Not only did we lay the necessary groundwork for advancing our governance system in 2024, but also set new foundations for the ecosystem as a whole. This post summarizes key governance proposals & milestones in 2023 and outlines our plans for 2024!

Governance Proposals: A Summary

The year 2023 saw our highest activity yet in terms of successfully approved proposals. The passing of the 2023 Org proposals established a new organizational structure, where core teams became their own autonomous Orgs within Radworks.

With RGP-16, Radworks became the first organization to fund its dependencies via Drips, allowing $1M of the Treasury's funds to be streamed to critical dependencies over the next year.

The community also approved the Governance Improvements proposal to upgrade our governance process and documentation, as well as RGP-17, which initiated our first governance contract upgrade.

Finally, the passing of the 2024 Org proposals secured another year of funding for each Org, and validated their proposed strategies for the coming year.

On-chain Proposals

• [RGP-12] Start the Foundation Org - Established and funded the work of the Foundation Org, including its three Committees (Operations, Governance & Marketing) through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-14] Start the Radicle Org - Established and funded the work of the Radicle Org through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-15] Start the Drips Org - Established and funded the work of the Drips Org through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-16] Fund Radworks Dependencies with Drips - Allocated a total of $1 million in RAD and USDC to fund Radworks’ critical dependencies over the course of a year, allowing for consistent and reliable support to the projects that are crucial to Radworks’ operations.

• [RGP-18] Radicle Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Radicle Org through 2024

• [RGP-19] Drips Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Drips Org through 2024

• [RGP-21] Foundation Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Foundation Org, including its three Committee (Operations, Governance & Strategy) through 2024

Formal Reviews

• Governance Improvements Proposal - Improved our off-chain governance process to make it easier for community members to follow proposals discussions, participate in governance, access governance documentation and understand the ecosystem’s operating model.

• [RGP-13] Start the Grants Org - Established the Grants Org, confirmed strategy & goals for remaining funding through 2023.

• [RGP-17] Upgrade Governance Contracts from Compound Governor to Open Zeppelin Governor - Gained community consensus around upgrading our governance contracts from Compound Alpha to OpenZeppelin Governor. Once the upgrade is ready for execution, an onchain vote will be required from the community to execute the new contracts.

• [RGP-20] Grants Org Proposal 2024 - Attempted to fund the Grants Org through 2024. This proposal did not pass Formal Review. It has been resubmitted in the January cycle to include feedback and adjustments from the community.

A Year of Governance Optimization: Key Changes

🔄 Introduction of Monthly Proposal Cycles

The implementation of monthly cycles as part of the Governance Improvements proposal made proposals easier to follow and plan for. Voting happens on the same schedule every month, making it easier for token holders to follow and proposal authors are able to prepare their proposals with a clear timeline for being passed.

✍️ Version-controlled Governance Manual

The governance process was previously documented as a forum post and was maintained by the Governance Team. Now, the process is documented in the Governance Manual, a living, version-controlled document outlining all processes, cycles, and rules related to governance of Radworks and its treasury and is managed by the Radworks community. (see contributing.md).

📚 DAO & Governance Docs

Previously, our community and governance resources were scattered across various platforms and links, causing challenges in accessing crucial information. The introduction of docs.radworks.org streamlines the search and discovery process, serving as a hub where individuals can easily locate the community-driven purpose, ecosystem overview, project history, and all governance resources in a cohesive space.

📝 Proposal Templates

We created a proposal template library for proposal authors to use to create their proposals, making it clearer both for the authors what was needed in each proposal and for the community to know what to expect from each proposal.

🧹 Forum Clean Up

In an effort to enhance the user experience on the Radworks community forum, we made some upgrades to community.radworks.org. This involved the implementation of more discernible category titles and refined category descriptions to provide users with a clearer understanding of content organization.

👾 Discord Reorganization

Following the transition to the new DAO structure and Drips and Radicle teams opting to establish their respective chat servers, we embarked on a mission to enhance the Discord experience by decluttering and improving navigation. This included archiving redundant channels and introducing additional features to assist members in tracking information and updates relevant to their interests. We attempted to standardize moderation, yet additional efforts are needed to effectively handle trolls and FUD.

Foundations for the Future: Radworks

You can read the full Governance Committee Retrospective here.

The most significant accomplishment of 2023 was completing our “transition to the DAO” and evolution into Radworks. This marked a massive milestone for the community, as we witnessed Radicle and Drips successfully spin out into their own, autonomous entities and our community come together to form a new purpose and identity to take the project into this next chapter.

In preparation for the transition to the DAO that took place earlier this year, we collected contributor feedback in the form of both interviews and org model design sprints. This work ultimately led to the “Org”-focused model we have today, and shaped a new relationship with governance.

After conducting a detailed community insights analysis with Apiary in early 2023, it became clear the community was lacking a clear shared purpose to rally around after all of the organizational changes. This led to the creation and ratification of the Radworks shared purpose. This purpose acts not only as a North Star for the community to turn to for clarity in times of change, challenge, confusion, or conflict, but also acts as a guide for how we should be developing and designing governance.

With the brand transition from RadicleDAO to Radworks, we also helped create and update a multitude of community resources.

• Radworks Website radworks.org

• Radworks purpose

• Consolidated all community documentation on docs.radworks.org

• Updated the community forum community.radworks.org

• Launched new social channels

• Defined new visual identity for Radworks.

Using the newly defined purpose and feedback from the community, we feel that we are in a good place to start developing a more mission-aligned approach and strategy for evolving ecosystem governance. While a complete strategy is still in development, the foundation for this work is finally in place.

Looking forward to 2024

In 2024, the Governance Committee will refocus on governance-specific initiatives, with higher-level strategy and organizational development shifting into the hands of the newly formed Strategy Committee. We think this will greatly increase our capacity for delivering on our 2024 objectives and completing the work of our two unfinished initiatives from 2023.

Our main focus will be on incubating proposals and research to mature Radworks’ decentralized governance system, while also maintaining documentation, improving governance processes, and establishing best practices for the ecosystem, as seen in the following priorities.

1. Increase diversity of token holders & votable supply.

2. Increase governance engagement & participation.

3. Refine Radworks’ governance processes (e.g. budget disbursements, requirements & expectations, proposal templates) for 2025 proposal cycle.

4. Formalize governance risk management processes.

5. Incubate an initial treasury management strategy to implement in 2024.

(To go even deeper, see our 2024 governance initiatives.)

That’s a wrap! As you can see, it was a big restructuring year that required a lot of community facilitation. We are excited to refocus on governance in 2024, and of course, to have you along for the ride. We appreciate your feedback, guidance and advice, please keep it coming!

Yours truly,

Shelby & Abbey

The Birth and Definition of Radworks

Back in July, Radworks was announced as the community-governed network behind Radicle & Drips. The creation of Radworks reflected a reorganization of the (then) Radicle community and ecosystem in response to the evolution of the “Radicle” product into two separate products -- Radicle, a peer-to-peer network for code collaboration, and Drips, a decentralized toolkit for funding public goods.

https://radworks.mirror.xyz/PHFoG1xR98l2eZhkgr4281AaxbXnHD2iVGhip6zbmSw

This reorganization allowed us to:

1. Set up products for success. Through delineation and definition, both products orgs now have the space to execute on their own paths to adoption & product-market fit.

2. Clarify brand(s) internally & externally. Housing all ecosystem activities under one brand (“Radicle”) was causing confusion for stakeholders, including contributors, community members, and prospective users. By separating the brand into distinct parts (Radicle, Drips, and Radworks), each entity was given the opportunity to shape its own market voice and enabled stakeholders to participate and contribute with less friction.

3. Define the purpose, role, and function of the Radworks community. By naming the network, the roles and responsibilities of the Radworks treasury, community & governance system are more clearly defined.

Radworks facilitates the governance and operations necessary to achieve two primary aims:

1. Stewarding & deploying the treasury

2. Supporting the development of Radicle & Drips

Within the Radworks ecosystem, the Radicle Org maintains core development of the Radicle stack (find the team on Zulip!), while the Drips Org maintains core development of the Drips protocol & app (find the team on Discord!).

