PRAGMA and Blink Labs

Blink Labs is a founding member of PRAGMA, a Swiss non-profit professional association focused on open source blockchain software.

Cardano Foundation, dcSpark, Sundae Labs, and TxPipe are among the industry leaders in our ecosystem. It’s a privilege for Blink Labs to be counted among them and to collaborate with the talented individuals behind these organizations. The true magic lies within the people, each bringing varying backgrounds and expertise to cooperatively advance blockchain-related open-source projects. On April 22nd, PRAGMA was formed from like-minded organizations with a shared vision.

At Blink Labs, our commitment to open-source software runs deep. For decades, our members have been pioneers in the open-source movement, serving as leaders and dedicated contributors. Our passion for open-source goes beyond mere advocacy; it’s ingrained in our DNA. We believe in the power of collaboration and the equalization of technology through freely accessible code.

Let’s talk a little more about PRAGMA though. PRAGMA’s primary goal is to provide focused support for creating sustainable open-source projects through cross team collaboration. PRAGMA will not be funding projects. However as many of us know, the work just keeps ramping up after funding. PRAGMA will assist with IP, legal, and governance and that which accompanies it. PRAGMA was founded by 5 organizations, each with equal say in how we operate. We’re a multi-headed operation. The founding members constitute the General Assembly and have ultimate authority on the strategy/functioning of the association. The Administrative Board effectively runs the operations and reports to the General Assembly. A crucial mission of the board is to decide on projects and appoint Maintainer Committees to them. The committees are a small group of software engineers in charge of developing and managing projects in collaboration with their open-source communities.

The initial focus is on two key projects. The first project is Amaru, a Cardano full node in Rust, fully interoperable with the existing Haskell nodes. The second project is Aiken, a smart contract development language. These two projects will guide us to creating a repeatable framework for governance and maintenance of projects for future on-boarding. It’s been humbling to see people ask how they can help PRAGMA. At this time we’d love contributors to the Amaru and Aiken projects and of course join us on our Discord.