Elegoo announced a US$1M fund to reward creators on their Nexprint 3D model site.
Nexprint was announced only days ago, and it’s Elegoo’s equivalent of Printables, Thingiverse, MakerWorld, and MakerOnline. While it may have fewer 3D models than some of the other sites, it does include print profiles specifically for Elegoo equipment.
Now Elegoo has launched a new “Creator Fund” to reward interesting submissions to the site.
Their goal is to promote activity on the site by rewarding what they describe as “exceptional content” provided by “original creators”. It seems they are aware of the rampant model copying that takes place on some other sites.
How does the fund work? It’s quite a bit different from the schemes used on other sites. In Nexprint, they allocate a monthly amount and then give out US$5 rewards as they identify quality content. They describe the process:
”Each month, we will invest in a reward pool to grant $ 5 to each approved submission. There is no exclusivity capped on the design. Exceptional designs will be rewarded with an extra $ 5 each and featured for priority exposure in Nexprint. There is no restriction on the number of monthly submissions by an individual creator.”
They also have something called an “alliance award” that is a bonus for persuading other creators to join the platform, also US$5 each. However, there’s a monthly limit of US$100, or 20 successful invitations.
The awards are granted on a first-come basis, so there is a possibility that each month they may run out of funding. The funding resets each month, with US$1M allocated for the entire year. If distributed evenly, it would mean each month there would be US$83,333 allocated, equivalent to 16,666 awards, or about 555 per day.
That’s a lot of awards. Someone at Elegoo is going to be quite busy evaluating 3D models, I think.
I like this approach. It’s quite simple and easy to understand, as opposed to the increasingly complex points systems that appear on other 3D model repositories.
Will it work? That remains to be seen, but this is a pretty big commitment from Elegoo in terms of both cash and effort, so they are quite serious.