In addition, Radworks funds the work of the Better Internet Foundation, whose purpose is to support the development of resilient and humane software infrastructures. The Foundation and its contributors drive activities in 2024 that will serve three roles:

1. A Protector: The Foundation supports legal strategy, ensures operational and financial health, and promotes transparency within the Radworks ecosystem.

2. A Nurturer: The Foundation incubates proposals and research to mature Radworks’ decentralized governance system, while also maintaining documentation, improving governance processes, and establishing best practices for the ecosystem.

3. An Advocate: The Foundation advocates for resilient and humane software infrastructures, building networks of individuals, initiatives, and organizations that can educate and push (technical and cultural) adoption of these technologies.

Finally, Radworks funds the Radworks Grants Org, a program dedicated to funding third-party developers working in three key areas:

1. Integrations & tooling (IT) specific to Radworks technologies

2. Alternative interfaces for Radworks’ funded protocols

3. Community initiatives driving activities in line with the Radworks purpose

For more background and detail, learn more about Radworks and how we work.

Key Milestones Across the Radworks Orgs in 2023

Radicle

In 2023, the Radicle team moved all repositories and development from Gitub to the Radicle product. Since their migration, they’ve been exclusively using Radicle to collaborate and develop the Radicle product, and have shared and merged hundreds of patches through the Radicle network.

Key features developments include:

1. Issue and patch management

2. Public and private repository support

3. Node lifecycle management

4. Many other features across both the CLI and web interfaces!

For more information on what’s been launched, see this update from the team.

Learn more:

• New Radicle website and web client

• How Radicle is dogfooding

• Chat with Radicle on Zulip

• Follow Radicle on X

Drips

The biggest achievement in 2023 was the launch of Drips v2, which came with a shiny new website and app. Drips v2 included two huge new features — “continuous [software] dependency funding” and “awesome lists” — plus many important updates to the core experience of streaming, splitting, and claiming funds for open source software projects.

In addition, the Drips team onboarded three large-scale organizations to Drips: Octant, Funding The Commons, and Radworks. With these organizations using Drips, there is now over $1.5m streaming through the Drips protocol annually, with much more to come in 2024.

https://radworks.mirror.xyz/ABW_l2dGRuJ-iY9iYEbVTtlbQ6rvsaDw0ReQ8rkc0Bc

Learn more:

• Check out the new Drips website and app

• Read more about Dependency Funding with Drips

• Chat with Drips on Discord

• Follow Drips on X

Radworks

Within Radworks, 2023 was marked by completing its “transition to the DAO” and evolving the “RadicleDAO” into what is now call Radworks.

All core work within the Radworks ecosystem is now coordinated and funded by the Radworks treasury via the new organizational framework, and the community now operates under a collectively-defined purpose to “fund new, resilient, permissionless technologies to cultivate internet freedom”. Since then, Radworks has:

• Committed $1M in continuous funding to its critical dependencies.

• Funded eight ecosystem grants including package managers and IDE plugins and extensions for Radicle, as well as a community research report.

• Assessed & reduced risk by improving Radworks’ social & technical governance systems, analyzing current attack vectors, and pinpointing areas of centralization that impact the ecosystem’s resilience.

• Scoped and defined Radworks’ relationship with each of its Orgs, resulting in the MOUs with Radicle and Drips.

https://radworks.mirror.xyz/qopF06RBjKSEhi7HKQgYiyGGfidDAadES4bPXc8xTpE

https://radworks.mirror.xyz/_cMYmUlX6zbJbSi7J6qvD9hvSXsgiwqQi13Tbv9imuU

Learn more:

• Check out the new Radworks website, docs hub, and community forum

• Read more about how Radworks' purposes was defined

• Chat with Radworks on Discord

• Follow Radworks on X

2024: A Look Ahead

Looking ahead into 2024, the Better Internet Foundation’s newly formed Strategy Committee will shepherd key initiatives and community proposals that enable Radworks to fund new, resilient, permissionless technologies, achieve self-sustainability, and steward mission-aligned governance.

The Strategy Committee plans to research and propose an in-depth sustainability model, new treasury management strategies, and outline community-led initiatives to improve ecosystem resilience.

Finally, there are two key milestones in the product orgs:

1. Radicle 1.0 is set to release in Q1 2024 🥳Stay up to date by following Radicle on X.

2. Drips continues to onboard leading orgs that want to fund their software dependencies. Here’s how to get in touch with the team.

As 2023 comes to a close and 2024 begins, the Radworks community is grateful for your continued support of its technologies and a shared mission of a free and open internet for all. 🌱

Radworks is a community dedicated to cultivating internet freedom and is run by a decentralized governance system that is powered by a vibrant community of users & builders. Designing a governance system that serves the project’s purpose while incentivizing its participants is an ongoing challenge we’ve faced through the various phases of our “transition to the DAO.” In the process, the Governance Committee, led by Abbey and Shelby, has done its best to harness input and learnings from the Radworks community and its surrounding ecosystem to guide governance design and facilitation.

Tapping into the extensive knowledge and experience in the vibrant DAO ecosystem is one strategy we’re employing to address our 2024 governance initiatives. We started hosting Governance Geeks Gatherings during Ethereum conferences, the first having taken place during ETHDenver 2023. The purpose is to bring together other high-context DAO governance experts and operators to discuss challenges, share ideas for solutions and resources, and identify other potential collaboration opportunities.

At the latest Governance Geeks Gathering in November 2023 alongside Devconnect Istanbul, we ran a workshop focused on capturing the challenges, concerns, and initiatives that governance facilitators and designers have top of mind going into 2024. We mapped out the main governance challenges we face in great detail, and tried to outline specifications to solution formation.

Click here for the full description and summary of the last Governance Geeks Gathering Workshop! At the bottom of this post, you will find a template of questions used in the workshop for anyone who wants to run through the exercises themselves.

Key Challenges & Our Approach

For anyone who’s been in the DAO space for a while, you may notice that the problems and challenges DAO governance operators face today are not much different than those we faced when the DAO space first started booming way back in 2019. The key challenges then, which included fairly distributing influence and power to a diverse set of stakeholders, building a healthy community where contributors are motivated and properly incentivized, and having the right accountability mechanisms in place to allow for permissionless work and contributions - remain the key initiatives for today’s governance operators and designers.

However, significant progress is being made. With each passing year, the complexities of these challenges are becoming clearer, and projects are continuing to experiment with new creative mechanisms and tools. Governance operators are identifying the root of problems more clearly, which will likely lead to better solutions for these challenges. Below is a  summary of the top challenges governance operators from Radworks, MakerDAO, SafeDAO, and others are tackling in 2024.

1. Finding a Shared Purpose

A clearly defined purpose is one of the most important mechanisms for governance coordination, development strategy, and sustainability goals for Radworks & for all other decentralized communities and DAOs. Having a clearly defined purpose allows different teams/sub-DAOs to better coordinate their own strategies and initiatives to align with the shared DAO purpose. We noticed that many of the challenges we came up with as a group stemmed from the lack of a clear shared purpose/vision for the DAO. Not having a clear shared purpose leads to:

• Inability to design effective governance & incentive mechanisms

• Lower transparency on roles, responsibilities, and strategy alignment

• Difficulties finding “DAO/Product fit” (see Challenge 2 outlined below)

• Poor process for off-loading work to the community

Community participation is absolutely essential when curating a shared purpose in order to gain an understanding of the perspectives of diverse stakeholders as well as give the purpose legitimacy. For example, Radworks went through a purpose definition process earlier this year with the help of Apiary, an applied research company that advises teams on building better systems for collective, decentralized decision-making. This purpose lies at the core of all our governance initiatives.

2. Identifying DAO/Product Fit

DAOs need to create alignment across a variety of variables: with their purpose and with other factors such as their ecosystem and their community. Importantly, a DAO needs to align with the business and products it supports and is supported by. Without alignment between the DAO and its related product(s), both are distorted and momentum collapses. In the same way that a go-to-market strategy must have alignment with the ideal customer profile of a product, a DAO should seek to service the right community and compound its value proposition. To nurture this alignment, DAO leaders need to find and maintain clarity on the DAO’s mandate and relationship to the product.

