Hail Open Source, Hail Gittron

Deploy an autonomous fundraising Bot for your Open Source project.

Ven Gist
Odyssy
4 min readFeb 18, 2019

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Back up, let’s start at the beginning. We were all just in Denver for #BuidlWeek in the lead up to ETHDenver. We wanted to build a fun DApp for the participants to interact with. We started by experimenting with pulling data from Open Source repos on Github, and generating unique digital assets (ERC-721 NFTs ala CryptoKitties) off of the codebase. It rather quickly scaled into a far more interesting concept.

What if we could turn these NFTs into passive income generators for the associated open source project?

Open Source projects suffer from sustainable funding issues, which really sucks for everyone. These projects are quite literally humans working together to deliver public goods with no regard for generating revenue. These are some of the most valuable contributions to mankind, at least in the realm of code, and should be supported far more broadly. Kevin Owocki of Gitcoin has provided an enormous amount of insights on this topic and was very much an inspiration for Gittron.

We decided on the following gamified funding mechanisms:

Any open source repo on Github can register their repo at Gittron.me for the cost of gas (about 5–10 cents). This generates a Prime Bot, a programmatically unique digital asset built off the the codebase. We use various data points from the repo such as primary language, commits per hour, etc. to build the DNA of the Prime Bot. This DNA informs the chances of getting various bot parts, stats, and rare elements. I won’t go into the DNA hashing and generation mechanics here, but hit me up if you’re interested!

Generation of a Prime Bot

Once generated, this Prime Bot is now an autonomous fundraiser for the open source project associated. Anyone in the world can go to the Prime Bot’s page and support it for a price set by the owner. Supporting a Prime Bot clones the bot’s DNA and generates a similar but different bot known as a Support Bot and distributes it to the Supporter as a thank you.

These funds get stored in Prime Bot’s Bot Bank and the owner can click a Withdraw button and the funds are distributed to the wallet address set during Prime Bot generation.

By registering their repo on Gittron, the manager of the open source project has added passive income to the project. All they have to do is go back to Gittron and withdraw funds at their leisure.

Supporters of open source projects have a way to donate to these amazing contributions to society, and get a collectible digital asset in return.

Supporting an Open Source project and getting a Support Bot NFT

According to KittySales, CryptoKitties has sold $27,199,291.83 worth of digital kitties. Imagine if most of these funds went to open source projects. And remember, these purchase were made with no incentive other than getting a collectible digital asset (NFT) in return.

Also, owners of a Prime Bot (managers of open source projects), can Gift NFTs to their contributors for free. These are Buidl Bots, and are also a clone of the Prime Bot’s DNA with some unique differences. All Bots are full ERC-721 Non-fungible Tokens and can bought and sold on marketplaces such as OpenSea, or they can be held as a stake in the project.

This is all really just one use-case of an autonomous, distributed, and gamified fundraising mechanism. Github data works for open source code projects, but how can we apply this to other types of impact projects? Any data source could be used, and the framework could be applied to just about any domain. We’d also love to turn the Gittron bots into a game, extending the utility of the Bots for holders. For now, we already have a huge backlog of product improvements (better Web3, switch from ETH to DAI, ...) to get through and we’ll look to turn a product rapidly built at a hackathon into a much more robust, decentralized application serving the Open Source community.

Oh yea and let’s not forget this is all also really fun. Here’s the initial backstory for the Bots. ;)

The people of Earth have built a decentralized autonomous bot factory called Gittron and sent it out to explore the vastness of space. To expand its reach into the farthest edge of the cosmos, it builds self-replicating Prime Bots capable of cloning themselves as Buidl and Support Bots. Together, they buidl the crap out of the universe!

Join the Gittron Discord and give us your feedback or join the #Buidl effort.

Deploy your Bot at Gittron on Mainnet or just test on Rinkeby.

#BuidlOn

— VG

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