Announcing the DigiByte “Bounty Fund”
We’re shaking things up a little and want to try something different to help the developers out:
We need more help with getting these wallets out the door, we want to pay someone to help, and we want the community to come together to help fund this!
Let’s talk about the development side, and then we’ll go over the fundraising.
Our current developers have been incredible! This initiative has their support and we have been in consultation with them about how to best assist them. They’ve been giving 100%, but there’s simply not enough hours in the day to get things done. So we’re looking for somebody (or a few people for a few bounties) who can pick up the ball with these jobs and run with it.
These will probably require developers with some serious programming experience to get these jobs done. Our initial bounties won’t be easy, but we also want to financially reimburse whoever is able to complete these tasks with an appropriate sum of DigiByte.
This is where we need the community, and also where we want to lead by example.
We want to start the pot off with 50,000 DigiByte, from some of those involved with the Foundation, and the existing developers. Although we give freely of our time (The Foundation doesn’t pay us), we also want to show we are behind this endeavor as well. These DigiByte have been mined / purchased by ourselves, so we are in the same position as you: Donating to a project we love and want to see succeed!
We have 4 items for the mobile wallets (Android and iOS) that need to be tackled, and we expect we’ll need around 100,000 DigiByte for each.
The first two bounties are:
- 1) Sync / Rescan issue
There’s porting needed from Bitcoin code in BRPeerManager.c to make it work with DigiByte and fix the communication with peers during the BRPeerManagerRescan() function calls - 2) Update the iOS Swift Application to support the latest version of the SPV core that Android is using
And we’ll follow up with the other two later on after these are solved.
Four bounties at around 80–100k each brings us to a total of 400k DGB.
Any change remaining, we would like to be able to offer something to our newest helpers as well, even though they’ve joined in the last couple of weeks with no expectation of pay, just to say “Thanks, we appreciate all you’re doing”.
So how can you donate?
We’ve setup a wallet for donations to the Bounty Fund here: 3CmhvoyjYkhKWYQLjrpwKbEoWtkiW9cWwX
This is a 2-of-3 copayer wallet setup specifically for this cause, with myself, ycagel and Jared from the DigiByte Foundation needed to send the funds on to the developers.
You can also keep track of the balance, along with an easy QR code here: http://digibyteguide.com/dev.php
How is this all going to work?
First, we list the Bounties as we are now. Then, we get people from the community to contact us if they’re interested in fulfilling these code-bounties, and we will provided them the specifics. Once the code is submitted to GitHub, we will have our existing developers review and confirm they’re happy with the merge, before we send the DigiByte on.
We would be OK with you splitting the work and bounty with a partner if you so desire.
Am I qualified to contribute?
We hope so! Here’s some skills you’ll need:
- A very solid history of C / C++ coding
- Bitcoin Core experience
- Android or iOS development experience (iOS specifically for Bounty #2)
If you think you fit the bill, we want you to introduce yourself over on Telegram in the Developer Channel: https://t.me/DigiByteDevelopers
We’re finalizing the detailed bounty write-ups / details now, so please join the Telegram channel and we’ll notify you of the specific expectations very shortly.
How do we know you won’t run off with the DigiByte, and that you’ll pay the bounties?
This will require a certain level of trust, though we would like to think we’ve been trustworthy thus far. This is why it’s being handled by public figures from the Foundation.
Will there be more bounties later?
Possibly! We are starting with these two, and once they’re done we have two more we will seek help from. We’ll post more about those later on though.
These are for a variety of things so we don’t anticipate one person being able to complete them all. Once these 4 are done, we plan to review it all, see how we did, see how the new developers did, and see if the community is willing to continue helping etc.
We may put up a semi permanent Bounty Board, depending on the success of this. Or, we may decide that’s enough and finish up there.
Why have you said 80–100k DGB bounty, but want to raise 400k?
The final amount we give for each bounty will be approximately that amount. If it turns out one job doesn’t take very long at all, we may look at offering slightly less, or if the code quality isn’t quite up to standard.
The final amount will be decided by our existing lead developers, but we also want to reassure anybody thinking of undertaking such a venture that we value their time and want to take it seriously, we aren’t about to underpay.
Keep in mind any additional funds we want to be able to offer the existing / recent developers a bit of a goodwill gesture. We put out a call recently on Twitter and had some great people helping out as a result.
Whats happening with the PR Agency though? We’ve donated before!
We are so grateful for that too, and we expect to have more news real soon about what’s been happening on that front.
There is a small amount remaining, but, people donated for it to be used for PR and Marketing and so we’ll keep it there for that cause for anything that may require it.
This is in addition to that, which is why we’re wanting to keep those wallets separate.
What comes next? What about the 3rd and 4th bounties?
We’ll reveal more about those shortly, these will be the core focus now needed to get the wallets shipped. Our 3rd & 4th are more “nice to haves”.
We will be approaching the community again shortly though for more fundraising, so that we can begin to take care of some of the long-term running costs that we’ve been incurring.
We’ve made some good strides in terms of our transparency so far in 2018 and we want that to continue. We know the community will rise to the challenge of helping out DigiByte, so we’ll share more about that soon.