In an effort to create clearer alignment between Radworks and the products it supports, the Radicle and Drips Orgs, the two products currently supported by Radworks, both produced MoUs (see Radicle MoU, Drips MoU) in addition to their 2024 Org proposals. These documents define the relationship between Radworks and the product Orgs. Specifically, they describe the grant funding terms and expectations for the Orgs’ 2024 operational funding and outlines expectations and processes for continued funding into 2025.

3. Designing for Accountability

Designing adequate accountability mechanisms that engage contributors while also providing the necessary checks and balances around decision making remains  a key challenge. To understand and design mechanisms for accountability, you first need to clearly outline the roles and responsibilities of participants. They are often not well defined or may be highly subjective and dynamic over time. A few solutions that have started to become common practice across DAOs include milestone/deliverable-based payout systems, templates for proposals, updates, and objectives/deliverables, and frequent reflections  on which processes are working and which are not. Particularly crucial is understanding the WHY behind success and failures to help calibrate for more promising future outcomes. Gathering more thorough community input, and doing so on a more frequent basis is one way we’re  planning to build in more accountable governance mechanisms in the Radworks Governance Committee in 2024.

4. Sharing Knowledge

A recurring theme in many discussions was the frustration over the absence of resource sharing among DAOs, which often results in duplicated work, inefficient problem solving and overwhelmed DAO operators trying to solve similar complex problems in isolation. It would be immensely beneficial for all governance leads and operators in the DAO space to have more opportunities to collaborate by  exchanging research, and sharing past experiences, resources, and best practices. While there may be challenges to sharing and exchanging governance practices and research between DAOs given variation in community makeup, products, and purpose, there was a strong and widespread eagerness to find more solutions for facilitating the exchange of knowledge and insights. The Governance Geeks Gatherings provide one way to do this, but solutions with more consistent tough points and concrete deliverables remain lacking between DAOs.

Next Steps

While our understanding of these challenges continues to improve, we as a decentralized industry are nowhere close to designing the perfect governance system. This will likely remain the case for years to come, perhaps in perpetuity. In the meantime, the Radworks Governance Committee, along with our colleagues at other leading DAOs, remain confident that our continued efforts to bring together fellow “governance geeks” at subsequent gatherings will continue to strengthen the overall ecosystem health and culture, bringing us ever closer to our goals of securing internet freedom for all. 🌱

Octant, a participatory public goods funding platform, has committed a total of 23.2 ETH (approximately $42k) to fund its critical software dependencies with Drips.

Octant & Drips share a commitment to strengthening the open-source ecosystem, and we’re thrilled to partner with them. James Kiernan, Head of Community & Partnerships at Octant, shared that his team sees the inherent value in funding its dependencies through Drips, and that Octant’s use of Drips is a testament to its effectiveness and reliability.

Octant is Dripping 💰 to 4 Critical Projects

Octant has emerged as a major player in public goods funding in the past year. Their approach to using decentralized governance empowers the community to get involved in decision making around funding.

In 2023, Octant has already completed two public goods funding rounds, distributing $1M in ETH in Epoch Zero in July 2023 and 258 ETH (around $464k) in October 2023 to a variety of projects, including Drips!

Funds from Octant’s Epoch Zero and Epoch One will be streamed to the four dependencies on their Drip List: Web3.py, Flask, Wagmi, and Nimbus.

Web3.py is a Python library that allows developers to interact with the Ethereum blockchain easily. Flask is a micro web framework for Python, popular for its simplicity and flexibility in developing web applications. Wagmi is a collection of React Hooks that make it easier to connect a frontend to the Ethereum blockchain, and Nimbus is an Ethereum 2.0 client optimized for resource-restricted devices, which plays a crucial role in the network's sustainability.

Our partnership with Octant is only beginning. We’re hoping to see more funding directed towards Octant’s Drip List in Epoch Two, which begins soon!

Why Octant Used Drips💧

Drips makes dependency funding possible at scale, giving projects a way to support all their dependencies at once, permissionlessly and programmatically. James Kiernan, Head of Community & Partnerships at Octant, recently went through the process of setting up the Octant dependencies and described his experience:

"I was impressed with how seamless and efficient the process was. The platform’s intuitive design made the setup straightforward because of the ability to stream funds directly to any GitHub repository or Ethereum address without intermediaries. This ease of use is crucial, not just for individual contributors like myself but also for larger organizations seeking to make a meaningful impact."

When you use Drips to stream funds to your dependencies, you're ensuring the sustainable development, stability, and ongoing improvement of essential software. With each contribution, we’re a step closer to making the 'lone maintainer' meme a thing of the past.

Fostering a Community of Support

At Drips, our goal is to create new, virtuous loops where open source developers & projects have all the funding they need to thrive.

We salute James and Octant for being early to see the value in utilizing Drips to bolster the open-source ecosystem. As he describes, “it's not just about funding; it's about fostering a community of support and collaboration that elevates the entire sector.“

If you’re interested in supporting the public goods that YOUR project depends on, we would be happy to help you get onboarded to Drips. Thanks for your ongoing support for our work and our mission✌️

Learn More & Take Action

Explore more details on Drips and other recent news:

• Radworks' Announcement of $1M in Support For Builders Using Drips

• Octant’s Drip list with their dependencies

• Set up your own Drip List

• Join the Drips Discord and get in touch

About

Octant

Octant was developed by the Golem Foundation to test various hypotheses around user control, community engagement, and participatory funding of public goods. It allows for running various governance experiments in a real-life environment and rewards user participation with ETH and is funded by staking rewards earned by the Golem Foundation’s 100,000 ETH. Every 90 days, a fraction of the staking rewards is used to fund the Octant reward pool. Follow Octant on X.

Drips 💧

Drips is an off-the-shelf solution allowing any organization or individual to provide direct and recurring financial support to the free and open source projects they depend on. Using Drips, organizations can effortlessly allocate funding to the projects they consider essential and to link their success to the success of their dependents. Follow Drips on X.

This is a watershed moment for Radworks in our journey to build a freer internet. We believe that by actively supporting our dependencies, we can enhance the resilience and sustainability of the free and open source ecosystem as a whole.

With this, Radworks becomes the first project to utilize Drips to support open source builders at scale. (That being said, we’ve heard a few whispers that several more are coming soon! 😉)

We’re Dripping 💰 to 30 Critical Projects

Supporting our critical software dependencies and the digital infrastructure that underpin our ecosystem is a cornerstone of Radworks’ purpose to cultivate a freer internet.

In September 2023, the Radworks community voted to stream $1 million from the treasury over the course of a one year period, half in our native governance token ($RAD) and half via stablecoins ($USDC).

These funds went directly to support our dependencies - the critical software packages, tools, and infrastructure that our products are dependent on.

For those less familiar, dependencies are the libraries,  frameworks, packages, etc. that all modern software relies on to function. Virtually all developers lean heavily on free & open source components that are created by other people on the Internet.. And they’re often maintained by under-funded skeleton crews or builders burning the midnight oil. That is, until Drips.

Radworks set up four Drip Lists - a master list, and 3 nested lists - one for each of our constituent orgs - Radicle, Drips and Grants. We split the $1 million in total funds between those three lists, with 45% going to Radicle’s list, 45% to Drips’ list and 10% to Grants’ list. In total, there are 30 individual software dependencies, of which 15 are from Drips, 11 are Radicle dependencies, and 4 are from Grants.

But enough about us. We’d love to highlight a couple of the amazing projects we’re proud to support: Ethers.js, Protocol Guild, and Libgit2.

Ethers.js and Protocol Guild are Drips dependencies. Ethers.js is a lightweight JavaScript library that enables interaction with the Ethereum blockchain, providing the tools to work with its data in a type-safe, and efficient manner. Protocol Guild is a collective of around 150 contributors who maintain the core infrastructure of Ethereum.

Libgit2 is a Radicle dependency, and is a cross-platform, linkable library implementation of Git anyone can use in their applications.

