That's correct that the requirement to be on team Gridcoin was removed in 5.0.0. You can now earn Gridcoin from any BOINC team.
The manual rewards claim is still in the works although there's now some more specific plans in mind [1] for it than there were in the past. It's on the roadmap somewhere
[1] See this message from Jim Owens (one of the core developers) about some of what he's thinking https://discord.com/channels/211637812968161280/338020950714.... I would normally quote this instead of making you have to join a Discord, but it's rather lengthy and part of a discussion
Thanks for the update, progress! I'll dig into the last bit more, I don't Discord but I'm sure it's over on reddit or that other place people blog for coin (it's been a minute since last I was in this game). Much appreciated.
The manual rewards claim is still in the works although there's now some more specific plans in mind [1] for it than there were in the past. It's on the roadmap somewhere
[1] See this message from Jim Owens (one of the core developers) about some of what he's thinking https://discord.com/channels/211637812968161280/338020950714.... I would normally quote this instead of making you have to join a Discord, but it's rather lengthy and part of a discussion