Recently, more and more contestants enter the leetcode contest. I remember when I first joined the leetcode contest, there is less than 2000 contestants, and now there is over 30000, 15 times than before.
However, the number of participants awarded for leetcode coins is still 200.
It is reasonable only award top 200 when there is only a few thousands contestants, but now it is not reasonable. Reaching top 200 is very difficult and nearly impossible for most of the contestants.
So here is my suggestion, upvote me if you are agree (and downvote if you are disagree or think I am insane)
Award top 5-10% of all participants (instead of rank 100-200) for 50 coins.
Award top 2-5% (instead of rank 50-100) for 100 coins.
Award top 1-2% (instead of rank 4-50) for 200 coins
Award top 0.5-1% for 300 coins.
Award rank 4 - top 0.5% for 500 coins.
And top 3 can remain unchanged. 5000, 2500, 1000.
.......
Actually leetcode coins will not cost much, every contest, If there is 30K contestants, total coins awarded will be 3K * 50 + 1.5K * (100-50) + 0.6K * (200-100) + 0.3K * (300-200) + 150 * (500-300) + 5000 + 2500 + 1000, which is almost 354K leetcode coins. Let's see what leetcode 354K leetcode coins can do.
For 1-month premium, 350K coins can award 70 months. However you need 5000 coins to redeem, even if you ranked top 0.5% every time, and one month there is only 6 contests. You get 3000 coins and you still need to do the monthly challege every day to get 600 coins. There is still not enough to cover the monthly premium cost.
For a T-shirt, there is 6000 coins. Suppose the T-shirt cost is 700. However, most of the coins will not go into the T-shirt, they just lie in the account as a virtual number. The actual cost is no more than $100. Holding a contest itself will cost far more than that.
I am not proposing for myself, actually you can see my profile, my rating is 2700+ and I rank top 200 for most of the contests, even in the current rule, I can mostly earn leetcode coins. I just want to help all the contestants who is struggling but still very far away from earning leetcode coins.
My other proposals just for advice:
Allow person to follow one leetcode user.
Show your friend rankings during the contest.
Add a badge higher than Guardian. Like top 1% in the rating above 1600.
User: hxu10