Ok, so everyone knows that newer people will be playing around with Cryptocurrency because of the headlines from the last year or more. I will admit I'm one of the newbies and I have tried to understand as much as I can but I'm admittedly lost.
I went with gridcoin because I figured if nothing else my wasted electricity was helping a cause. I used to do folding@home back in 2003 or 2004 I think or something like...anyhow, I thought gridcoin sounded like a way to do something similar and make a little on the side. I've been letting my computer (and my android phone) use boinc for 28 days now and it's time for me to just look for some help.
So, now the confusion:
I work in grcpool because I've read everywhere that I can't go solo until I'm in the thousands of coins. I've made 10 coins and have another 20 sitting in the pool waiting to be paid. So far so good. I also understand that my wallet should say INVESTOR which is currently is. The first confusion though is around the whole proof of stake and staking. I just don't get it. Is it better to pull coins out of grcpool as quickly as possible in order to increase my chance to "stake"? Or just leave them there until I have enough to get a good size pay out which would enable me to research solo?
Why the heck do I seem to continuously get on a fork? I've increased my max connections to 16 in order to have a chance to always get the proper chain. Am I doing something wrong leaving my wallet online and staking right now?
By unlocking my wallet for staking, am I even doing anything for the network or is that just a waste of time?
grcpool has had a network fork issue for days now. Is my BOINC work doing any good on the gridcoin network or will I lose everything I've done in that pool?
I'm sorry if these are basic or even uninformed questions. I've tried to read so many things and honestly I only understand enough to know I don't know what the hell I'm doing.