I'm not well read up on the exact mechanics of FOLDING@HOME, but if it's based on the Bitcoin POW blockchain I would say that it's a wastefull and much less innovative chain.
As Gridcoin uses POS to consume less power for chain maintenance and more for actual real research it also supports a wast number of different projects.
It's good with alternatives and some healthy competition, but in my opinion, Gridcoin is superior to all other research coins.
Foldingcoin is based on “Proof of Fold” concept using Folding@home to verify contributed computational power instead of SHA256. This means the calculations are beneficical to science as well. I can't comment on the waste in maintaining the actual blockchain but I would think this to be of lower impact.
The actual Foldingcoin whitepaper can be found here.
Thank you for the swift reply 😎