More info about Charity engine

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Fabrizio ID: 6567487 Posts: 5
20 Nov 2019 04:06 PM

Hello,

I started to use charity engine and then I started to question my decision.  I was already running boinc getting credits for the glory and then I decided to switch to charity engine to get also a reward.  But then the question is, what are the chances to get a prize?  How many users are currently running charity engine?  I see you decreased the prize amount and the prize frequency, why? Is it possible to see your financial report?

I was happy to run boinc for the "glory" and I'd rather go back to "the glory" if the chances to with are 1/10^6.
These points need to be clarified from your side.

Tristan Olive ID: 22 Posts: 383
25 Nov 2019 05:34 PM

I can't answer all of your questions, but can offer that your chances of winning are based on how much you contribute versus the network as a whole. If the network generates 5,000,000 points and 1,000 of them are yours, then you have a 1:5000 chance of winning.

That being said, the total output of the network varies, so it can't be predicted what your chances are for any given drawing. I'd suggest they're probably a lot better than one in a million based on your current daily average, but can also say statistically that the vast majority of users are not going to win a drawing, even if they try for years.

So what else can I say? Personally, I would run for the prize. :)

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Fabrizio ID: 6567487 Posts: 5
26 Nov 2019 12:59 PM

Respectfully, I would like to express some doubts...
Maybe it's worth to try to play the lottery but there are other problems.  I asked for the financial report because, even though you are running many caritative projects (this is praiseworthy), your project gets paid. Charity engine gets paid by its customers and we, the users, are offering our machine to make you get an income. You are getting the best deal.  You get a grid of machines, that you use for free, don't maintain and don't reward very much, and you get paid for this.

This is a fundamental difference with other BOINC projects.  The others don't get an economical income.  In a sense, (without using charity engine) we are preventing scientific groups to spend money whereas, with you, we are helping a private institution to get money. This is a transparency problem and needs to be addressed. How much are you gaining?  How much of it is reserved for the lottery?

Mark McA ID: 179 Posts: 224
27 Nov 2019 06:20 PM

Hi Fabrizio,

All this info is public! To correct a crucial misconception though; Charity Engine is NOT a BOINC project. We are a regular UK-based company and CE is our grid that uses BOINC along with other technologies such as VirtualBox, Docker and blockchain to create a useable commercial platform.  Like any other company, we must submit annual accounts that anyone can see. 

Your odds in the prize draws are actually extremely good, as the vast majority of participants don't bother to register their email (although this may change when we can give away larger prizes). You can see exactly how many people enter each time on the Lists of Entries, which are published for every prize draw.

Finally, we have always contributed huge amounts of computing (for free) to science projects such as Rosetta, Einstein, ClimatePrediction, Africa, Sum of Cubes, etc. We are a massive net gain for them all, and we always will be.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Mark

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Fabrizio ID: 6567487 Posts: 5
28 Nov 2019 09:45 AM

Thank you, Mark, for all the clarifications.  By googling "annual report" and CE I found the numbers.  22M, that's a very impressive number, congratulations.

AR
Adam Radocz ID: 22746 Posts: 74
28 Nov 2019 12:12 PM

On the About page you sais:

"The grid is rented like a giant supercomputer, then all the profits shared 33-33-33 between ourselves, the charities and the lucky prize winners."

The usual prize money is $1000. How come you're profit margin is soo low?

The other thing I noticed. Lately, there are more and more CE projects are running, but the prize hasn't changed at least 2-3 years.

Mark McA ID: 179 Posts: 224
28 Nov 2019 12:25 PM

The 22M figure is not us, might be the other CE, a software company in the USA. We have only recently stopped being in the red each month!

Doesn't matter how big the grid is, what matters is how much runtime on it we can sell. We are getting there though, finally... :)

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Fabrizio ID: 6567487 Posts: 5
28 Nov 2019 12:32 PM

Then you need to tell to this site, because they point you as CEO:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-charity-engine/owler/owler_summary