into your paticipation or have a look here: http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?result&t=CPID_Leaderboard
Anyway, if you like a project you should support it, to keep the BOINC spirit up ;) I like the LHC and everything concerning CERN so I keep participating although it's not really worth it regarding GRC because they sometimes have an unstable WU feed.
Additionally, you might want to re-visit the projects you contribute to, you don't want to contribute CPU power to a project that allows GPUs its like trying to mine Bitcoin with your PC, you are competing with the wrong equipment. You might start by visiting this list: http://wiki.gridcoin.us/Current_BOINC_Whitelist and make sure you aren't using your CPU for projects that have the ATI or Nvidia icon. You can also maximize your magnitude by finding projects that have smaller team RAC (just make sure they have work available) on the network report which you can find here: http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/?result&t=Whitelisted_Project_Leaderboard
Staking (Interest)
How is the amount of stake-reward calculated?
The stake reward is calculated by two combined algorithms.
Proof of Stake rewards based on an annual interest rate. An interest block contains only interest and occures when you are fully paid in your research or an investor without research activity. Proof of Research rewards for BOINC contribution, though research activity. A PoR block is a combined payment of interest and research reward.
Have a look here for the current interest rate which will be fixed after October 2015 at 1.5% -> http://wiki.gridcoin.us/Proof-of-Research#Proof-of-Research_Reward_Schedule
The wallet says "Not Staking because you don't have mature coins" , how long does it take for coins to mature?
It takes about 16 hours for GRC to become mature from the time of arrival in your wallet. After a specific set of coins have Staked, they will need to mature again for 16 hours before they can Stake again.
Why can't I send coins in my wallet balance?
You may have a balance reserved in stake. If this ever happens to you do this in the console:
reservebalance true AMOUNT
Where AMOUNT is the amount you want to send
Wait a few blocks
Then send it.
When I get an interest/mining payment, a portion of my GRC looks to be moving from my total balance into the "Stake" line of the wallet balance. Is that correct?
Every 4 hours the wallet is on-line, it looks for old coins that can accrue interest and moves them from 'Balance' to 'Stake' then it works on staking. Once staked, it moves the staked balance back to balance.
I lose my stakeweight after receiving PoR? The "maturecoin-creationprocess" is starting again after each mined PoR?
Yes that is normal, because your node builds up a set of stakeable coins and once you stake them the process takes about 4 more hours to get new mature coins, unless some have been found in between (it's a constant process).
Do I have to leave my wallet unencrypted to be able to stake?
Well, if you encrypt your wallet and enter "walletpassphrase [passphrase] 86400", that would unlock it for 24 hours for staking. Alternatively to auto-unlock for staking when you start Gridcoin see: http://wiki.gridcoin.us/Wallet_Auto-unlock_for_staking
Your wallet file remains encrypted and since you do not have to enable external rpc access for mining anymore, it's safe aside from physical access or perhaps memory leakage.
Can I stake with encrypted wallet?
Yes, but you have to unlock it first. It's okay to unlock it "for staking only".
The console walletpassphrase command does what clicking the lock button does.
To lock Type
walletlock
to unlock for a certain time type
walletpassphrase PASSWORD TIMEOUT
to unlock type
walletpassphrase PASSWORD
to unlock only for staking type
walletpassphrase PASSWORD TIMEOUT true
Also there is an autounlock feature. You need to encrypt your password and set a line in config....
to encrypt your passwort type
execute encrypt YourPassPhrase
copy that encrypted password and add a line in the config file in %appdata%/Roaming/Gridcoinresearch
autounlock=YourENCRYPTEDPassPhrase
How do you turn staking on and off?
walletpassphrase "your passphrase in double quotes" timeout true
where timeout is a number of seconds, e.g. 10000 and true is a toggle that unlocks the wallet for staking only.
BOINC
Choosing BOINC projects: In BOINC, is there still a defined whitelist of "projects" or can we use any project now that has Gridcoin as a Team Name?
