I have been involved in this project for over 12 years. For the last few weeks I have been wondering what the point of this is. OK, I have given out credits to students for research, though sometimes they do not even say thank you.
Not answering directly your question, but just a comment w.r.t. "what is the point". If you’re referring to what is the purpose of the platform, I can provide some feedback as someone who has experience in both industry and academia. Ripe Atlas is _fundamental_ to research. No other platform offers the same level of coverage in terms of diversity and number of vantage points, as well as real-time results. Plus, it's free of charge. Without it, many advancements in DNS, NTP, and routing wouldn't have been possible. There are numerous academic papers and several RFCs that have used RIPE Atlas, achievements that wouldn’t have been possible without it. /giovane