If you mostly use chat-style AI tools and recently started following new tools, this is the kind of signal that is easy to read wrong. You see a project explode, assume the creator is already getting paid, and move on. That is how people burn time, budget, and attention on the wrong lesson.
The case here is sponsors / asgeirtj. The contrarian point is simple: a viral project does not automatically monetize. The payment page is the first real test. To judge whether an update is worth your time, do not count features first. Ask whether it changes your next decision.
Why say that? On the public project page for system_prompts_leaks, asgeirtj shows about 48.4k stars and 7.9k forks, and the page notes it was mentioned by The Washington Post [S003]. On the public GitHub Sponsors page, the visible pitch is just "Support asgeirtj's open source work," and the page shows 1 sponsor [S001]. Attention is clearly there. Paid support is not.
That gap matters because a star is closer to a public like than a payment. It tells you people noticed the project. It does not tell you the value was explained well enough for someone to pay on the spot. The practical miss is assuming popularity and paid support are the same job.
There is a boundary here. This example does not prove page copy is the only reason sponsorship stays low. Topic controversy, audience habits, and willingness to pay can all matter. But it does break the lazy assumption that fame closes the revenue loop by itself. The brief also cites a 2024 research abstract saying only about two in five developers seeking GitHub Sponsors actually receive donations [S008].
The next step is simple. When you land on a Sponsors page, do not ask only whether the project is big. Ask what value is being promised here, for whom, and why pay from this page instead of just leaving a star. If that question helps someone in your circle, share this with them.