Open Source Bounty Work - First Funding

Workstream Discussion Special Projects
1

Summary

Fund the Engineering workstream with 200K FOX. Expectation is 100K FOX will be used for Open Source bounty work at the discretion of the workstream. Additional 100K FOX for contingency and other needs.

Abstract

Centralized ShapeShift engineers are hard at work on the first new repo to go open source. Our intent is that this repo will be under active development from both centralized foxes and DAO community developers. We are targeting to make this repo open source by the end of the month. Very shortly thereafter we hope to post bounties for specific pieces of work that we believe are well suited for coders new into ShapeShift. The workstream leader will work with centralized ShapeShift engineers to determine the specific bounties.

Motivation

We (centralized ShapeShift engineers) believe this would be a great way to get open source community involvement as early as possible. This is important to keep excitement around the project and build momentum. It is also a great way to get needed functionality added as quickly as possible.

Specification

  1. Passing this proposal would trigger 200K FOX to be sent to the Engineering workstream. The workstream leader will have the authority to spend 100K on bounties to community devs. The workstream leader is being entrusted to the following:

    Work with centralized engineering to determine what functionality in the repo is appropriate for community dev work.

  2. Determine how much FOX should be allocated to each bounty
  3. Post bounties in a public forum. The DAO Discord could work. As could posting on gitcoin.
  4. Track progress of bounty projects. Ensure devs who picked up the work have access to centralized dev foxes so they have the support they need to get the job done.
  5. Evaluate completeness of work when person/team reports it is complete.
  6. Pay out bounties
  7. The workstream leader will be accountable to the community for success of this proposal. They will supply a report every two weeks to the community showing status of each bounty project. The report will include for each bounty project:

    Bounty Name

  8. Bounty Summary
  9. Person or Group working bounty
  10. Amount of bounty attached
  11. Status of work

It is acceptable that current centralized foxes pick up bounty work, but they must do the bounty work after their salary-job hours.

Benefits

  1. Gets community dev involvement at the earliest possible opportunity

  2. Huge learning from experimenting with our bounty process.
  3. Features and functionality supplied to users of our products sooner.

Drawbacks

  1. Management overhead of the bounty program

Vote

A vote for this proposal would immediately send 200K FOX to the engineering workstream. These funds would be used at the discretion of the engineering workstream leader to divvy out to bounty projects at their discretion. They are expected to work with the centralized engineering team in doing so.

A vote against this proposal would cause no action to be taken.

2

Love this and definitely support funding the engineering workstream with FOX to use on these bounties. This could really speed up the pace of development as engineering identifies appropriate bounties and can post them up right away without a longer DAO proposal process needed to get devs involved and helping!

Has my support for sure.

4

Thanks for the comments. In September, I will be putting forward a proposal for much more funding to keep a core dev team engaged. This is a much smaller amount to primarily cover a set of bounties.

5
  • I’d like to add an additional thought to this already great proposal. It may be out of scope currently, and a bit too forward thinking, but it could get ideas flowing regardless. In regards to the centralized workstream picking up bounties. In a scenario where there is a lot of need and not enough comfortable initiative by the community to solve these problems on their own… I propose an expansion on your bounty idea that would allow employed workerstream members to persue these bounties during working hours while also involving the community.

    Gauge interest in the community to form a small team to tackle this task.

  • A workstream member who would like to lead the effort recruits the team, with the intention on creating a sort of apprenticeship learning exercise. This could make payouts a grey area, but the intention is to reward community interest with an opportunity for growth and potentially increase their level of skill and experience in future contributions
    • 6

    Great idea . The core dev team discussed this this afternoon. We are going to start our open source effort by soliciting volunteers to work alongside a core dev member for onboarding into the code base. All bounty work will have a core dev member assigned for guidance in the beginning. It may get to the point where a core dev member needs to recruit a team, it’s a good thought. We will watch how things go and see if that is required.