Running "list projects" in console will list all the whitelisted projects you could possibly contribute to that would help your gridcoin research wallet.
If it says "non participating project" does that mean that they aren't accepted for Gridcoin purposes?
That means you aren't participating in those projects or the e-mail address you have in the conf file doesn't match the e-mail address used in your BOINC manager on that machine. For every project you join, you also have to join the Gridcoin team on that project. Any changes about e-mail address on a project or team membership on a project take around a day to propagate.
I use BOINC with one username but on a few machines - is it enough to have one wallet with the proper boinc_project_email address, or do I have to have a separate wallet on each machine?
You only need one wallet for each BOINC account/CPID (Cross Project Identifier). You can use BAM (BOINC Account Manager) to combine more projects in one CPID. Here is a guide http://grcnation.com/en/bam-boinc-account-manager/ . Your reward is based on the credit in your BOINC account/CPID. You can point as many machines and resources to a single account as you want and only need a single wallet to receive your reward. You do have to set "email=" in the config file to your BOINC/BAM email and must be running the wallet on a machine that has BOINC installed and is associated with all BOINC projects you would like to get credit for (they can be set to not retrieve new work) and each project must show at least some RAC on that machine (press "Update" in the BOINC software when a project which shows 0 contribution is selected).
BOINC: For our accounts, we used to have to use our gridcoin address as our usernames for those accounts. Is that the case still, and if so, should we change our address info over to the "new" client addresses? Like under BAM/Boinc Stats, our stats/info isn't searchable via e-mail address but is via username. Just wondering what we can/should use for going forward.
Changing your BOINC name to a Gridcoin Address is not needed anymore. Now just set "email=" in the gridcoinresearch.config file, ensure you are in team Gridcoin in each project, that should do it.
No, but there may be a defined process one day. Currently, decisions are placed individually due to a vote within the blockchain. The discussed project is then added or deleted from the dynamic whitelist.
As far as hardware requirements, projects should be able to run on both 64 and 32 bit OSes. Some BOINC projects are limited to architecture. We definitely need a set of guidelines to follow before adding a project to the whitelist. It is favourable to choose projects that are accessible to the masses.
How do I delete a project from my list of CPIDs?
We used to support detaching but a vote was made to calculate magnitude on every project you still have valid rac on; so GRC does not support detaching projects (it was supposed to prevent gaming the system). There is no difference if you score 0 on a projects, as all are taken into account equally.
If you insist on not being paid for a specific project, change your team away from team Gridcoin for that project.
Status
How can I see my Researching Status?
If you have some BOINC credits, you are in team Gridcoin and your email is correct in the gridcoinresearch.conf file you should see a list of the projects you are participating in when entering "list cpids" to the debug console of the wallet (Help -> Debug Window -> Console). It may take 24-48 hours for new accounts to be populated.
If you then type "list rsa" you will see your Research Savings Account which displays, among other information of your research status, what you are owed. This is the payment you can expect within the near future.
What does "diff" exactly measure? What does it tell if it's high or low?
Difficulty (diff) is a variable int representing how hard the PoS algorithm has to make the next block to keep block minting periods at a stable 90 seconds rate into the future.
When a lot of researchers are eligible at the same time for a block, diff rises to slow down minting. In contrast when no one is online mining, diff will drop to lure in miners to keep our blocks staking at once per 90 seconds.
Another way to look at diff is how many distinct PoR miners are eligible during any one minute to stake. When diff is @20, it means 20 miners were on-line that minute with solutions, so diff is rising to keep emission steady.
Its very similar to PoW diff. The big advantage we have in this version with PoR is we can accommodate thousands of new miners without seizing the chain with the RSA (Research Savings Account) and the 90 seconds block times.
What does stake weight mean?
The personal stake weight it how many coins are eligibile for staking * coin age for your node.