As you’re able to see if you navigate to Ethers.js, Protocol Guild, and Libgit2 in the Drips interface, each of these projects has already received over $10,000 from Radworks via Drips!

Why We Used Drips💧

Drips was created to reimagine the way we fund the communities and builders that we rely on for our mutual success.

And that’s exactly what we were trying to do.

Drips makes dependency funding possible at scale, giving projects a way to support all their critical software dependencies at once, permissionlessly and programmatically. With Drips, you can stream to any GitHub repository you want and they can claim the funds, whenever they want.

As Eleftherios Diakomichalis, Co-Founder of Radicle & Drips describes: "Drips’ features, such as per-second streaming, flexibility in token choice as well as its flexible identity model where funders can stream to any Git forge URL or Ethereum address, ensures a streamlined and user-friendly experience for both our DAO and the recipients of funding. Unlike other solutions, Drips makes programmatic, recurring funding easy and efficient for both individuals and groups, so it’s multiplayer by design."

By streaming with Drips, you can help ensure the sustainable development, stability, security and continuous improvement of the critical software we all depend on.

The Bigger Picture: Acknowledging & Supporting Interdependency

Radworks is funding our dependencies to the tune of $1 million because we strongly believe that our individual success is intertwined with that of the broader open source community. If you write code, we’re guessing this rings true for you as well.

As we see it, software developers are hugely dependent on each other -- or interdependent -- and our own success hinges upon the health of our dependencies, and our dependency's dependencies, and their dependencies… and so on!

A million years ago (in March 2017) we wrote the oscoin manifesto, where we highlighted a core problem with the internet that, tbh hasn’t improved much:

It was clear to us then -- and it’s very clear to us now -- that the mainstream view does not acknowledge the interdependency of all software, and that new structures & new technologies are needed to directly support the communities and open source we rely on for our success.

So we got to work, building. And the result was Drips. This brings us to today, where we can proudly say that we’re finally supporting our dependencies. 🙌

In a world where all modern digital infrastructure depends on thankless maintenance, we all need to fund our dependencies. Maybe, you could be next.

Learn More & Take Action

Explore more details and follow the journey of the initiative through Radworks governance.

• Radworks' On-chain Vote

• The Governance Proposal and Full Proposal Details

• Set up your own Drip List

• Join the Drips Discord and get in touch

About

Radworks 🌱

Radworks supports a freer internet by empowering builders with the tools & funds they need to thrive. Radworks is run by a decentralized governance system, represented by our $RAD token, and powered by our incredible community of users and builders. In addition to supporting the two product orgs (Radicle & Drips), Radworks engages in community-building activities to build awareness for builders of decentralized & open-source technologies. Follow us on X.

Drips 💧

Drips is an innovative toolkit for automatic, recurring payments that allows individuals to receive payments without intermediaries. Built on cutting-edge decentralized protocols, Drips ensures that payments are transparent and secure. By using Drips, individuals can receive payments on a recurring basis without the need for intermediaries, enabling greater financial autonomy and control. Drip list recipients may be designated using Ethereum addresses, ENS names and Git repositories, may be curated by anyone, and can be public or private. Create your own Drip list.

Radicle 👾

Radicle is a decentralized network for code collaboration that empowers developers to work together without intermediaries. Built on peer-to-peer technology, Radicle ensures transparent and immutable codebases, making them resistant to censorship and tampering. By using Radicle, developers can easily track changes made to codebases while maintaining full control over their data.

Despite the inordinate amount of time we all spend on the internet—not to mention the near infinite amount of available content—how often do we consciously consider the systems and external forces that shape the information that reaches us?

Are we allowed to explore the digital world freely, or are there hidden barriers that hinder our access, expression, and creativity?

This is the world of internet freedom, and it is the core, overarching focus of Radworks.

At Radworks, we fund new, resilient and permissionless technologies that promote an open, censorship-resistant web, in pursuit of our long-term mission.

We build towards a freer internet by empowering builders with the tools they need to thrive—an undertaking that demonstrates, reinforces, and brings awareness to the viability of decentralized and open-source technologies.

Today, our community-governed network includes two key projects: Radicle, a peer-to peer network for code collaboration, and Drips, a peer-to-peer fund sharing and splitting solution. Both products focus on making the internet more accessible, inclusive, and transparent—the foundations of a free internet. That is, as the leader of the “free software movement,” Richard Stallman, famously stated: “Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.”

As we described in the Radworks launch post, we believe that a free and open internet is a necessary foundation for a democratic and just society.

The aim of this piece is to establish what internet freedom is, outline the challenges we’re up against, share our plans to address these challenges, and enlist your support. More specifically, we’ll touch on:

• The origin of the digital landscape and how it has evolved

• The pillars comprising internet freedom

• Why a free internet matters for society

• Key challenges and headwinds facing proponents of internet freedom

• Radworks’ plan to promote internet freedom

• How you can help

We believe promoting internet freedom is critical to unlocking human innovation, collaboration, and creativity at unprecedented scale—a vision that motivates us each and every day.

History of the Digital Landscape: Core Values & Early Obstacles

The Information Processing Techniques Office, founded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and led by J.C.R. Licklider (colloquially known as “Lick”), pioneered the initial vision of a protocol-based “network of networks” that led to ARPANET and the foundations of today’s internet.

This early internet aimed to replace centralized structures with open participation and governance—a trend embodied in Paul Baran's 1964 report “On Distributed Communication,” which culminated in the World Wide Web.

In its earliest days, the internet was populated primarily with academics, researchers, and tech nerds, and underwent a metamorphosis with the advent of the World Wide Web, evolving from an academic resource into a more accessible global platform.

When the visionary Tim Berners-Lee created the first web page and browser, he unleashed a powerful tool that had the potential to promote freedom and democratic values on a global scale. Bolstered by the values imbued in its early development, the nascent digital environment soon became a canvas for creative self-expression and open communication, where individuals began to shape narratives from the bottom-up, share knowledge, and engage in global conversations.

But, as the internet turned into a truly global network and an increasingly significant part of daily life, major challenges to digital freedom began to emerge. No singular government proved capable of or willing to make the necessary policies and investments to secure the future of internet freedom. And where the public sector left gaps in authority, the private sector filled in, pursuing corporate control and providing permissioned—often gated—applications for identification, communication, association, and asset exchange.

In the face of these pressures, many founders of the early internet vocalized concerns over the possible futures of our digitally-networked lives. These included technologist Ted Nelson, originator of the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia,” who issued prescient warnings that inadequate structures built around secure information sharing and control would inevitably lead to pervasive surveillance and information siloing.

For his part, Lick also pondered the negative impact the internet could have on society, foreshadowing ills such as public distrust of government, digital misinformation, debasement of creative professions, and control by private entities of the primary platforms for speech and public discourse.

In order to ensure this new and powerful technology included proper digital rights and freedoms, it was clear to these early technologists that organized efforts must be undertaken.

Starting in the 1970s, open-source software emerged as a key component. The early software industry, which predated the internet, was beset by two concurrent forces– commercialization and opacity, Richard Stallman devised the “GNU General Public License” in part to oppose the closed nature of the Unix OS, which critically allowed users to run, study, share, and modify the underlying source code.

Eventually, in the 1997 landmark case of “Bernstein v. United States Department of State,” the courts recognized software source code as speech protected by the First Amendment, and the government's regulations preventing its publication as unconstitutional. This case highlighted the clash between technology and regulation, underscored the crucial role of code as speech, and paved the way for broader discussions on the boundaries of digital expression that we continue to face today.

More recently, social media platforms have heralded a new era of interconnectedness, offering unparalleled avenues for expression and mobilization. But these platforms have also raised questions about privacy, data misuse, and the level of influence algorithms have on the information we consume. As a result, foundational infrastructure such as distributed systems and blockchains have emerged over the past decade—technology that challenges traditional models of centralized control and offers innovative solutions to preserve individual agency in the digital realm.

In this ever-evolving landscape—in the face of countervailing forces from both the public and private sectors—the struggle for internet freedom has persisted. In the next section, we’ll attempt to break apart and define the constituent components of internet freedom that have emerged.

