SUPERALGOS PROJECT

How to Contribute to Superalgos

The current state of affairs in terms of the management of the collaboration, contributions, and rewards.

Julian Molina

Published in

Superalgos | Algorithmic Trading

6 min readOct 31, 2021

This post is maintained and updated regularly. Last update: Oct 15th, 2022.

Superalgos is an open-source community-owned project featuring a horizontal organization made of teams. The project is massive and has growing needs of all sorts, meaning that everyone may contribute and add value regardless of their background and set of skills.

The project rewards contributions with the native Superalgos (SA) Token.

The most important aspect of the collaboration is that the project rewards value that has already been created, that has materialized, and that is measurable — at least in relative terms compared with other contributions.

In contrast, the project does not allocate rewards to future work, proposals, promises, or isolated efforts that have not yet produced tangible, quantifiable value.

The project holds a monthly Distribution Event. During the days before the event, the community exposes the work that has been done in each domain and places claims using the governance system built in the Superalgos Platform.

Token holders then vote to support claims and collectively decide how to distribute rewards.

Horizontal Organization Designed to Scale

The ultimate goal of the design of incentives and the collaboration, in general, is to foster an ever-growing community of contributors. Such a goal presents significant challenges related to scaling.

How do you manage and reward the contributions of people in an ever-growing collaboration?

The current solution is to organize the community in decentralized autonomous teams, each with a specific focus. For example:

The Data Mining Team builds indicators, produces data studies, creates strategies, and improves the data processing infrastructure.
The Exchange Relationships Team is develops mutually beneficial relationships with exchanges, engaging in bilateral promotion, and negotiating discounted trading fees for Superalgos users.

The easiest and clearest path to start contributing is joining a team that is working on a field you may be interested in, or that may benefit from what you have to offer.

How to Find and Join Active Teams

If you browse the GOVERNANCE section of this blog, you will find the Proof of Value Reports written by each team month after month. Those reports are a window into the work of each team as they report the value they have created.

Reading PoV reports is the best way to understand what each team has been focused in lately.

To join a team, show up in the online group where they meet and offer your help. If there is no particular group where the team meets, then join the Community Telegram or the Discord server and ask for the team leader of the specific team.

Team leaders will be eager to onboard you, and will very much appreciate your contributions. They will help you understand the project from the inside, will help you get acquainted with the governance system, and will vote for your claims so that you get the rewards you deserve.

Do You Have the Entrepreneurial Gene?

Teams emerge through the initiative of entrepreneurial community members. If you notice that performing a certain activity, achieving a specific goal, or building a new asset would be beneficial for the project, you may start working in that direction.

You may work on your own and be a single-member team, or may recruit other community members to help you.

If you do so, you become the creator of a new team. You will want to develop the line of work and build a team around you to go faster. At some point, you may want to find a leader for the team so that you may delegate duties and start your next team.

If you’re not sure if your idea will be well received by the community, you may want to write a Medium post describing your plans, and asking the community for feedback.

Permissionless Innovation

Superalgos is permissionless, meaning that everyone is free to develop arbitrary lines of work and pursue arbitrary goals.

However, bear in mind that it is the community of token holders who decides how to distribute rewards. You will need community support to get rewards — preferably from those with a reputation as they have increased voting power.

This is not a bug in a permissionless project; it is a feature designed to promote true collaboration and accountability. You may indeed work in whatever direction you like, but to get rewards, you will need to be on board with the interests of the community, and you will need to show the value you’re adding to the project.

That said, notice that you don’t need the support of the whole community, a majority, or any specific number of holders. All you need to do is work close to other people that may value what you’re doing and may support your claims.

About Your Rewards

You may want to know exactly what rewards you’re going to get for a specific type of work or particular achievements. Unfortunately, that is not possible.

The rewards you are going to get depend entirely on a complex web of interactions of an ever-growing community that rewards all sorts of value created across a distributed network of teams.

What we do know is the following:

The project manages an annual budget and currently distributes up to 10M tokens per month. The 10M figure is a cap. Usually, fewer tokens are distributed, as many rewards remain unclaimed. For example, the first-ever monthly distribution of October 2021 awarded SA 5,779,253.
You can find the market value of the token in PancakeSwap, or market data aggregators like CoinMarketCap or Nomics.
You may use that information to estimate the monthly incentivization power of the project (10M SA * market price).

You may want to talk to team leaders and ask about their experience with rewards in past distributions.

Are You a Developer or a Tech Person?

If you are interested in contributing code or any other technical skills, then our lead developer’s post on the Multi-Project Roadmap is a must-read. It covers everything developers should know to get started.

Team Members and Team Leaders

Let’s clarify what entails to become a Team Member and a Team Leader.

The first important thing to note is that joining the corresponding Telegram Group or Discord Channel doesn’t make you a Team Member, nor a contributor for that matter.

It is producing valuable work in coordination with the rest of the team that makes you a Team Member and qualifies you to place Contribution Claims for the Team Member position in the governance system.

For instance, let’s say that you join the Russian Community Group. You start engaging with people, discussing ideas… you offer feedback, ask questions, interact socially, and so on. In that case, you are a community member like everyone else, not a Team Member.

To become a team member, you need to engage with the mission of the Team and help it achieve its goals.

If your work produces significant value and you show leadership qualities, you may eventually become a Team Leader too!

As a Team Leader, you assume responsibility for the mission of the Team and its goals.

You will recruit and onboard more Team Members, coordinate the work and prepare a monthly report on the advances of your Team so that the wider community may become aware of the Team’s work and vote to reward your efforts.

You will also be responsible for voting for your Team Member’s claims, as you will be in the best position to know who did what — who contributed what value.

Don’t like your team? That shouldn’t be a problem. If for whatever reason you are not happy working with a team, you can always move on and start your own team, or simply work on your own.

You Too May Be an Early Adopter!

Although the Superalgos Project was born in 2018, we are still young and are still distributing generous rewards among contributors.

You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become an early contributor of Superalgos and earn tokens for your contributions!

Comparing early-stage crypto projects with the origins of Bitcoin is certainly cliché, but if you are willing to indulge me, “mining” the Superalgos (SA) Token at this point — with your contributions — is equivalent to mining Bitcoin in 2011!

Mastering Contributions

You just read an article in the Mastering Contributions series exploring some of the crucial aspects of the Superalgos Collaboration. To continue your journey learning about how to contribute to Superalgos, just keep reading: