I just turned off the funding experiment.
We won't be implementing this as a funding model, which is probably not a surprise at this point. However, IMO the experiment was worthwhile, and at the very least, it helped us to learn a thing or two about what we want, and what we don't.
We haven't crunched the numbers to determine the movement of bits across the userbase, but of 700,000 bits, 228310 of them ended up in the Hubski account.
As a user that did not start with any bits, I donated a total of 3325, and had 46 left to give. I was on vacation for much of this time, however.
Personally speaking, I was surprised how quickly I forgot about the experiment, and how as a result it had almost no influence upon my behavior. Although that might be considered a good thing if one is concerned about the influence of money upon site activity, a funding model that no one remembers is probably not going to be a successful one.
What we have agreed upon, is that a basic donation model is something that most people want to see, and that it should exist, even if other mechanisms are implemented. We are working on setting that up at the moment.
That said, feel free to share your thoughts regarding the experiment. Did it play out as you expected? Did it influence your behavior?