Defining Five Pillars of Internet Freedom

To continue the fight for internet freedom, we need to remind ourselves of the fundamental building blocks of this precious technology. What is internet freedom, exactly?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group founded over 3 decades ago, and plays a major role in defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.

According to the EFF, internet freedom refers to the ability of individuals to access and express themselves on the internet without interference or censorship.

In other words, internet freedom grants individuals a sense of agency over their digital lives, empowering them to navigate their virtual environment with autonomy.

We’ve identified five key areas that encompass internet freedom, which we will refer to as the “five pillars of internet freedom”:

1. Freedom of Expression and Speech - Internet freedom hinges on the principle of freedom of expression, allowing individuals to voice their thoughts, opinions, and creativity without fear of censorship or retribution. Online platforms provide spaces for people to share ideas, engage in debates, and contribute to a rich tapestry of digital discourse.

2. Net Neutrality - Net neutrality ensures that internet service providers treat all data equally, without discriminating based on content, source, or destination. This principle prevents the creation of digital fast lanes and preserves a level playing field for users and content providers.

3. Privacy and Data Protection - Internet freedom includes the right to privacy and control over personal data. Robust data protection measures encourage individuals to share information online while safeguarding against unauthorized access, surveillance, and misuse.

4. Innovation and Open Source Collaboration - A cornerstone of internet freedom is the ability to innovate and collaborate openly. Open source software, where code is freely shared, modified, and distributed, encourages a culture of collective problem-solving and technological advancement.

5. Access to Information and Knowledge - Internet freedom guarantees unfettered access to a vast repository of information and knowledge. This access empowers individuals to educate themselves, engage with diverse viewpoints, and contribute to informed decision-making.

We also surveyed the team members and contributors at Radworks to gather their opinions on what internet freedom means to them. Their responses included descriptions of infrastructure that is “fundamentally open” and “community-governed,” rather than controlled by giant corporations. Ensuring global accessibility, censorship-resistance, and the sovereign ownership of data—meaning it cannot be seized or sold—were further highlighted as necessary features of a genuinely free internet.

But why should we care about internet freedom in the first place? And what are some of the broader implications of internet freedom for individuals, communities, and societies?

Why Internet Freedom Matters

In a world where digital interactions are seamlessly woven into the fabric of everyday life, the concept of internet freedom emerges as a cornerstone of social progress. Beyond the realm of technology, internet freedom carries far-reaching implications that shape the way we communicate, learn, innovate, and advocate for change.

Here, we outline various examples of the roles internet freedom has played in fostering positive outcomes for individuals and communities.

Catalyst for Expression and Innovation: By removing the physical barriers between networks and establishing common protocols for sharing information across diverse environments, the internet has had a profound impact on the way individuals express themselves. And by opening and pooling the intellectual resources of individuals and organizations, the internet fosters competition and innovation. For example, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to which we’ve liberally linked throughout this piece, enables a diverse set of contributors to freely share and pool their knowledge. This ultimately fosters competition, redefines information dissemination, and leads to credibly neutral, high quality, and thorough results.

Gateway to Knowledge and Learning: The internet democratizes access to knowledge and education on an unprecedented scale, allowing platforms like Khan Academy, Internet Archive, and online universities to offer free resources that transcend geographical barriers. Internet freedom ensures that individuals can explore subjects of interest, engage in self-directed learning, and collaborate with experts, regardless of their location or background.

Fuel for Economic Opportunities and Entrepreneurship: In the digital economy, internet freedom is the driving force behind economic opportunities and entrepreneurship, and platforms like Etsy, Airbnb, Mercado Libre, and other digital marketplaces that allow individuals to become creators, sellers, and service providers. Internet freedom fuels innovation by enabling startups to reach global audiences and disrupt traditional industries.

Platform for Advocacy and Social Change: Internet freedom promotes advocacy and social change by providing a platform for marginalized voices and grassroots movements. The #MeToo movement, born on social media, spotlighted issues of gender inequality and ignited conversations that reverberated worldwide. And consider the Arab Spring—a series of transformative movements across the Middle East that harnessed the power of social media to spark social and political change. The ability to communicate, organize, and share information online has both empowered individuals and mobilized communities to challenge norms and drive systemic change.

Network of Global Connectivity and Solidarity: The digital world erases geographical barriers, fostering a sense of global interconnectedness. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the internet emerged as a lifeline, connecting people, disseminating crucial information, and enabling remote work and education. A free internet allows for maintaining critital social connections and building solidarity across disparate populations, which is particularly important during global crises.

In our rapidly changing world, internet freedom isn't just a concept. It drives social progress, nurtures innovation, and amplifies the voices of the unheard. As the digital era advances, understanding and advocating for internet freedom becomes paramount in shaping an inclusive, equitable, and empowered global community.

And yet, many of the threats to society posed by the internet and ruminated on by its creators—warnings that were issued even as the internet had begun to fulfill their very own dreams of freedom and decentralization—continue to play out.

Challenges Facing Proponents of Internet Freedom

As the technology has evolved, so have the challenges to the resilience of internet freedom. The internet, once envisioned as a bastion of freedom, has become a battleground where the principles of expression clash with the dynamics of power. Building towards a freer digital environment requires a nuanced understanding of the obstacles that stand in the way, some of which we will illustrate here.

Surveillance and Privacy Erosion: The proliferation of surveillance technologies raises concerns about individual privacy and autonomy. Mass surveillance programs—often conducted under the guise of national security, as we’ve learned from the legacy of Edward Snowden—cast a shadow over the internet, challenging the very notion of private online interactions. The Apple-FBI encryption dispute underscores the tension between privacy, security, and law enforcement access to encrypted communications.

Censorship and Content Restrictions: Governments and institutions across the globe have attempted to exert control over digital spaces through censorship and content restrictions. Instances such as the “Great Firewall of China” illustrate how authorities can filter, block, or manipulate information, limiting access to certain websites and stifling open discourse.

Corporate Control and Digital Monopolies: The concentration of power in the hands of tech giants raises questions about corporate control and digital monopolies. Platforms that dominate the digital space wield significant influence over information flows, content moderation, and user behavior, prompting discussions about fair competition and user empowerment.

Threats to Net Neutrality: The principle of net neutrality, which ensures equal access to online content, faces threats from practices like data throttling, fast lanes, and zero-rating. These practices can distort the level playing field, favoring certain types of content or users and potentially stifling innovation.

Ensuring Universal Access: Access to the internet remains uneven across the world. Millions still lack connectivity, especially in emerging nations, as social, economic, and geopolitical dynamics continually threaten to reduce access. Addressing this digital divide is essential to ensure that internet freedom is a reality for all, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographical location. As Lick, together with another internet pioneer, Robert Taylor, wrote in 1968:

“The [internet’s] impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on the question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a privilege or a right? If only a favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage of ‘intelligence amplification,’ the network may exaggerate the discontinuity in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.

On the other hand, if the network idea should prove to do for education what a few have envisioned in hope, if not in concrete detailed plan, and if all minds should prove to be responsive, surely the boon to humankind would be beyond measure.” (source)

Surmounting & tackling the above challenges, among others, will require a multifaceted approach that includes a myriad of stakeholders, including governments, civil society, the tech industry, and individuals.

In the next section, we outline our own plan to foster a freer internet, and fulfill our commitment to an open and inclusive digital future.

How Radworks Will Promote Internet Freedom

At Radworks, we’re steadfast in our commitment to advancing the principles of internet freedom and shaping a digital future where openness, innovation, and individual rights are paramount.

Our mission is to empower individuals, communities, and organizations to harness the full potential of the internet, while upholding the fundamental values of openness, inclusivity, and transparency. We believe that internet freedom is the cornerstone of a thriving digital society, and we are dedicated to promoting this freedom for present and future generations.

We will work towards accomplishing these goals through a combination of the following initiatives:

• Advocacy and education: Through campaigns, workshops, and partnerships—as well as support for open-source projects—we contribute to raising awareness about the importance of internet freedom.

