Buy crypto anonymously on the Incognito pDEX   

Builder Rewards v.2

#1

2686×1405 194 KB

Decentralization is a key part of Incognito’s future, and community builders are a key part of decentralization.

In the first Builder Rewards program, many of you took charge of your own projects and fleshed out the Incognito privacy ecosystem. Now, that program has evolved to take the project even further.

Program goals

Builder Rewards program v.2 is designed to achieve new goals:

  • Product diversification: to have a variety of useful products built on the Incognito chain.
  • User satisfaction: to help serve more Incognito users with relevant products they need and want.
  • Decentralized governance: to open fund distribution decision-making to community members.
  • Community expansion: to bring new communities to Incognito via exposure to builder products.

Program process

1. Wish list

First, a wish list will be published by the core team that describes products we’d love for community builders to build. All relevant parameters and expectations will be detailed in the list, such as: product type, specifications, uses, fund distribution timeline, etc.

2. Builder proposal

From the public wish list, builders can make decisions to take on any product that they are interested in and can deliver on.

Builders will then create a proposal indicating their plan, timeline, and deliverables, and will present their proposal in the Builders/Community category. By doing this, builders will be able to get helpful feedback from the community (who will be their future users), and make the process transparent.

:point_right: What to include in the proposal

  • What is the product?
  • Why are you building this product?
  • What problems does this product solve?
  • What are the deliverables and expected outcomes?
  • What does your timeline look like?

:white_check_mark: Note: Builders are welcome to propose their own products not on the wish list published by the core team. Ideas will be examined and accepted by the committee (see below :point_down:) if they meet a need with high enough demand and with a great enough use case. Keep in mind that serving a real demand or need in the community (usability) is the ultimate standard by which projects will be measured.

3. Quality inspection

Once a milestone has been met, committee members will conduct quality inspections on builder projects to ensure that promised features are being delivered well, and that the ship dates are on track to being met. Usability testing will be one of the most important items included in the inspection criteria.

After the quality inspection, committee members will vote internally to decide whether the project with the relevant milestone is eligible to be funded.

Committee members will also give feedback to the project’s owner so that they can maximize their productivity and direction.

4. Funding

The Builder Rewards v.2 fund is a milestone-based system, in which funds are released when predetermined milestones are met. While deadlines are an important way to keep the project on track, quality is far more important than speed.

The committee has 5 members, and a project is funded if it gets at least ⅗ vote from the committee that it has met its milestones and quality expectations.

Committee:

In Builder Rewards v.2, the committee will consist of representatives from both the core team and community.

Core team representatives:

@Andrey: Project lead
@Duc: Tech lead
@Binh: Product lead

Community representatives

An open election will be organized for all community members. During this election, anyone can nominate people they believe are reliable and can give objective judgements on builder projects.

The two candidates who get the most votes will become the 4th and 5th members of the committee.

:white_check_mark: Note: Builders who are building products are not eligible for nomination, and committee members can not start projects of their own that are eligible for funding.

Disclaimer

  • Transparency: All projects applying for Builder Rewards v.2 must be open source.

  • Ownership: Builders take full ownership of their projects which is understood as: building products, finding and fixing bugs, and finding/supporting users

  • Subject to change: We’re always looking for better ways to empower builders. If we come up with new ideas or circumstances change, the Builder Rewards program is subject to change, too.

Make Incognito yours

By building a privacy product, you’re taking the Incognito project into your own hands, building privacy how you want it. The bar has been raised considerably for Builder Rewards v.2, because Incognito deserves the best, and we believe our builders can do this.

If you’re ready to build privacy, start brainstorming products you want to see, ask the community what they want and need, and keep an eye out for the wish list!

17 Likes
Weekly Privacy Newsletter - 2.2.21
Join us for the February 2021 PRV Holders Call
Incognito March 2021 Targets
Letter to PRV Holders (January 2021)
#4

Do you mean the code must be open so it can be reviewed or the license must be open so others can use the code as they wish?

#5

Hey, @inccry I remember that you do not like the milestone base program, you have reasons for that. Builder rewards v1 has a really cool idea and motivation, unfortunately, it didn’t go on the way we expected.

Builder rewards v2 is a sandbox, where we should find a way to build an ecosystem of world-class products that drives adoption of the Incognito network.

It would be awesome if everyone from the builder’s community would be able to bring more ideas on how to improve the program and adapt it on the way.

