Hey Builders 👋

It’s your resident code junkie, Andy, back with another fix of Happy Hacking. This week is all about rewarding contributions in open source projects.

Picture the scene. You've got an awesome open-source project and you're looking for contributors. Easy, right? Just build it and they will come? Nah. Don't get me wrong, some devs genuinely do it for the love of it, which I fucking love, BTW. But most have full-time jobs, mortgages, and bills to pay. So, how do you incentivise them when you have no money?

We've been wrestling with this challenge for ages – how do you really fuel open source? It's not just about thanking people; it's about making sure valuable contributions are recognised and that the right things get done! And that's where the magic of decentralised tech and AI Agents comes in. See, it's not just about slapping a token on contributions (though that's awesome for rewards!). It's about building a system where the community token itself becomes the engine for coordination. Imagine this: contributors earn tokens for their code, sure, but also for helping guide the project, for reviewing others' work, for flagging important issues – all the stuff that makes a project thrive. And with AI Agents in the mix, we can automate task assignment, prioritise what needs doing, and even help distribute those tokens fairly based on the value of the contribution. If we get this right, and the project takes off, that token isn't just a reward – it's a stake in a thriving, self-organising open-source ecosystem. And that is seriously exciting.

So, considering our tech is open-source, we're starting this process ourselves to see what happens. Those of you in our Discord server may have noticed a new channel pop up yesterday called #building-our-community-agent with messages like this:

Let's me tell you how it works.

1. Head over to https://rewards.openformat.tech/open-format

2. Connect your GitHub account (and your Discord if you want notifications in Discord). This will create a wallet behind the scenes for you. If you want to use an existing wallet in Metamask, log in with Metamask and then connect your GitHub account.

3. Head to https://github.com/open-format/ and take a look through our open-source repos and see what takes your fancy. As soon as you start contributing code, you will be rewarded.

4. That's it!

What's the Stack?

• Currently, It's an API with a POST endpoint that GitHub calls. Here's what happens:

  • Listens for GitHub Events: The API listens for real-time events happening on GitHub repositories using webhooks. This means we're instantly notified when code is pushed!

  • Securely Verifies Contributions: We use a secret key to ensure every webhook comes directly from GitHub, guaranteeing the legitimacy of the contribution and preventing fake reward claims.

  • Automatically Identifies Code Contributions: The API processes the webhook data to detect new code commits. This detection is the trigger for our reward system.

  • Rewards Contributors with $DEV Tokens: For every valid code contribution from a registered user, the API automatically rewards them with 100 $DEV tokens via Open Format, directly to their linked wallet.

  • Publicly Celebrates Contributions on Discord: Lastly, the API posts a message (see above) in our Discord community channel, announcing the reward and linking to the commit and the reward transaction!
    
    If you want to take a look for yourself, you can find the code here.

This is only the beginning. We have so many ideas about how this could evolve. The next thing we're working on is integrating LLMs to review PRs and map that against Open Format's goals to determine the reward value. Then we can give the agent a wallet itself with our community token and let it loose. Exciting. Ambitious. Mainly exciting.

However, we don't want to do this solo. We're looking for new or existing open-source projects interested in building this with us. If you know us, you know we've built the decentralised layer for token distribution. Now, we're diving headfirst from the 200ft diving board into the AI Agent space to marry community coordination and decentralised token distribution in a beautiful, long-lasting relationship that anyone can use. So, if you are interested in co-creating the future of open-source incentivisation, hit us up in Discord or book a call with me.

• Improvement: added max description length of 2000 characters and added translation for error message (8d9fe51)

• Improvement: improve community settings form validation and error handling (a7e356a)

• Improvement: Add GitHub username support for leaderboard and user handles (bda525f)

• UI: add ActiveLink component for navigation highlighting (adfb2a1)

• Fix: /leaderboard endpoint no longer returns entries with zero xp_rewarded

• Fix: resolved validation not showing by implementing field operator and blur handling (d9ce4de)

• Fix: image size validation for badge creation form (730af9d)

• CSV Import for bulk reward distribution

• CSV Export for reward auditing

• Dynamic Token Selection for Leaderboard - The Leaderboard currently shows rankings for only one pre-selected token (set by token_to_display). Users can't directly view leaderboards for other community tokens in the UI. This limits data insights and flexibility. We're improving the Leaderboard to let users dynamically switch between tokens and see each token's leaderboard - PR

That's it! See you next time!

Cheers,
Andy and the Open Format Team

Psst 👋 New to Open Format?

You can now create a token, badge, and reward them in just three minutes on our platform. Yes, you read that right. Three minutes. What a time to be alive.

Try it for yourself here.