• Technological and Financial Empowerment: We develop and support solutions—such as Radicle and Drips—that advance the frontier of technological innovation, allow open-source developers to more effectively earn in exchange for their code, and bolster internet freedom.

• Community Engagement: Our endeavors are not solitary pursuits—they are part of a broader movement that spans continents and cultures. We will strive to promote diverse communities and foster a sense of collective action through grassroots initiatives, online forums, and local events.

• Local Empowerment, Global Change: By participating in and engaging with both local and international initiatives, we hope to catalyze conversations that resonate globally and contribute to an ecosystem of digital empowerment.

We believe internet freedom isn't just a luxury—it's a necessity. It's the lifeline that connects us to knowledge, enables us to share our stories, and empowers us to challenge norms. It's the cornerstone of innovation, entrepreneurship, and social change, uniting individuals from diverse backgrounds in a common quest for progress.

Concluding Remarks & How You Can Help

While the concept of internet freedom has emerged as our north star—a beacon that drives us to work towards an inclusive and exciting future—it remains a moving target. A myriad of dynamic external forces regularly shift beneath our feet.

As new technologies emerge, corporations vie for dominance, and geopolitical entities and relations evolve, both the definition of internet freedom, and the objectives that come with it, change, which poses persistent limitations in our pursuits.

We simultaneously acknowledge that we are not alone in our ambitions, and that our efforts rest on the shoulders of giants—individuals and organizations, both past and present, that have endeavored and achieved so much in the name of internet freedom and digital rights.

As such, we extend an invitation—a call to action that echoes across borders and resonates in the heart of every digital citizen. We invite you to join the collective movement to push the boundaries of internet freedom forward.

Here’s how you can start contributing:

• Engage with the Champions of Internet Freedom: Organizations and NGOs such as the EFF, World Wide Web Foundation, Freedom House, Internet Freedom Foundation, and Open Technology Fund continually publish research and advocate for a free and open web. The first step towards action is staying educated on global developments and supporting initiatives that impact the digital landscape.

• Advocate for Change: Participate in both online and IRL discussions and events,  such as those promoted by Team CommUNITY, The European Digital Rights (EDRi) network, and Ranking Digital Rights (the independent research program founded by Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom). Connect with others to help raise awareness about the importance of internet freedom and the networks that support it.

• Support Open Source: Embrace and contribute to open source projects that foster innovation, transparency, and user empowerment. You can start by referencing this guide published by the Linux Foundation—a non-profit organization that supports open-source software projects. By collaborating on open source initiatives, you play a role in shaping the digital tools of tomorrow.

Together, we can collectively become architects of an internet that respects individual autonomy, celebrates creativity, and upholds the principles of democracy.

We invite you to join us on this journey to preserve and expand the frontiers of internet freedom, ensuring the online world remains a realm of boundless possibilities, accessible to all.

“It is in this light that we must recognize that only a restoration of open-source culture, and all that enables across the full spectrum of open-source possibilities, can allow humanity to harness the distributed intelligence of the collective and create the equivalent of heaven on Earth — in other words, a world that works for all.”

— The Open-Source Everything Manifesto

Today, we’re excited to announce the start of the next chapter in our long march towards a freer internet: Radworks.

Radworks is the community-governed network behind Radicle, a peer-to peer network for code collaboration & Drips, a peer-to-peer fund sharing & splitting solution.

We believe a free and open internet is a necessary foundation for a democratic and just society, and we’re dedicated to making this brighter future our reality. We’re committed to funding new, resilient & permissionless technologies that promote internet freedom.

Radworks is run by a decentralized governance system represented by the $RAD token and powered by our incredible community of users and builders.

Where We’ve Been…

Throughout the past several years, we’ve evolved from a single code-collaboration product called “Radicle” to a broader community-governed network that funds several new technologies that cultivate internet freedom.

These technologies we support are represented by Orgs within the Radworks ecosystem. They exist as independent entities that are funded by the Radworks treasury. The technologies we currently fund are:

• Radicle 👾 is a peer-to-peer network for code collaboration, built on Git

• Drips 💧 offers peer-to-peer fund sharing and splitting, powered by Ethereum

The Radworks community and more specifically, $RAD token-holders, collectively manage the Radworks treasury via an on-chain decentralized governance system. They are responsible for funding & supporting Orgs that align with the Radworks purpose.

Where We’re Headed…

In addition to funding Radicle and Drips, Radworks aims to engage in community-building activities to demonstrate, reinforce, and bring awareness to the viability of decentralized & open-source technologies. As we move forward, we’re focusing on three key areas:

1. Securing internet freedom for everyone. Why? Internet accessibility and freedom is a fundamental human right. At Radworks, we know that our Internet is only free because builders fight to keep it that way. We intend to use our resources to support them every step of the way.

2. Helping independent builders secure sustainable funding & thrive financially.
   We want to live in a world where the best developers are building open-source and making a great living. To get there, we’ll help builders get funding for what they want to build for the world. We believe in supporting developers and helping them maintain ownership & control over their code, no matter where they live and work.

3. Celebrating & empowering open source builders. We believe that empowering builders produces better outcomes. We will find, learn from, and amplify the stories of builders who are fighting for a freer internet. We know that progress is made by creating software & products that challenge the status quo and protect digital human rights.

We recently went through a community-led process to articulate our purpose, mission, and values. We will continue to partner with individuals and organizations who share these values. After all, they brought us here and are what will motivate us moving forward.

Join Us in Cultivating a Freer Internet 🌱

With Radworks as the connective tissue between Radicle, Drips, and the rest of our ecosystem, we're excited to unlock a clearer focus and a stronger identity for each of our projects. We believe this change will enable us to better serve our community, achieve our goals, and promote internet freedom for all.

We invite you to follow us on Twitter, visit our new Radworks website, and learn more about our projects in our docs hub.

Thank you for your unwavering support of our organization, our products, and — most importantly — our shared mission of a free and open internet for all. We’re excited to continue to build alongside each and every one of you!

About Us

Radicle 👾

Radicle is a decentralized network for code collaboration that empowers developers to work together without intermediaries. Built on peer-to-peer technology, Radicle ensures transparent and immutable codebases, making them resistant to censorship and tampering. By using Radicle, developers can easily track changes made to codebases while maintaining full control over their data.

Drips 💧

Drips is an innovative toolkit for automatic, recurring payments that allows individuals to receive payments without intermediaries. Built on cutting-edge decentralized protocols, Drips ensures that payments are transparent and secure. By using Drips, individuals can receive payments on a recurring basis without the need for intermediaries, enabling greater financial autonomy and control.

Radworks 🌱

Radworks supports a freer internet by empowering builders with the tools & funds they need to thrive. Radworks is run by a decentralized governance system, represented by our $RAD token, and powered by our incredible community of users and builders.

In addition to supporting the two product orgs (Radicle & Drips), Radworks engages in community-building activities to build awareness for builders of decentralized & open-source technologies.

At the beginning of 2023, we embarked on a research project to better understand the (then called) Radicle community’s composition, motivations, and team dynamics. At the time, it was clear the organization needed to evolve its operations and governance to better achieve its objectives. Before making such significant changes, we wanted to ensure we really understood the goals, needs, and values of the Radicle ecosystem members.

We partnered with Apiary to research our community with the interest of understanding:

• How does the community understand and identify with the organization’s purpose?

• Who comprises the Radicle community? What are their driving motivations and incentives for participation?

• What is the environment within which the community is operating? What are the constraints, incentive structures, and behaviors needed for the network to succeed?

• Do people understand the current governance system and how it functions?

Apiary conducted multiple stakeholder interviews and did a deep analysis of existing documentation. The research surfaced several valuable insights from the community – about its culture, organizational processes, and opportunities for improvement.

One key insight was that community members felt they lacked a clear understanding of Radicle’s purpose. What united the community was a shared vision for a free and open internet, enabled through open-sourced technology. Beyond this vision, stakeholders were unsure about the specific role Radicle sought to play in realizing a freer and more open internet. Its purpose lacked definition, making it challenging for individuals to understand how their contributions served a greater goal, which in turn hindered community cohesion and individual participation. This insight, coupled with the decision to evolve Radicle’s brand, prompted the DAO (now referred to as Radworks) to define its purpose.

