To collect research rewards regularly, the amount of GRC in your wallet is actually largely irrelevant. What most newer members don't realise is that your wallet's 'estimated time to earn reward' is based on staking weight only. Research mag plays a large role in your actual payment rate.
I have a magnitude of about 640 today, and have been paid out four times already, despite only having 1000ish GRC...
What we will be seeing is a massive drop in GRC/mag paid out as more members join the community, as is to be expected. If you look at the growth rate of compute contributed to some projects, there is an almost exponential trend over the last weeks.
That is good to hear! I wonder if that is a recent change. It would make lots of sense.
Actually, it has always been like that. If you had BOINC running on one PC, you had enough research magnitude to receive rewards quite often, even if you had only 200-300 GRC in your wallet. However, if Gridcoin network increases 100x in size, magnitude will get dilluted for everybody and things may yet change.
But on the other hand, rewards are getting bigger - it's possible now (even for home users) to earn close to $1000 per month, solely through running BOINC and mining Gridcoins. Check @xaqfields and his experience:
https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@xaqfields/i-m-a-boincer-not-a-miner-how-i-built-two-gridcoin-boinc-powerhouses
Nice. Thanks for the info!