I would definitely say so. If you look at the altcoin market, everything (bar a few) has been falling as investors move onto the BTC train.
You only have to send a beacon if you want to solo mine. So, if you are happy pool mining, you don't have to do it at all. The beacon registers your CPID with the Gridcoin network, which allows the network to reward you for the research you have done. When pool mining, you are mining for the pool CPID, so the pool has to send the beacon (which it did when it was first formed).
In my opinion, the best faucet is here. That is also the home of our best block explorer.
Yeah, that is what I figured. I do want to solo mine eventually. I'll check that faucet out. Can you explain to us what magnitude is? How is it earned? What effect does it have on your earning?
Sure. When you run any BOINC project on your machine, you earn credits. The rate at which your earn credits is called Recent Average Credits (RAC) by BOINC. Your magnitude on each project is a function of your RAC, relative to everyone one else on Team Gridcoin's in that project.
RAC builds up over time, and takes about 4 to 5 weeks to peak. This means your mag will also peak after 4-5 weeks.
Your magnitude is the translated to how many Gridcoin you mint per day through a number called the mag_unit. Currently this is 0.175, meaning that for every unit of magnitude, you will mint 0.175 GRC per day.
I just checked out that faucet, and it requires my cpid. I don't have a cpid because I'm only mining in a pool. So I guess I'm out of luck on that one too. It's ok, I'll just wait for my pool payout. Ideally you would say solo mining is the way to go long term though?
My bad on that one - I had forgotten that @sc-steemit (who operates that faucet) recently changed the rules to only accept CPIDs and not wallet addresses to prevent abuse.
I definitely think solo mining is the way to go long term - it is how the system was designed to be used. You will be able to participate in community votes, stake interest on your whole balance as soon as you mine it, and improve the security of the network. You will also not be paying any pool fees.