I've been running BOINC / World Community Grid on my M1 Mac Mini now for a few months. Seems to be doing about as well as my previous Intel i5 iMac. Although I too would like to see optimisation for the M1 chip. Because I have it on 24/7 I've limited BOINC to not more than 40% of the processor resource. iStatistica Pro reveals that all 8 processor cores are in use - just utilised at around 40% (on a bar graphical representation). This keeps all temp sensors in my Mini at 51 degrees centigrade or less with the SOC apparently running at 30 degrees centigrade. The fan does not seem to go over its idle of around 1700 rpm.

Congrats, Bearcat, on the M1! And good call going with the 16GB ram.

Answering your specific question, if you download the 7.16.14 version of the BOINC app from https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php , that one can run natively on Apple Silicon. However, the actual WUs from the various WCG projects will be running through an emulation layer as the research community has not rewritten the underlying science applications for native Apple Silicon support as far as I know.

As I have posted multiple times previously in this thread with supporting data, I have been super pleased with the performance and efficiency of the M1 machine I've been crunching on. My personal suggestion would be to give your system a try because it will likely be your most efficient cruncher by far all while drawing less than 30 Watts under full load.

For me, I would say the M1 Mac mini does get a little warm to the touch while crunching but not hot at all and you'd be able to feel a small trickle of warm air out the back fan. With it drawing only ~23-28 Watts under full load, it generally runs pretty cool compared to all of my other systems.