Monetary Awards

September 2006: New Mersenne Prime!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is offering a $100,000 award to the first person or group to discover a ten million digit prime number. If you find such a prime with the software provided, GIMPS will claim the award and distribute the award according to the following rules.

No money will be awarded unless and until GIMPS discovers a 10,000,000 digit prime, it is independently verified, and EFF validates our claim according to their rules. Verification may take several weeks and publication in a suitable academic refereed journal as required by EFF rules will likely take another six months.

For tax reasons, no money will be awarded until GIMPS is incorporated as a non-profit organization. You are responsible for all applicable taxes.

Up to $20,000 total will be awarded to the discoverers of new Mersenne primes found after September 1, 1999 and prior to the discovery of the 10,000,000 digit prime. Each new Mersenne prime will receive a maximum of $5,000. This money will only be awarded if and when a 10,000,000 digit prime is found and EFF pays the award. GIMPS does not have any cash on hand to make an immediate payout.

$5,000 will be awarded to GIMPS, Inc. to cover expenses and/or fund future awards.

$25,000 will be awarded to the charity of George Woltman's choice for organizing GIMPS and providing the software.

The remainder goes to the discoverer of the 10,000,000 digit prime.

If a group or team wishes to make a claim of one of the above awards, they must appoint a single individual to make the claim and disburse the award.

In the unlikely event of two qualifying primes being found at about the same time, then the winner will be the first to either send their result to the PrimeNet server or to email their results to me.

These rules may be changed at any time prior to the discovery of a 10,000,000 digit prime.

The decisions of the GIMPS board of directors in applying the rules above and granting awards is final. Prior to GIMPS' incorporation the decision of George Woltman is final.

Other rules:

If a user is running anonymously, he/she must provide sufficient proof that they discovered the prime. If proof is not satisfactory, it will be treated as an unclaimed prize.

We will try to accomodate any prize winner that wants to designate a charity for all or part of his prize.

After one year, an unclaimed prize will be donated to charity or used to fund future prizes.

If you were to find a 10,000,000 digit prime today the above rules imply that $3,333 would go to Michael Cameron, discoverer of the 39th known Mersenne prime, $3,333 would go to Michael Shafer, discoverer of the 40th known Mersenne prime, $3,333 would go to Josh Findley, discoverer of the 41st known Mersenne prime, $3,333 would go to Dr. Martin Nowak, discoverer of the 42nd known Mersenne prime, $6,667 would go to Curtis Cooper and Steven Boone the discoverers of the 43rd and 44th known Mersenne prime, $5,000 would go to GIMPS, $25,000 would go to charity, and $50,000 would go to you.

Now the bad news. Testing a single 10,000,000 digit number takes two months on a 2 GHz Pentium 4 computer. Your chance of success is roughly 1 in 250,000. Someone may find a 10,000,000 digit prime before GIMPS does.

Last updated: November 27, 2007