The most practical way to look at it is as a clone of WCG.

It is a blockchain ledger, beginning as a centralized project, which distributes processing power to projects which might not otherwise have enough work or participants.

The centralized version determines the distribution of this work based on a running poll in the Gridcoin client.

What's stopping me running many user accounts to earn more than my fair share? I have no doubt that this will be abused by many.

See @applepiie's comment

Were there any alternative names that came to mind before 'grcstarter' ?

This is only a placeholder name.