The network stake weight is the sum of coin age mined in the last 72 blocks by the network.
What is RSA?
The RSA is the "Research Savings Account" that keeps track of your overall owed amount.
What command to get rsa using the headless wallet?
list rsaweight gives the value the client will use when it forwards the block.
How to call commands when starting Gridcoin Wallet on Windows?
Create shortcut that links to the actual GRC program in Program Files directory and add the function at the end of the target, then properly name them for the function to execute:
Example with -rescan option: Make a new shortcut to "C:\Program Files (x86)\GridcoinResearch\gridcoinresearch.exe" or "C:\Program Files\GridcoinResearch\gridcoinresearch.exe"
Add the command to execute at the end of the 'Target:' line like "C:\Program Files (x86)\GridcoinResearch\gridcoinresearch.exe" -rescan .
Rename the shortcut like 'GRC rescan'.
Then go to Advanced and tick on run as Administrator.
From now on when you double click on it, it will execute that Command Line function.
This way it is simpler and faster for newbies than CLI and batch.
How could I check whether my local block is the same as on a explorer?
After you double click on the tx in the list, write down the block number (not hash).
Then do
showblock blocknumber
And compare the details with details from explorer.
Btw, just for fyi, if you do want to get a block by hash, you would have to:
getblockhash blocknumber
getblock blockhash
But that is a little longer :)
Upgrade
How do I upgrade the Gridcoin wallet client?
Download the installer from Gridcoin.us and install over your previous installation.
Go to User/%appdata%/Roaming/GridcoinResearch and delete everything EXCEPT wallet.dat, gridcoinresearch.conf, walletbackups folder and testnet folder (if those folders exist). After the upgrade you can synchronize your wallet to the network much faster if you use the Download Blocks feature. Press Rebuild Block Chain -> Download Blocks to download the latest snapshot.
Backup
What can I do if I didn't save a prior version of wallet.dat?
The wallet has an automated backup in place that will make daily backups (once every 24 hours) into %appdata%\gridcoinresearch\walletbackups.
Which is the best practice to save my new wallet?
Different methods were discussed in the Gridcoin Community Classroom #003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxrjUwX5XvA
How to compress my wallet getting rid of orphans?
The quick and easy way.
- Close your client and rename wallet.dat to wallet.bak
- Start client. Once started, click recevie coins and see your 1st address and copy the address down.
- Close client and rename wallet.dat to somethingelse.bak
- Rename wallet.bak to wallet.dat
- Start client and send all coins to the address you copied down in step 2.
- Make sure you get at least 10 confirmation for the transaction.
- Close client and rename wallet.dat to wallet.bak and rename somethingelse.bak to wallet.dat
- Start client and enjoy your new wallet.
The reason why you should never dump private keys or wallet is that if your PC is compromised, you probably won't know it and the moment you dump your keys, someone on the listening side will get your private key, and therefore get your coins.
Yes. You will lose your coin stake, and it will take 4 hours for coins to start staking again.
What should I do to recover an old backup of my wallet?
Backup wallet.dat.
Look for the %appdata%\Roaming\GridcoinResearch\walletbackups folder.
Find the youngest backup.
Copy it to the %appdata%\Roaming\GridcoinResearch directory and rename it wallet.dat.
Restart.
If you have no backup you will have to do the -salvagewallet as starting option.
Sync
I have lots of connections, but synchronizing stopped at a certain block. What should I do?
Try this:
- Make sure Gridcoin is running as an administrator.
- Close the client
- Clean out your Gridcoin Appdata folder EXCEPT wallet.dat, your GridcoinResearch.conf file and the folders walletbackups and testnet if present. For windows '%appdata%/Roaming/GridcoinResearch', For Linux '~/.GridcoinResearch'
- To get a quick start to Syncing, In the Gridcoin UI, Go to Rebuild Block Chain -> Download Blocks. This will download the latest snapshot of the blockchain and speed things up.