The Purpose of a Purpose

The purpose serves to constitute the organization, codifying what we believe in, why we are in collaboration, and what impact we seek to have. In doing so, the purpose seeks to:

• Define Radworks’ specific role in contributing to a free and open internet.

• Outline parameters around Radworks and its relationship to the  community.

• Memorialize why Radworks exists, so that the community can return to this raison d’être for clarity in times of change, challenge, confusion, or conflict.

• Serve as a North Star for governance, legitimizing what decisions we make, how we make them, and enabling the community to hold itself accountable.

As such, the purpose statement shouldn’t be read as marketing material, but rather as Radworks’ North Star, which is intended to be:

• Lived, guiding and informing the organization and its decisions.

• Measured, ensuring that the community is fulfilling its purpose over time.

• Adaptable, so as not to hinder the organization as it faces new challenges and conditions.

• Understood and owned by its stakeholders.

• Integrated into the Radworks’ structures, processes, and identity.

Design Process

Drafting Radworks’ purpose was a three-part process.

Part 1 - Facilitated process with founders & core team

Apiary facilitated a 2.5 day in-person workshop for Alexis, Abbey, Sean, Ele, and Ange, integrating learnings from the Insights Report into the conversation to explore the organization, its purpose, culture, and structures. Goals of the facilitation were:

• Define a purpose statement that can be communicated to and iterated on with the community and integrated into the Radworks’ operations and governance.

• Draft a list of core values to be workshopped and owned by the community.

Facilitation was structured around 4 core questions:

• What is the problem the DAO seeks to solve?

• What political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, environmental, and legal factors are important for and to the DAO?

• What does the DAO believe?

• What does the DAO give?

These questions built on one another and led to an exercise where the group collectively drafted a purpose statement for Radworks. The outcome of the workshop was a draft purpose statement.

Part 2 - Community interviews and input

The draft purpose statement was then brought to a select group of community members for feedback. This group was selected from the research Apiary conducted in Q1 2023. We selected community members based on their role in the organization, demonstrated commitment to the project, and for having voiced concerns or dissenting opinions during the research process. The goal was to surface any confusion, tension, or disagreements with the draft purpose statement. The purpose statement was revised and iterated based on this community feedback.

Part 3 - Ratification

The community will have the opportunity to ratify the Radworks purpose in an on-going process using Radicle. Signatures can be submitted by community committee members to signal their commitment to Radworks’ purpose and community. You can ratify the Radworks purpose using Radicle by following the steps here.

The Purpose of Radworks 🌱

The Radworks purpose is hosted on Radicle. You can find it on seed.radworks.org in the radworks-governance project or by clicking here.

Preamble

The purpose serves to constitute Radworks, memorializing what we believe and the community’s raison d’etre. It’s intended as a living document: a North Star that the community can return to for clarity in times of change, challenge, confusion, or conflict. If successful, this document will help protect and further Radworks’ purpose over time as we collectively navigate change.

Foundational Beliefs

1. Freedom - That technology should be developed to promote freedom and privacy, no matter where you are in the world.

2. Decentralization - That the internet should be decentralized and governed by its users, rather than controlled by governments or corporations.

3. Privacy - That technologies should be developed to protect individual privacy and prevent surveillance.

4. Accessibility - That technologies and information should be open and accessible to everyone, regardless of financial status or location.

5. Community - That technology should be developed to promote and harness community, collaboration, and peer-to-peer networks.

6. Resilience - That technology should be developed to be resistant to censorship, capture, and anti-competitive forces.

7. Sustainability - That technology should be developed with a long-term perspective, and should prioritize technical and financial sustainability.

Purpose Statement

Radworks funds new, resilient, permissionless technologies to cultivate internet freedom. We focus on funding and supporting the creation of censorship-resistant and decentralized technologies that empower builders and creators to collaborate. We are committed to enabling individuals and communities to collaborate in the digital realm securely and freely.

Radworks is focused on…

1. Ecosystem health - Governing and operating with the goals of increasing the health of the ecosystem, improving the diversity of token holders and network participants, and supporting the long-term sustainability and resiliency of the ecosystem.

2. Technical principles - Ensuring we uphold and promote our technical principles through our funding and activities.

3. Cultural development - Supporting the creation of a culture that is conducive to internet freedom through education and community engagement.

4. Demonstrating the viability of open source alternatives - Demonstrating the viability (in cost, labor, quality, and resiliency) of open-source software and its development by distributed organizations and communities as an alternative to conventionally funded, owned, and centrally controlled tech corporations.

5. Organizational ethos - Operating and governing Radworks in a manner that reflects the values we seek to support and promote through our activities. These are codified in our organizational principles.

Please join us in ratifying the Radworks purpose here to show your support for cultivating a better and freer Internet 🌱

The Radworks purpose is hosted on Radicle. You can find it on seed.radworks.org in the radworks-governance project or by clicking here.

This is a quick onboarding guide for ratifying the Radworks purpose doc with Radicle! It will walk you through the steps of installing radicle, cloning a project, and submitting a patch.

To start, open up your terminal!

1. Install radicle

    sh <(curl -sSf https://radicle.xyz/install)
   

2. Follow the instructions on installation: Run source ~/.profile or open a new terminal, then run rad auth.

3. Start your local node and connect it to seed.radworks.org

   rad node start -- --connect z6MksA6UnYhEzXPqHrG4Mz7m3qwzfFCaM1BhVK9LGRHZZxek@seed.radworks.org:8776
   

4. Clone the radworks-governance repository to your machine

    rad clone rad:zPUsinVa3gP71g6Dt47LP76phAWd
   

5. Enter the directory

    cd radworks-governance
   

6. Create a new branch

   git checkout -b ratification-<INSERT YOUR NAME>
   

7. Open the purpose.md file in your editor of choice, or directly in the terminal with:

    vim purpose.md i
   

8. Add the following to the bottom of the page:

   🌱 <INSERT YOUR INITIALS/NAME/HANDLE>If editing with vim, press Esc key to exit edit mode, then type :qa to quit.

9. Add and commit your changes

   git add .
   git commit -m "Ratification for <INSERT YOUR NAME>"
   

10. Open a patch to get your ratification merged into the project

    git push rad -o patch.message="Ratification of Purpose" -o patch.message="I am a Radworks community member and I ratify this purpose." HEAD:refs/patches
    

Once successful you should see something along the lines of:

Patch 036702eadf68385bcb708baeef571f6dba6f9a0f opened

Thanks for joining us in our quest to cultivate a better and freer internet! 🌱

The Radicle project has released its native governance token, making it the first open-source, community-led, and self-sustaining network for software collaboration.

• The Radicle token is live! The official contract address is: 0x31c8eacbffdd875c74b94b077895bd78cf1e64a3

• 50% of the total supply will be allocated to Radicle community members and users over time through the network’s treasury.

• An open proposal to make 3.75% of the total supply available on a Balancer Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool is live for voting. If it passes, it will trigger a two-day community distribution where all proceeds will be claimed by the Radicle Treasury.

The Radicle project was established with two main objectives:

1. Develop resilient collaboration infrastructure that respects users freedoms, without a reliance on trusted gatekeepers nor on corporate or state overlords.

2. Use the newly developed sovereign financial infrastructure (Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi) in order to create new value flows for developers and grow the digital commons.

To accomplish both objectives there has always been one prerequisite: make Radicle self-sustainable.

With over 1000 projects already published to the network and an average growth of 8% week-to-week in its public beta, the Radicle project is ready to decentralize the network among its community and begin the quest towards self-sustainability.

Why a token?

While the arguments for sovereignty and censorship-resistance continue to strengthen, the case for decentralization goes beyond the tech. In the current era of the closed-source web, users have relinquished control of their privacy and software freedoms for a free and convenient gateway into the open Internet. Now, they are looking for alternatives as our global social platforms deteriorate due to societal pressure, lack of innovation, and the relentless extraction necessary to satisfy stakeholders.

