Round 1 Winners!
Proof of Usefulness Report

The Computational Democracy Project

Analysis completed on 3/18/2026

+295
Proof of Usefulness Score
Gaining Momentum

The Computational Democracy Project (Polis) is a highly respected, innovative open-source tool for digital consensus-building with strong real-world utility and press validation. However, this specific submission contains dubious, exaggerated claims ('most people have used my product', irregular marketcap metrics) and lacks verifiable, objective traction data from the submitter, heavily penalizing its traction and response quality scores.

Ready to Compete for $150k+ in Prizes?

Move this data into a HackerNoon blog draft to become eligible for your share of $150k+ in cash and software prizes

View All Reports

Score Breakdown

Real World Utility+150.0
Audience Reach Impact+20.0
Technical Innovation+105.0
Evidence Of Traction+12.5
Market Timing Relevance+70.0
Functional Completeness+2.5
Subtotal+360
Usefulness Multiplierx0.82
Final Score+295

Project Details

Description
The Computational Democracy Project designs, engineers and maintains Polis, an open source, real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning. Polis and implementations of the technology have been widely covered in the popular press — including articles from The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist and MIT Tech Review — as well as in documentaries from the BBC and books from Penguin. CompDem hosts https://pol.is/home, and provides support and services to communities of journalists, academic researchers and public servants innovating future democratic systems. CompDem also maintains an extensive and growing knowledge base for those implementing Polis, as well as an open data repository and open source Jupyter notebooks for academics and data scientists participating in developing methods.

Algorithm Insights

Market Position
Growing utility with room for optimization
User Engagement
Documented reach suggests active user community
Technical Stack
Modern tech stack aligned with sponsor technologies

Recommendations to Increase Usefulness Score

Document User Growth

Provide specific metrics on user acquisition and retention rates

Showcase Revenue Model

Detail sustainable monetization strategy and current revenue streams

Expand Evidence Base

Include testimonials, case studies, and third-party validation

Technical Roadmap

Share development milestones and feature completion timeline