4 Likes
#6

I understand why this is important, as we don’t want the committee members abusing their power for their own projects. However I imagine that developers would want to be a committee member as they know more about the in’s and out’s of the project then anyone else. But the cost of running in this election would be giving up receiving an income for developing for Incognito.

I feel like dev’s would be the best types of people to judge and give funding to projects on Incognito as they know what to look for. But it would mean they would be essentially giving up developing for Incognito, which is not good because we don’t have many tbh.

4 Likes
#7

I cancelled my first funding proposal about Incscan.io (it was before Builder Rewards v1) because you were asking me “Milestones” about a product I had in mind. This product is built by using users feedback, the most valuable feedback, so it’s impossible to make a proposal that could fit your old (and new, with BR v2 :wink: ) requirements.

It’s important for me to let developers and community creativity open. If you ask for a fixed plan, you’ll get what is defined in this plan, but not what users really need.

About the committee, I think it’s the good solution to the wrong problem :upside_down_face:

My initial message about Incscan funding proposal, almost 1 year ago: [CANCELLED] Incognito Network Explorer

6 Likes
#8

Disclaimer: I don’t want to create new products so I’m not interested by BR v2 and I created incscan.io by self-funding.

  • Remove milestones & committee
  • Remove money rewards
  • Bootstrap your onchain DAO
  • Give DAO vote power to builders

I know you want to improve community products quality, to limit abuses like community builders that don’t talk for a month and wake up before every vote session to get money, but well, I think it’s really a small problem compared with the number of good products that have been created.

If you don’t put any expectation, that’s when good things happen.

5 Likes
#9

Me too :joy:

Your words are my words :crossed_swords:

#10

Objection your honor :slight_smile:

As I wrote previously, the open-source should be incentivized but not be mandatory. I think closed-source projects should be allowed but some cuts (say %25) should be applied to their rewards. That portion of the money can be distributed to the open-source projects as an addition to their rewards.

#11

I agree with all of the above. My earnings tracker, while humble, made me realize this when people started talking about taxes this month. I posted this to the builders follow up, but the statement remains the same. You can add @inccry to my list.

I read the new proposal for the builder’s reward, and maybe I’m missing something. The new approach seems like a finite project for each builder. Kinda like a quote to build a website with deadlines. It doesn’t seem to really address ongoing projects that require monitoring. IMHO bots like Nito and ENSI from @Josh_Hamon and @J053 fall into that category. There are some required necessary features that are severely lacking in the incog app if you want to grow any kind of base in the US. They are the go to answer for anyone who is constantly asking if their new nodes are working on the message boards because the incog app keeps telling them their node is offline. Also, now that the 1st round of taxes are due here in the US, everyone is scrambling. Since their is no way to export data from the app, and most have lost the local data due to app updates, they are really the only log people have for earnings. My question, I guess, is how does the team plan to either solve the problems within the app or compensate them for complimenting incog’s apps shortcomings?

I guess my point is you can either pay developers one time to build out incogs app for you while you work on other things, or devs need to be compensated for running complimentary apps to support incogs while you work on other things like security and bridges.

What we have proposed seems like a weird hybrid between paying devs like a normal scope of work would require and crowdsourcing. At the end of the day, V1 was a nice test to see what kind of return you would get from a voting system. The community actually delivered on some great products. But to continue in this fashion is like a never ending PR stunt. Everyone create a logo, we will pick the best one, and use it. In return, we will give you credit. In the real world, this is a constant battle that is fought that doesn’t exist in any other industry. You dont tell a car dealership to give you a car and let you drive it. Then if you like it, you will tell your friends as payment. We all started our builders projects because we believed in the project. But, if you want quality work and support you need to give devs assurances about compensation at this point. There was a lot of time and resources that went into every one of the projects from V1, and continue to go into them. If @inccry and other folks just went offline tomorrow, things would not be great.

3 Likes
#12

This feels like a return towards the original recipe system, which isn’t bad per se but I’m curious why it went from that to Builder Rewards V1 and why V1 didn’t meet the core team’s expectations.

Could you elaborate on that?

2 Likes
#13

Very good point—that would give us some insight on what the team is thinking. I usually can follow their thinking (even if I don’t understand some technical details) but this time I cannot.

Can you also share a couple items from your wish list? What were you hoping was developed and it wasn’t yet?

#14

Should we bring it on PRV holders call next Friday ?)

3 Likes
#15

Ideally, in my opinion, every project made for Incognito should be licensed with GPL or any of its variants.

Why is it so hard to make things open-source? Do this people fear something? I really don’t get it.

