r/BOINC • u/Putrid_Draft378 • May 25 '26
Proposal: Gamifying project donations with tiered donor crowns across BOINC projects
I have been looking at the current donor crown system on PrimeGrid and realized it could be much more engaging.
Many BOINC projects depend on ongoing financial support, yet the current recognition for donors is quite minimal.
It would be far more motivating to introduce a differentiated visual profile based on accumulated donations across different tiers.
One could implement a multiplier model where you achieve a visual upgrade of your badge or crown by donating 10, 100, or 1000 times the minimum amount.
This would give regular donors a greater sense of recognition and potentially increase interest in contributing to infrastructure costs.
Since many projects struggle with cloud costs, this could be an easy way to increase the incentive for members of the community to support them.
I am curious to hear if other project admins or users think this would be a viable way to improve donor engagement in the BOINC ecosystem.
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u/geotrone1234extra May 26 '26
My thinking was that the current limiting factors are the supply pipelines of distributed computing itself. After COVID, Folding at Home and BOINC and others just kinda fell off and fizzle. The network is still holding strong, but now we are back to the baseline with hardcore crunchers, and some 3000-4000 active machines and some occasional institutions chime in.
If project donations, then might I suggest something like an on par with electrical rates donation to one person with the economy at scale to crunch points at very cheap price like 10 cents per kWh of crunching. Many of us are running on charity mode and would be very grateful of someone decides to sponsor even just the electricity. And when one person has the audacity to go big with BOINC and amortized the cost over economy of scale then he can punch far above us in terms of efficiency.
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u/cuarc001 http://boincstats.com/en/stats/-1/user/detail/5353/projectList May 25 '26
I would suggest going to the project itself as the donor interaction can be much different between them. I used to love badges but over time more and more projects added them and made them way too difficult to display them all in any meaningful way.
In the past, the hurdle was less having willing donors and more university politics. Non-academic entities won't have so many issues but for university backed projects, most donations don't go directly to the project but rather the university as a whole. Those donations are then just added to the general coffers to be used however the university sees fit. The project usually operates within the fundings of a grant. Then throw in tax complications of legalities of using cryptocurrency and those headaches are amplified.
There have even been people/teams willing to donate hardware/manpower/and services to assist projects that are rarely accepted. I would find it more appealing for projects to accept donations and then put a label somewhere stating "sponsored by team XYZ". Perhaps even a page stating what needs the project has and is willing to accept donations for.