Ask HN: What scientific/technical bounties with social impact would you support?

2 points

10 years ago

For a long while, I've been thinking of crowdfunding bounties for solving socially valuable science and engineering problems.

I've always been inspired by examples of this through history including:

- Longitude Rewards (17th century): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards

- Orteig Prize for Trans-Atlantic Flight (1920s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize

- Fermat's Last Theorem (1800s/1908): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Monetary_prizes

- Ansari X Prize (1996): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize

- DARPA Grand Challenge (2000s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

What specific problems would you want to donate a few dollars to see solved and that will work with prize amounts in the range $1k-$500k? What referees would you recommend to determine if the problem is "solved"?

4 comments