The DevX Initiative
TL;DR
The DevX Initiative believes programmers are creative, passionate individuals and understands that engaging developers is about participating in their already active communities in the spirit of reciprocity. The DevX Initiative will support developers who want to grow in the Rust Ecosystem. The DevX Initiative will provide a web platform, will contribute code to crates that benefit the whole Rust Ecosystem and will host workshops, hackathons, game jams and meetups to help people learn Rust.
Update: The DevX Initiative is no longer affiliated with Concordium. Please see the medium blog post for more details.
Developers as Humans First
Developer relationships are vital to launching an open-source project properly. Commercial projects that try to engage with open-source ecosystems generally approach developers because they know how to design, create, deploy, and maintain complex technical structures or as a box-ticking exercise to validate their platform's viability. The DevX Initiative knows software developers are passionate, individuals who want to connect with the world on the ground and not just behind a screen. We want to collaborate with individuals as the passionate, creatives that they are as they are. The DevX Initiative has this approach as its foundation.
Reciprocity as a Principle
The DevX Initiative aims to be a dynamic, practical dialogue with the Rust community rooted in the philosophy of reciprocity as a principle. Reciprocity, as a principle, does not mean quid pro quo. The DevX Initiative aims to be a part of the Rust community by being aligned with the language's core goal of empowerment. We affirm that to “get”, you must “give” first. The DevX Initiative wants to give its researchers and developers an outlet to contribute to the Rust community beyond its commercial interest while reaching out to Rust developers.
Location, Location, Location
Developers are in communities (Meetup groups, Discord servers, Reddit feeds). The DevX Initiative is not trying to create new and independent ecosystems using incentivization tactics. We understand this doesn’t reflect the type of connection needed to cultivate a real community.
We know at the DevX Initiative that developer engagement is about reaching out to where developers are, participating in their domains, and contributing to their already active communities. Our duty is to invest in the Rust ecosystem, not only with funds but by contributing code to crates that help the entire Rust ecosystem, engaging in interest groups, sharing research, being available to mentor, providing workshops and meetups. We aim to bridge the divide between blockchain’s current perception in the Rust ecosystem through our principle of reciprocity.
Impacting in Praxis
The DevX Initiative wants to have a stake in the Rust ecosystem based on contributing. Concordium’s DevX approach is rooted in being consistent; the intention is to make manageable, constant input that positively impacts the Rust ecosystem. The aim will be to make meaningful input where we are strong following the structure outlined below:
- Research
- Code
- Community participation
Research
Prof. Bas Spitters and his team from COBRA are excited to participate in the Rust Ecosystem, especially in the area of Formal Verification. Some of the things they are excited to share include.
- Research on the generation of high-assurance cryptographic code.
- Contributing to the Hacspec project.
- Sharing the details of ConCert, which is a framework for formally verifying smart contracts written in Rust but has wider benefits for Rust Ecosystem as a whole.
Prof. Diego Aranha and his team from COBRA are also excited to work with the Rust Crypto Interest Group members.
- Contributing to https://github.com/zkcrypto/bls12_381
- Contributing to the governance of the Rust Crypto Interest Group.
They will be joined by Dr Daniel Tschudi and Dr Christian Matt, from Concordium and ETH Zurich, to contribute to both groups.
Code
Dr Torben Pedersen (Concordium CTO), Dr Aleš Bizjak, and Dr Thomas Dinsdale-Young will contribute actively to open-source Rust crates and packages where applicable and with the direction and consultation of the wider Rust community.
Community Participation
Rust Conferences and Meetups:
Members of the DevX Initiative from Concordium will be sponsoring and speaking at several Rust Conferences, including RustFest, and Rust community user groups, including Rust London.
DevX Rust Events:
The DevX Initiative will host workshops, hackathons, game jams and meetups to help people learn Rust. We will share a roadmap of events with the community that will detail all the events we plan to host in the coming months. We are planning workshops such as the Ferris Commit Club, which will serve as a learning group where developers can discuss and dissect pull requests to exciting upcoming features and be a place for developers to build their confidence to make their own contributions to Rust.
DevX Rust Content:
The DevX Initiative will share research papers and blog posts. There are plans for a YouTube channel with Rust tutorials and recordings of Rust Interest Group meetings. The DevX Initiative will also create a new space for conversation and interaction in the Rust community by hosting a monthly space on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces for general, open discourse about the Rust Community and Ecosystem. The creation of content and the facilitation of DevX’s community participation will be lead by:
Beni Issembert
Suhas Hedge
Ernest Kissiedu
The DevX Initiative wants to embed itself as a part of the Rust community. We aim to liaise with prominent members of the Rust community as we navigate this journey.
Next Steps
To realise our ambition, we will launch a dedicated web platform for developers. The DevX Initiative platform will be brought to you by Concordium as the ultimate home base for developers, which will include tools and resources such as an emulator for smart contract development in Rust, our sponsorship and grants program for the funding and support of projects in the Rust ecosystem, a showcase for projects built both on Concordium and in the wider Rust community. The DevX Initiative web platform will be a sandbox for developers to learn, create and share knowledge.
Join the Concordium Community
Discord: https://discord.gg/xWmQ5tp
Github: https://github.com/Concordium/
