How the Kitchen Conquered 2021
When you’re in the Salad Kitchen, time tastes a little bit different. Treasured gaming hours—those moments spent mercking kids on hot mics, puzzling our way out of dungeons, or exploring the unknown vistas of the map—are more readily savored just knowing our PCs won’t get lonesome when we return to reality. There they sit, quietly purring, dreaming up new rewards for their loving owners. The little scamps. This time last year, who would have thought that hundreds of thousands of people might soon be thinking the same thing? Let’s push pause to appreciate everything the indomitable Salad Chefs achieved in 2021. Community Growth These past twelve months have certainly crowded the Kitchen. Our computesharing network is serving 950% more people than it did in all of 2020—and the newcomers came hungry! Together the Salad Chefs claimed a whopping $3.49M in value and redeemed over 3.2 million digital rewards* from the Salad Storefront in 2021. In those 365 short days, our community also managed to earn 3.18 billion experience points. That means each and every Salad user joined a colossal effort to share 6,054 years of computer processing. We’re now the world’s most distributed supercomputer, and we’re still in our salad days. But any chef worth their salt knows: the real magic of the Kitchen lies in its ability to dish it out. *Including rewards issued as Bonuses during Salad Seasons and Community Challenges. Charitable Contributions Salad users collectively made over 60,000 individual charitable donations in 2021. In addition to their contributions to the many charities we support via the Salad Storefront, our Chefs doled out seriously generous portions in the fall and winter. During the ScreamTrees Community Challenge, Salad Chefs joined us in raising a Halloween helping of $3,100 for #TeamTrees—because there’s nothing spookier than a world without trees! Then, a month later, they tripled down in our Growvember 2021 charity campaign. In just thirty days our community rallied to raise $9,630 for environmental charities around the world, including another $5,091 for the reforestation efforts of #TeamTrees. The Chefs do truly amazing work—but they still make plenty of time for play. Season 2 In Review When Salad Season 2 began, we explained how thousands of user responses guided us in cooking up this season’s fresh new features and remixed challenges. As we bid adieu to our second Salad Season, we’d like to thank our loyal community once more for helping us perfect the recipe. Over 175,000 unique Salad Chefs took a spin on the latest levels, earning a total of 812,000 Bonuses, games, and rewards from our seasonal bill of fare. Though only 413 legendary individuals completed all 20 XP Levels in Salad Season 1, we’re pleased to announce 1,489 Chefs are joining that stouthearted cohort in Season 2. Congratulations to all those who reached Level 20! If you have already claimed your Level 20 Bonus, look out for your exclusive rewards to arrive in the next few weeks. Season 2 Giveaway We hope you saved room for dessert. One lucky Season 2 Giveaway winner has won a state-of-the-art Nanoleaf Shapes RGB light panel kit—a coveted, glow up grand prize that comes drizzled with Salad Balance. We’ve also issued $100 Salad Balance Bonuses to one hundred runners-up. All told, that’s ten thousand smackers to satisfy even the most fiendish loot lust. Thanks to everyone who participated! If you made off with a prize, don’t forget to share your latest sweet redeems in the #show-off-your-earnings channel of the SaladChefs Discord. 2021 Events This year, Salad introduced some long-awaited wishlist features, overcame obstacles, and partied down with the people of the Kitchen. Here’s just a sampling of some of the biggest events and developments of 2021. Community Challenges This year we welcomed Community Challenges, a series of biweekly, limited-time missions that offer extra rewards for everyone in the Kitchen. Salad Chefs joined us in donating to important causes, helped us test new features, and even amplified our signal on social media. For every Challenge conquered, our users earned supplemental earnings boosts, exclusive profile avatars, and other exclusive perks. Soon after, our click-and-claim Bonus system made it easier than ever to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Media Milestones In April the official SaladChefs community server earned its verification on Discord. What finally tipped the scales? Perhaps it was the combined might of more than 43,000 individuals (and counting!). Later on the SaladChefs Twitter followed suit, going offish with a snazzy blue check. Those badges might seem meaningless to a headshotter dripping with Call of Duty emblems, but they’re important battle standards in the fight for decentralization. As more and more legacy platforms begin to acknowledge the strength of our Kitchen, we’ll be able to show millions more people how to profit from their PC. Salad is too legit to quit, and now the world knows it. Salad Season 1 Salad users earn XP for every minute of work shared to our network—but for a while, it didn’t do much else. Salad Season 1 turned that XP from an inert cheevo into a full-blown leveling system! For the first time ever, Salad Chefs earned games, subscriptions, and Salad Balance boosts just for running Salad, no matter what hardware they brought to the party. Mapping the Metaverse Over the summer, our community journeyed into the Metaverse. Their mission? Save the six Chefs we had lost on the other side. As part of the #MappingtheMetaverse Summer Series event, everyone who shared our featured articles earned a rare profile avatar featuring one of those intrepid explorers. Summer Series The original #MtM articles harkened to a more aspirational time, when we saw major gaming companies as compatriots on a quest to craft the next era of video games—and the Internet itself. Reminisce with us in the six O.G. entries: Winter Series Now things have taken a darker turn. The ongoing Mapping the Metaverse Winter Series covers the cultural and technological impact that centralization may have on the burgeoning metaverse if left unchecked. Catch up with our call to arms below: 15K Fall Series In October, local gamers joined us at Esposure Studios in Dallas, TX for the championship round of the 15K Fall Series NBA2K tournament. Pre-qualifying teams sliced into Salad’s $15,000 prize purse, leading to the ultimate showdown between No Tolerance and Farewell Gaming on #TheMainCourt. Congratulations to No Tolerance on their victory—and bravo to Farewell Gaming for making it a real nail-biter!