Fall 2026 has been a busy season for new BOINC projects. Here are three worth a look.
Eternity II
In 2007 the Eternity II puzzle went on sale with a $2 million prize for the first complete solution. The deadline passed at the end of 2010 and nobody ever claimed it. The puzzle is 256 square pieces on a 16x16 board, and a perfect solution has to match all 480 internal edges. The best known boards come up a dozen or more edges short.
The new Eternity II BOINC project, run by Benjamin with server help from rebirther of SRBase, puts volunteer CPUs to work searching for better boards. Tasks run about an hour, work on Windows and Linux, and every promising board is verified before it is credited. Account creation requires the invitation code eternityathome.
Project URL: https://boinc.eternityathome.org/eternity/
Beacon@Home
Beacon@Home is a new non-CPU-intensive project built to give orphaned Radioactive@Home detectors a home again. Its radiation app collects readings from Geiger counters and builds a community radiation map that shows coarse areas, not home locations. Supported detectors so far are the GQ GMC-300 series, the GMC-320, and both Radioactive@Home homebrew detectors. The project also revives GoofyxGrid's infinite monkey theorem apps. Because it's NCI, it runs alongside your regular projects without taking a core away from them.
Project URL: https://beaconathome.org
The Puzzle
In January 2015 someone sent bitcoin to a series of addresses whose private keys were deliberately picked from small ranges: puzzle #1 has a 1-bit key, #2 a 2-bit key, and so on up to #160. Each step roughly doubles the work, which makes the series a public yardstick for how far brute force can reach. Everything through #70 has been solved. Puzzle #71 is the lowest one still open, with its key somewhere between 270 and 271 (about 1.2 sextillion possibilities) and roughly 7.1 BTC sitting on the address.
There's no shortcut, only checking keys one at a time. The Puzzle splits the range into blocks of 234 keys (about 17 billion each) and hands them out through BOINC. Results come back encrypted and are verified before credit is granted. Credit scales with keys checked.
If the key is found, 20% is set aside for taxes, 40% goes to the operator, and 40% is split among every volunteer who returned valid work, in proportion to their credit. It doesn't matter whose computer finds it. Read the full prize rules on the project site before you dive in; there are details on payout thresholds, claim deadlines, and what happens if someone outside the project solves it first. Nobody can say how long the search will take or whether the project gets there first.
The app is CPU only for now on 64-bit Windows and Linux, and one task uses every core BOINC allows. Set "Max # of CPUs for this project" if you want to limit it. An NVIDIA GPU app is in testing.
Project URL: https://thepuzzle.cloud
All three are tracked here on Free-DC. Attach a few hosts, and good luck!
— Skillz