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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Eligibility is a bit unclear; is it in transition? On one page [1] it says "We ask that a researcher to be tied to a university or research institution in order to help us ensure the safety of a project's funds." But on another one [2] it says, "we love to see proposals from people outside of research institutions".

[1] https://www.microryza.com/institutions

[2] https://www.microryza.com/faq

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Thanks for pointing that out, we'll be sure to clarify that on the site!

For now we are currently able to host research that is based at universities, while private or independent research requires more effort to evaluate and vet the proposal on our end. We are working hard to launch more independent projects soon!

That's a reasonable place to start. I do think crowdsourced money could often go further outside academia, especially in areas with less required lab equipment, but requires more vetting on your part.

One idea could be to branch out of academia starting only with "less risky" areas, e.g. fund independent mathematics research but require medical research to be through existing institutions.

Having to depend on Universities or any other institution for security's sake seems to be a little bit restrictive. Individual or non-institutionalized research should be acceptable. Responsibility with project backers shouldn't depend on that, don't you think? There should be a legal contract anyway.

However, I don't think that this will be the most common profile looking for funding.

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