[jltsiren]

Payments for making past discoveries public create terrible incentives. They encourage you to keep your discoveries secret until someone is willing to pay enough for them. If your discovery is not particularly valuable on its own, but someone else could make a breakthrough building on it, that breakthrough won't happen, because the other person does not know about your result.

Patents, while also terrible, are a better model. They at least require you to disclose the invention first, and then it's up to you if you can take advantage of your temporary monopoly. While practical impact may be lagging due to reduced commercial interested during the monopoly, the result is at least public, and other people can build on it.