Interesting comment! I really appreciate it and I am tempted to follow you in a debate. Please allow me for bringing my two cents. :)
Maybe in some future (and I am really looking forward to this future), research will be fundable with Steem or cryptos in general. However, we are not there yet. For instance, a PhD student costs about 40.000 EUR per year, and one needs to pay him during three years. So, in short, we can't really fund personal costs. However, travel costs for a small group (a few thousands per year) is probably achievable.
Here, with my small project, the scale is even more different. With a few hundreds of dollars in upvotes, we indeed can make a difference already today. We indeed don't need dozens of thousands of dollars. With this amount, we can open the doors of the world of scientific research to anyone who has time and who wants to help.
And this is what I find amazing. I tried to give this option to Steemians, and it fully works!
RE: Running state-of-the-art particle physics research on Steem - a status report after 3 months