- You can also get the snapshot manually Here and extract it to the Gridcoin data folder. For windows -> '%appdata%/Roaming/GridcoinResearch', For Linux '~/.GridcoinResearch.
There is also an official thread for sync problem if it didn't work.
How could I test whether I am in sync with the network?
Compare your highest blocknumber with the one listed at http://www.gridresearchcorp.com/gridcoin/
When the explorer is clearly ahead of you (> 9 blocks) and increasing about every 90 seconds, your node is most likely on the fork. You can wait till it syncs or rebuild the block chain.
When you are clearly ahead of the explorer and / or the explorer has stopped incrementing on a regular basis, it's more likely that the explorer will sync up with you and your connected nodes at some point.
How to get back in sync fast?
Ensure you have upgraded to latest wallet version.
Try downloading blocks (Press Rebuild Block Chain -> Download Blocks). While it downloads, delete the peers.dat in %appdata%\Roaming\GridcoinResearch - you may have a bad peer group.
While the client restarts after the download blocks, you can also try to switch off/on your router if you get a new IP with that, to make sure you are not banned by good nodes because of earlier behavior.
I certainly fell off the consensus chain, how to get back on?
First ensure you are running the latest version
Second try to restart the client
Third try to used downloadblocks feature (Press Rebuild Blockchain -> Download Blocks).
If you tried each of the steps above and are sure you are running the correct version
Backup your wallet.dat file
Close the Gridcoin-Research wallet
In the roaming folder delete all but gridcoinresearch.conf and wallet.dat and the wallet backup folder.
Check your List of Addnodes
Start Gridcoin-Research and wait. If you continue to have trouble visit the technical support forum: https://cryptocointalk.com/forum/2380-technical-support/
I still can't get connections. How can I test, whether the net is down or my node is misconfigured?
Open Windows/Linux command box and enter "telnet node.gridcoin.us 32749". If there is no response, your Firewall might have blocked the port. Otherwise your configuration might be wrong or your node has been temporary banned by the network.
When syncing from zero, the sync gets stuck or pauses for an untimely duration. What to do next?
Syncing may seem to take longer with growing blockchain. If you get stuck use 'reboot client'
Gridcoin Classic
What is Gridcoin Classic
Gridcoin Classic was the first iteration of Gridcoin. Gridcoin classic is no longer used and all coins where converted to Gridcoin Research coins via Proof of Burn. The Burn process ended April 20, 2015. If you missed the Burn deadline, your coins are now in the possession of the Gridcoin Foundation and can no longer be claimed.
Development
Where can I find mirrors of documentation?
Also if you would like to catch up on everything the wiki's are starting to get populated nicely and have a lot of in depth information that is easy to read all in one place:
Primary: http://wiki.gridcoin.us/Main_Page
Mirror 1: http://coinwiki.info/en/Gridcoin
Mirror 2: http://coinwik.org/GridCoin
find old classic FAQ contents at: http://gridcoin.us/guides/Misc/FAQ.htm
Where can I find source?
https://github.com/gridcoin/Gridcoin-master
https://github.com/gridcoin/Gridcoin-Research
What does the version number long tail comprise?
Oh someday we will have all this consolidated :) Help -> About shows the Registered .NET version (used occasionally when we break out a new .net feature) so its still important to know - currently .net release 337. Help -> Debug shows the Gridcoin Release major version and product name followed by a hyphen and the minor version integer. The minor version is the "-130". The minor version allows me to release small features without breaking compatibility.... Rob
How does internal ticket system work?
a. In Tickets, the system will ask you for a password. The password is not shared with anyone or ever transmitted over the network.
Tickets will store the pass in your gridcoinresearch.conf automatically under TicketPassword.
The system will hash your Handle and TicketPassword into a security key. Any item you add to a ticket (a ticket history item Or an attachment) will be hashed with the security hash key and a security guide will
be stored automatically with every item. If you change your password, all items updated by you will turn red. I have no way to fix that at this time.
