The Collatz Frontier Foundation funds mathematical research, awards scholarships in computational mathematics, and operates the prize program that makes the search worth pursuing. Built in North Carolina. Open to the world.
Erdős was right. The conjecture has resisted proof for 87 years, and no theoretical breakthrough is in sight. What has changed is the computational infrastructure available to investigate it — and the potential to build economic incentives that make the search worth pursuing for anyone with a device and an internet connection.
The Collatz Frontier Foundation was built on the premise that mathematics — real mathematics, frontier mathematics, the kind that hasn't been solved yet — deserves the same public engagement infrastructure as space exploration, open-source software, and other great distributed human endeavors.
We built the network. We built the cryptographic prize system. We are building the endowment that funds mathematicians in perpetuity. Every dollar of endowment return goes to scholarship awards. Every new number verified is a permanent record. Every milestone crossed is a press event, a mathematical achievement, and proof that distributed volunteer compute can do things supercomputers cannot do alone.
The Foundation is headquartered in Tyro, North Carolina.
We operate the only distributed compute network designed specifically for number theory verification — with HMAC-SHA256 cryptographic proof of every contribution, a peer-reviewed academic paper formatted for Mathematics of Computation, and nightly results published to a public GitHub archive. The network coordinates hundreds of machines across any hardware that wants to join, from gaming GPUs to mobile phones.
The Foundation's permanent endowment is invested in a broad-market index fund. Every dollar of annual return funds named scholarship and fellowship awards in computational mathematics, number theory, and distributed computing — with priority for North Carolina students and researchers. Named in perpetuity. Compounds forever.
$655,350,000 across 19 named milestones — from Sextillion ($10,000) to Centillion ($327,680,000), doubling at each level. Every prize is verified by a cryptographic claim token generated at the moment of crossing. The token is unforgeable. The prize is real. Any machine can earn it.
We publish everything — source code, nightly frontier status, academic paper, governing documents. If you are going to trust us with your compute, your scholarship application, or your prize claim, you should be able to see exactly how it all works.
The Foundation's complete source code is publicly archived on GitHub under the MIT License. Nightly frontier status and a sanitised coordinator checkpoint — with the coordinator secret redacted — are uploaded publicly every evening at 8pm EST. The peer-review paper describing our methodology is publicly available in the repository.
Annual IRS Form 990 filings are available for public inspection as required by law. Governing documents — Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, and Conflict of Interest Policy — are on file with the NC Secretary of State and available on request.
Every prize claim is cryptographically verified before any payment is made. The HMAC-SHA256 coordinator secret that signs claim tokens never leaves the coordinator machine and is never exposed via any API endpoint. The verification process is documented in full in the academic paper and the API reference.
The Foundation's Board of Directors includes independent members with backgrounds in finance, law, and mathematics. Executive Director compensation is set by the independent board members based on comparable nonprofit data and documented in board minutes.
Unlike scientific results that get revised or retracted, a verified Collatz sequence stays verified forever. Every number past 2⁶⁸ that the network clears is a brick that never needs to be laid again. The mathematical literature accumulates. The lower bound on the smallest possible counterexample tightens permanently.
Prior verification required a purpose-built supercomputer cluster. A phone can now contribute. That is a meaningful shift in who gets to participate in frontier science — and the Foundation exists to make sure the people who participate are credited, rewarded, and supported through the scholarship program.
An endowment does not run out. The $50 million goal, invested in a broad-market index fund, generates approximately $4 million annually in scholarship awards — every year, permanently. The students funded in 2030 and the students funded in 2080 come from the same endowment. It grows over time.
SETI@home had altruism. Folding@home had altruism. Collatz Frontier has altruism and $655 million in cryptographically verified prizes. The prize structure solves the cold-start problem that limits most volunteer compute projects: people contribute because the contribution could be worth something real.
Every machine that connects to the network receives a permanent cryptographic identity. Every milestone crossing earns a signed claim token. Join the search — from any device, right now.