What SCI did this year
A round-up of our achievements this year and where we plan to go
2022 has been a big year at the Science Commons Initiative thanks to your donations and support, especially during our Gitcoin grant round where we raised almost $30,000! WOW! This year we got all the infrastructure set up to incorporate as a non-profit, and we fully expect our 501c3 status to be approved any day now. While we wait on the IRS, we have continued to build our online presence and start new projects.
Supporting Gridcoin - We placed an open bounty for the development of a Folding@home adapter which will enable FAH participants to be rewarded for their computational contributions with GRC. We see Gridcoin and other DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) as new technologies that can fundamentally change the future of the scientific process and importantly for our mission: engage the public with it at every step from research to production.
Supporting BOINC - We started a bounty board and posted bounties towards a number of fixes for BOINC. These bounties continue to grow to attract new developer talent to the project. We also launched the BOINC Census to get a better idea of who uses BOINC and why. We know the results of the census will help developers, project admins, and our enthusiastic volunteers better plan to increase engagement and bring in new people to process for BOINC. We have an exciting BOINC promotion campaign planned for January and we are producing generic BOINC promotional materials that can be used by all BOINC projects.
Supporting DeSci - We published our weekly podcast “DeSci Weekly Roundup” and some thinkpieces which resulted in thousands of views. We continue to network with people on the bleeding edge of DeSci research. Through our collaboration with DeSci World, we are continuing to define DeSci and bring new people into the participation and experimentation realm. Importantly, we are a non-profit participant in the DeSci space and can provide reputable, neutral information to people who want to get involved.
Microgrid - We started a working group with members inside and outside of SCI to build a BOINC portal for researchers to submit work for processing. When completed, this project will enable researchers with smaller computational problems to use volunteer computing powered by BOINC to process data for them, and will enable more people to contribute to and connect with their research.
We are building a new way of doing science, one that engages the public and re-builds the bridge of trust between them and the scientific process. Thank you for your support so far, and we look forward to doing even more in the coming year.