Dear All, In order to provide data points for the discussion:
As far as I know, it's only possible to earn credits by - hosting probes itself - sponsoring new probes - getting a LIR
These are indeed the main "wealth generation" processes in RIPE Atlas. There is also a fourth one: asking the RIPE Atlas team (community builders or developers) for extra credits to do a particular (costly) measurement, or research or such [1]. We have no capacity issues in the system yet so this is not really a problem, and it helps virtually everyone. There's also the possibility to transfer credits between accounts, but that does not generate wealth, it just redistributes it.
But isn't load management *precisely* why the credit system exists?
Indeed that's the reason why the credit system exists: to ensure fairness in terms of resources provided vs. resources used. Hope this helps the discussion, Robert [1] This includes our own researches -- though admittedly we don't have a hard time convincing ourselves to give more credits to ourselves :-)