ConsenSys, the venture production studio building decentralized applications and various developer and end-user tools for blockchain has announced that it has added the Gitcoin project to its mesh of projects. Launched in September, Gitcoin is the first blockchain-based network for funding contributions to open source software (OSS).
Gitcoin will be initially running pilot projects with the following ConsenSys ventures:
- Metamask
- Truffle
- ConsenSys Security Best Practices
Kevin Owocki, CEO, and founder of Gitcoin said:
“Open source methodology is the path to a middle-class life for millions of talented individuals today, and a generation of software engineers have built thousands of websites, mobile applications, and SaaS businesses on top of open source.”
“Despite the economic value that is created by open source software, the incentives to create open source software and make it available freely are not currently aligned. Unless individuals have the scale and full weight of the Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation, or Red Hat behind them, open source contributions are relegated to side projects on nights and weekends.”
“Gitcoin offers a way for open source software developers to monetize and earn value from their work, directly sourced from a worldwide community.”
Gitcoin’s first partners are core infrastructure of the budding web3 ecosystem. While the mainstream financial news has been abuzz with hype about token sales lately, the projects that have quietly enabled their success have been largely taken for granted.
Kevin added:
“We are honored to have the opportunity to work on incentivization mechanics for sustaining these Open Source Infrastructure tools. These tools are important pillars of success for the entire ecosystem.”
“We expect that some of these Pilot Project Experiments will fail. Experiments require intellectual honesty and a long-term view. You’ll notice that there is no token sale associated with these pre-product market fit experiments. The ethos of the Gitcoin community is designed to be one of intellectual honesty and experimentation. We are building a community where it is okay when hypotheses don’t pan out or a pilot project needs to go to the shop for some re-tooling.”
- Pilot Project Hypothesis #1: Tips Build Relationships – The first hypothesis Gitcoin will be testing is: Do tips build relationships, improve quality of ‘service’, or help show appreciation?
- Pilot Project Hypothesis #2: Bounties Accelerate Open Source – The second hypothesis we will be testing is: Do liquid financial rewards accelerate open source repos?
The projects will experiment and see what happens when Ether and Ether-based tokens are staked against issues in open source software. In particular, Mr. Owocki says he is interested to articulate the results across the following dimensions:
Scoping
Are bounties good for core or auxiliary tasks?
What is the optimal level of complexity for tasks?
How much overhead is associated with scoping tasks?
Motivation
Is ETH or an ERC20 token a better reward?
Are bounties perceived differently by those who are extrinsically vs intrinsically motivated?
Do bounties provide value for teams that are recruiting?
What is the optimal price point for a bounty?
