Witnet Community Developer Fund

An announcement from community member

I’ve long wanted to launch a community developer fund to support and foster developing tools for the Witnet ecosystem. In a growing ecosystem, it’s even more important to develop useful tools, fix bugs in the existing tools, etc.

To help support these developing efforts, I have allocated 3 million Witnet coins to be distributed as rewards. Everyone who develops tools for the Witnet ecosystem, wants to extend existing projects or wants to help finding bugs in tools is eligible to receive such a reward.

The community developer fund coins reside in the account wit1x0fq5y533klxfs5n04yugtakzc6qxe7g4n729q.

Currently, I have the following tiered rewards in mind for building and maintaining new tools. The final reward obviously depends on the scope of the tool. Some examples of tools and an indicative reward are the following:

Up to a 100k reward:

1. Large-scale projects such as the Witnet blockchain explorer.
2. Development of standalone applications such as a light wallet.
3. Others of similar complexity or added value.

Up to a 50k reward:

1. Websites which track useful network metrics such as a clone of ethgasstation for Witnet to suggest transaction pricing.
2. Developing and maintaining a Witnet faucet (I am happy to also fund the faucet itself).
3. A Witnet tipping bot for Telegram or Discord.
4. Others of similar complexity or added value.

Up to a 25k reward:

1. Tools, scripts or bots to help node operators.
2. Small-scale gamification applications: Twitter bots such as a whale alert bot, transfers to exchanges, …
3. Others of similar complexity or added value.

Note that any and all rewards are payed out in Witnet coins and, depending on the size of the reward, it will be subject to a vesting schedule of up to 6 months such that the maximum payout does not exceed more than 5k Witnet coins per week.

Other ways to earn Witnet coins are extending already existing tools with new features (e.g. by creating pull requests accepted by the tool maintainers) or finding reproducible bugs. The final reward will depend on factors such as the severity of the bug or the scope of the added feature. I’ll reward between 1k and 10k for a single bug or added feature, although exceptions can be made depending on the size of the contribution.

The following projects are currently live or will be launched soon, and are eligible to receive rewards:

1. Reports of bugs or crashes in the Witnet explorer. These need to be verifiable and reproducible. Bugs which are related to your (browser) setup do not count.
2. Any and all bugs related to the light wallet (myWitWallet).
3. Other projects developed in the context of this grant program.

If you have another idea for a tool or website you can develop and want to get an estimate on what size of reward it would be worth, please contact me in advance.

If other people want to help grow the community and available tooling by sponsoring the fund, feel free to contact me.

Note that this development fund solely focuses on rewarding builders within the Witnet ecosystem, it does not aim to reward marketing or influencing campaigns.