Unlike SETI@Home with crypto you work on known unencrypted data block with recent transactions inside. Everybody at network work on the same piece of data. You just need to add some random bytes to that block so that hash of that block along with your bytes as an integer number will be less than current limit. If you are the first to find solution, you get reward in form of transactions fees in block plus system award. Same with pools, just reward divided among participants. All pools I know use only opensource miners (pretty simple ones, easy to look into and check what they really do), and pool server just can't do anything except tell you what ranges of additional bytes already in work by other participants.

In SETI@Home you get some unknown data from server and try to find regularities or whatever. You can't look into data and see what's inside. Everybody receive different chunks of data, and you have no way to determine if it is a radio noise from radiotelescope or some encrypted data provided by three-letter agency to crack (finding regularities in encrypted data is one of the steps of cracking encryption).

Cryptopools and SETI@Home or other similar networks are completely different things. The only similarity is they are both distributed computing. In former you have to create some data to get necessary result, so data flows from you to network, in latter somebody else give you data to crack, so data flows from somebody to you. Direction of dataflow is opposite crypto and SETI@Home.

However, you could run your own SETI@Home with your friends getting data from your own radiotelescope, not some shit from unknown source. It is not difficult to build a radiotelescope today. And it's size and sensitivity, I think, does not matter really. If somebody out there will have to say something to us, he will do it loud enough for even simple garage built radiotelescope.

Unlike SETI@Home with crypto you work on known unencrypted data block with recent transactions inside. Everybody at network work on the same piece of data. You just need to add some random bytes to that block so that hash of that block along with your bytes will be less than current limit. If you are the first to find solution, you get reward in form of transactions fees in block plus system award. Same with pools, just reward divided among participants. All pools I know use only opensource miners (pretty simple ones, easy to look into and check what they really do), and pool server just can't do anything except tell you what ranges of additional bytes already in work by other participants.

In SETI@Home you get some unknown data from server and try to find regularities or whatever. You can't look into data and see what's inside. Everybody receive different chunks of data, and you have no way to determine if it is a radio noise from radiotelescope or some encrypted data provided by three-letter agency to crack (finding regularities in encrypted data is one of the steps of cracking encryption).

Cryptopools and SETI@Home or other similar networks are completely different things. The only similarity is they are both distributed computing. In former you have to create some data to get necessary result, so data flows from you to network, in latter somebody else give you data to crack, so data flows from somebody to you. Direction of dataflow is opposite crypto and SETI@Home.

However, you could run your own SETI@Home with your friends getting data from your own radiotelescope, not some shit from unknown source. It is not difficult to build a radiotelescope today. And it's size and sensitivity, I think, does not matter really. If somebody out there will have to say something to us, he will do it loud enough for even simple garage built radiotelescope.