Ask HN: Is client computation a viable alternative to ads?

No of course, but those are research projects. I assume you're talking about a business, which implies commercial. Is the govt going to fund your business like they (directly or indirectly) fund these research projects, or will there be paying clients/customers? Who will need to crack encryption keys (or whatever..) often enough to pay you instead of setting up their own cluster? Ads make money because they make the advertisers money. Is searching for gravitational waves, or ET going to make someone money?