Since the new GPU offerings from nvidia have secure multi-tenancy, I think you're going to start seeing things like that. Especially when you look at what's happening with compute being more universally adapted via Vulkan. I haven't seen the framework for such a thing yet but you make a good point. I think I've got half a model in my head that could be retooled for something like that in a flexible fashion. It could work both ways too. Either you are giving away GPU cycles for research or you are paying for people to be paid for their cycles, or you post up your own job to be computed for pay or donation of cycles or money. As an example, wanna render predictions for erosion on a property you wanna buy? Put up the job and people that wanna contribute can and you get the result. Any user could set their hierarchy of things they contribute to. Like patreon sort of. So bucks or compute cycles can be chunked out to them by order of need and weighted priority.

Humm. Someone beat me to this idea so I don't have to do it.