This make sense. But what if the milestone could be changed? Say, you propose some, but then you see some feedback and change your mind, and simply make a poll to see if the users want it. I think making milestones is a good idea, because it lets people see what other features are being worked on, so it’s about transparency, and if the builders could change milestones then there would be no real limitation.

4 Likes
#16

The team mentioned diversification but treat every project/idea the same way. It’s kind of restriction. Not a warm welcome for everyone. Should the team thinks about a more flexible method

It’s an open fund distribution, so it shouldn’t the team who set out the builder rule. I hope this announcement is not yet final. Collecting eveyone feedback before make an official BR will make community please.

—————————————————
Besides good products in BR v1, incognito fund useless projects, neither they help any user nor visionary. Abusing the BR to get PRV on their own. A strict BR rule would make developer feeling not comfortable to start a project. When a project or idea is pilot, no one know the exact reaction from user. So as @inccry mentioned, good product collects feedback from community and make user happy. Should we not pay the compensation for a good idea, or paying too much for a bad project.

Clearly, it’s never the problem of BR v1, it’s problem of the operation. Team shouldn’t consider every project or idea the same way. Any of the decision in funding or not funding is acceptable for community as long as u guys give us a right reason.

And yes, good solution to the wrong problem

2 Likes
#17

Another feeling, BR v2 is kind like make developers from community employees of incognito. Rather than, harvesting the power of community.

2 Likes
#18

Hey all,

Thanks for giving feedback about the builder program these days. This structure is not final yet, we would like to leave it open to get more insights from the community. esp builders.

We’re reading all the comments and still consider over all carefully. Hopefully we can come to the conclusion after the PRV Holders Call on this Friday. Thanks everyone!

1 Like
#19

@Ducky Do you mind giving some feedback on this thread so we can engage in a working discussion? I’d like to get some insight into what the team is thinking and the further response from the community.

#20

Hey guys, just went through all comments here, most of them are really constructive. So I just wanted to express my personal thought (not representing for the core team) about the program.

In my opinion, the program should balance out a few factors as follows:

  • Flexibility to leave rooms for creativity. Yeah I agree that it’s hard to have a strict plan in advance that is based on feedback as well as developer’s availability
  • Incentive for builders in time. A very good example is https://incscan.io/ by @inccry. He has been building a great product used by many people in community then he deserves rewards.

In other words, we have a fund for builder (or something similar to bounty fund in other projects) and the core team will consider to award great products running on production already (not for development). Yes, I know this does not gain decentralization purpose as we expected with Builder reward v1 since any voting system is not perfect but we can always figure it out along the way like @andrey said.

7 Likes
#21

Hey everyone!

Long time no catchup! Sorry for the inconvenience and slow down during the Lunar New Year time :wink:

Thank you everyone for all the feedback that you were giving on this thread. All is valuable and help us understand more about the insights of both developers and community.

I would like to give the conclusion for Builder Rewards program:

  1. I will resign from the program and no longer be the moderator of it.
  2. From now on, Builder Rewards program will be handled by our developers. Developers talk to developers. Technology will not be a barrier anymore.

We believe that this shift would help in driving the program in the way that we all expect (hopefully :wink:).

@duc from our developer team will publish the new announcement for BRV2 soon.

Meanwhile, thanks all builders for keeping improving your projects and look forward to seeing all of you in the BRV2. :crossed_fingers: :crossed_fingers: :v: :raised_hands:

7 Likes
#22

Well I just finished reading the thread my being gone for a bit I had not been aware of this thread’s existence and what seems its demise regretfully… @Ducky I believe and feel you should not resign your position as moderator and believe that you could be of great help to @duc if indeed he intends to tie in with the builders for I imagine he has a full plate of his own dealing with core development issues and work.

Now it is interesting having read the entire thread of just who it was that basically commented throughout the thread…most if not all were well-known builders in the community who have contributed to Incognito but what was missing was any kind of commentary or feedback from the community at large meaning your average user who is not a builder or developer. What does that say about the communication within the community I ask and well in turn how can the core team and basically the set of builders I recognized in this string expect any Builder’s program to succeed when I would wager that most members are not even aware that a Builders program had existed and even that this string and topic, of great importance, even existed and well now seems to have to come to a conclusion from what Ducky just posted. Well I guess we will find out indeed at some point…hopefully soon for indeed there are amongst you very good builders and I would hate to see Incognito lose any of you… :sunglasses:

2 Likes