Virality Bonus
A critical part of the hacker spirit is actually shipping your project.
Now there’s a bonus for how well you ship it to the wider world!
Get up to 5,000 bonus stardust 
per viral project.
Ship your project, share it with the world, and if it hits a threshold on any platform, submit a claim from your project page using the “Submit viral mention” link.
A reviewer verifies it, and you earn your bonus.
⭐ Good
Your project got noticed. +50 stardust flat bonus, plus the Good Viral Project achievement and exclusive shop items.
🌟 Great
Your project blew up.
Payout ceiling goes from 20 to 30 stardust per hour.
Plus the Great Viral Project achievement and everything from Good.
Thresholds
Hit one on one platform to qualify.
| Platform | ⭐ Good | 🌟 Great |
|---|---|---|
| 25 upvotes | 500 upvotes | |
| Hacker News | 10 points | 100 points (front page) |
| GitHub | 25 stars | 100 stars |
| YouTube | 250 views | 50,000 views |
| TikTok / Reels / Shorts | 5,000 views | 100,000 views |
| Twitter / X | 50 likes | 1,500 likes |
| Bluesky / Threads | 50 likes | 1,500 likes |
| 200 likes | 100,000 views OR 10,000 likes | |
| App store (Google Play/Apple) | 100 downloads | 10,000 downloads |
| Package manager (npm, PyPI, etc.) | 1,000 downloads | 50,000 downloads |
| Modrinth / CurseForge | 2,500 downloads | 100,000 downloads |
| Blog / news article | Any third-party feature | At our discretion |
Platform not listed? Post in #stardance-help and we’ll figure it out.
To qualify, your project must be approved through normal Stardance review,
credit Hack Club in the README, and be your original work.
Project updates (something created before Stardance) or contributions to other
projects don’t count for simplicity.
Traction on Hack Club’s own platforms (Slack, hackclub.com,
stardance.hackclub.com) doesn’t count, and neither do bot reposts, SEO mirrors,
or paid engagement.
You can submit multiple mentions for the same project and upgrade from Good to
Great.
Already got paid out? Submit anyway, we’ll re-run the payout and credit the
difference.