The GridcoinSecurity.dll has security built in (based on classic technology) that makes it almost impossible to steal a hash from the user table or a security hash (since these are one time use hashes).
All attachments will be marked unsafe unless signed with the correct security hash.
Empty passwords are treated as unsafe.
b. In the ticket history for each ticket, each item is authenticated based on the security hash keys. If an item is Red, the item could not be confirmed to be from the submitted by user id.
If the item is green, it is confirmed to be from the authenticated submitted by user.
c. If you click on an attachment that is unsafe (based on submitted by being unconfirmable), the attachment will not open and you will receive a security hash error.
d. If you click on an attachment by a confirmed sender, the attachment will open.
e. Added "Updated by" on the view page - related to each historical row (used to figure out who forwarded the message for that historical row).
How could I participate in testnet?
Testnet is just like production (regular wallet), except it uses a different port and a different directory; so you copy your gridcoinresearch.conf down a level (%appdir%/gridcoinresearch/testnet) and everything works almost the same, except the diff rules make it slightly easier and of course all the money is fake. The data files are stored one directory down also. You will have to start Gridcoinresearch.exe with -testnet flag, for example due to the creation of a shortcut with this flag.
For Windows, simply add testnet=1 to gridcoinresearch.conf file. The wallet will automatically create the necessary directories. To revert to normal wallet, change it to testnet=0.
Troubleshoot
After reloading blockchain some coins are no longer in my wallet
Try running the client with "-rescan" or run the console command "repairwallet".
My wallet has smaller balance than last time. How to fix?
Try starting Gridcoin with option '-rescan'. Go in debug and do "repairwallet" or "rebuilt block chain" to fix the local amount.
What needs to happen to be added to the chain as a newbie?
1) All the normal prerequisites mentioned: Team Gridcoin, Verified Netsoft RAC > 100 in at least 1 project, correct email in the gridcoinresearch.conf.
2) A GRC balance ~100. Staking at a minimum of 16 hours so the stakeable coins are mature.
3) The wallet has to be fully unlocked (untick "for staking only") until it automatically sends a beacon. You can force the wallet to do so once it recognizes your CPID. Go to the debug console and do execute advertisebeacon force.
4) Once #3 is fulfilled, that node should be in the Neural Network within 12 hours.
Check the balance first and see how long the node has been online. Let the wallet run as often as you can.
How to get out of the loop of cycling appcrashes (Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Assertion failed)?
Delete the content of the folder called 'txleveldb' in %appdata%\Roaming\GridcoinResearch and restart. Once your wallet is up, you have connections and its synching use download blocks feature.
I can't rebuild block chain as it stays at 0 blocks, and clicking download blocks doesn't help!
Try doing this from command prompt as administrator: grcrestarter downloadblocks
Is there a getting started booster for new clients?
New node setups can show connections icon (even at zero connections) but stick at 0% sync progress. Hover over where the green tick would be when synced to confirm.
Turn off BOINC or set CPU to below 100%.
Use download blocks and wallet restart and/or gracefully close wallet (Ctrl Q), copy a populated peers.dat (bigger than 2kB in files size) and paste it as an overwrite to %appdata%/gridcoinresearch (you can type this in Windows search field) and then start wallet (elevated; right click, run as administrator).
When it starts back up it takes a while so be patient and if it looks like it is not responding, just ignore it or click 'wait for the program to respond'. You should eventually see the connections icon showing zero connections and it will flash very briefly on. You can check the debug log and see an entry 'socket closed' when the flash happens. Then use download blocks and after that process you should have syncing right upto 'up to date/100%). The debug log should show something like http://pastebin.com/1uEpDB79
If you don't get syncing after doing download blocks, check the size of your peers.dat. If it still 2kB then it did not overwrite or save and you will need to repeat the process.