In this reality, building Radicle within the traditional paradigm, as for example a SaaS or open-core company, would force users to remain in a customer/corporation relationship, leaving them vulnerable to eventual extraction. Additionally, if Radicle is to be resilient collaboration infrastructure that truly respects user freedoms, it needs to be developed with trust-minimization in mind, be accessible to anyone in the world, all while remaining adaptive and competitive in a market with well-funded mega-corporations. The only way out of this pattern is to build free and open source networks that are self-sustaining and community owned.

Operating by these constraints, Radicle recognizes token-based sustainability models as the most promising path forward. More specifically, it’s the emergence of governance primitives within crypto-networks that present a new design space for engineering community-owned open-source protocols & networks. These primitives provide a foundation for a truly "open" open-source world, not one bound by arbitrary walls.

For these reasons, the Radicle project will be moving forward as an open-source, community-led, and self-sustaining network for software collaboration. This vision will be realized by Radicle’s Ethereum integration — a set of open protocols that complement the Radicle peer-to-peer network. Its smart contract system enables unique global names, decentralized organizations, and experiences that help maintainers sustain their open-source work. The integration’s smart contract system will be decentralized with the Radicle token — a governance token that will enable the collective governance and long-term sustainability of the Radicle network.

How it works

The Radicle token (RAD) is designed as a governance token that enables a number of Ethereum-based features as well as the communal ownership, collective governance, and long-term sustainability of the Radicle network.

In short, the economic model of the Radicle token subjects users to fees when they interact with certain Ethereum-based protocols, unless they are members (token-holders). By buying (or being rewarded) and holding an amount of tokens, users can avoid (or have discounted) fees and participate in the governance of the network. Members maintain governing control over all Ethereum-based smart contracts and most importantly, the Radicle Treasury which holds more than > 50% of the total token supply.

Anyone can become a member by buying and holding an amount of Radicle tokens, in exchange for the following benefits:

• Discounted or no fees when interacting with Radicle's Ethereum-based protocols.

• The right to participate in the governance (through voting and proposals) of the Radicle smart contract system.

By giving Radicle users a functional reason to hold the token, they can experience the benefits of governance and start establishing a new paradigm for the communal ownership of digital open-source infrastructure. If, for any reason, they are unhappy with the network, they can “voice” concerns by participating in governance or they can “exit” by selling their tokens to the market.

Governance

The Radicle governance module is a Compound fork and gives owners the right to participate in the governance of the Radicle smart contract system. Explicitly, this means members can control and parameterize their membership experiences — whether it's by changing fees, upgrading contracts, or introducing new experiences.

The Compound governance module was chosen because it's battle tested, audited, and balances executive power with community participation through its liquid delegation scheme.

Similar to Compound, each RAD token is equal to one vote and voting is enabled by delegating voting rights to the address (or addresses) of the token holder's choice:

• The owner’s own wallet, if they would like to vote on their own.

• Another user's wallet, if they would like the other user to vote on their behalf.

• No wallet, if they don't want to vote.

Anybody with 1% of RAD delegated to their address can propose a governance action. Proposals are executable code, not suggestions for a team or foundation to implement. All proposals are subject to a 3-day voting period, and any address with voting power can vote for or against the proposal

✨ Delegation is live today on gov.radicle.network.

Radicle Treasury

Similar to other decentralized protocols, opting-in to some of Radicle’s Ethereum features incurs network fees. These fees accrue in the Radicle Treasury, a smart contract where 50% of the overall token supply exists.

The Treasury is entirely controlled by Radicle token holders via the Radicle DAO. Members will support the long-term sustainability of the network by coordinating the distribution of the Treasury’s supply via community programs and initiatives. These community programs (e.g. developer mining, contributor rewards, grants etc…) will emerge organically through the Radicle community as Radicle members use the Treasury to continuously support the growth and resilience of the network.

The network’s code and treasury of assets are publicly managed, allowing any developer to contribute to and influence the direction of the project, making Radicle an experiment in collective governance.

Token Allocation and Release Schedule

100M Radicle tokens (fixed) have been minted at genesis and will be vested over the course of 4 years.

• 50% Community Treasury (vesting over 4 years)

• 19% Team (4 year vesting from join date, 1 year lock-up from genesis)

• 20% Early Supporters (1 year lock-up*)

• 5% Foundation (1 year lock-up)

• 2% Seeders Program (1 year lock-up*)

• ~4% Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool**

* The lock-up release schedule varies based on jurisdiction. ** currently in proposal mode, if it passes immediately available

The Radicle project is supported by a group of amazing early supporters including Placeholder, Galaxy, NFX, Electric, Parafi, Hypersphere, BlueYard, 1kx and more. In addition, we have the support of multiple individuals like Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, Fred Ehrsam, Meltem Demirors as well as founders of crypto projects like Aave, The Graph, PolkaDot, Coinmarketcap, and CoinGecko.

How to get involved

There is an active proposal in Radicle governance that triggers a liquidity bootstrapping event. If passed, 3.75% of total supply will be put in a Liquidity Bootstrapping pool. Please refer to gov.radicle.network for more details.

We will tweet the contract address from our official Twitter account the day of the distribution if the proposal passes.

Drop into the #token channel on our Matrix or subscribe to our Telegram channel (@radicleworld) to discuss all things RAD.

Join our community forum, radicle.community, to discuss governance and Radicle development.

Contracts

• Radicle Token: 0x31c8eacbffdd875c74b94b077895bd78cf1e64a3

• Governance: 0x690e775361AD66D1c4A25d89da9fCd639F5198eD

• Timelock: 0x8dA8f82d2BbDd896822de723F55D6EdF416130ba

• Genesis: 0x6838f63899728816f602B3e9bF73952e2bD6dc35

• Registrar: 0x37723287Ae6F34866d82EE623401f92Ec9013154

• Radicle Token Icon

When coming to Radicle from a centralized code collaboration network like GitHub or Gitlab, users might be puzzled by Radicle’s unique social model at first. In contrast to centralized code collaboration platforms, on Radicle:

1. Peers are in control of their social interactions

2. Each peer effortlessly self hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow that they are interested in

3. Peers have subjective views over the projects they follow

This post attempts to contextualize the Radicle social model, the trade-offs it makes, and how it differs from the models of well-known centralized platforms.

The Web2 Social Model

In most Web2 social networks:

• Your content is global by default

• Your service provider is in control of your content (what you post), your identity, and your access

• Your service provider is in control of your social interactions. Practically, this means your service provider can determine what is spam and who you are allowed to interact with.

In exchange you get:

• A “privately owned public space”, where you can discover & interact with any public piece of content or user on the network, as long as it is allowed by your service provider.

• Convenience, as spam filtering & content moderation is mostly done for you (email and gmail are the best example of spam filtering, while the global feeds of Facebook and Twitter are examples of content moderation at scale)

When it comes to code collaboration, the former has proven to be significant to the growth of free and open-source sofware, as any user can a) consume any (public) project within centralized code collaboration networks and b) interact with any project within the network, by submitting patches or issues, creating branches or participating in the discussion (commenting).

The Radicle Social Model

In contrast to the common Web2 model of collaboration described above, Radicle prioritizes different concerns:

• People being in control of their identity

• People being in control of their content

• People being in control of their social interactions

You can read more about why we consider these concerns a priority here.

Designing our protocol, Radicle Link, to satisfy these constraints led us to a new model for collaboration that might be familiar to the free and open-source hackers of the 90s and early 2000s — one that is radically different from that presented by well-known Web2 platforms.

Protocol design

Radicle Link is a peer-to-peer gossip protocol with a generic distributed version control backend. It aims to be general enough to be used on top of systems such as pijul or mercurial, though its initial implementation is focused on supporting Git.

The protocol disseminates Git repositories via gossip-based replication, enabling the hosting and sharing of repositories without reliance on central servers.

In practice, Radicle Link distinguishes between two types of identities: personal and project. The first describes an actor in the system, while the second describes a (software) project on which one or more actors collaborate.

In Radicle:

• Peers follow other peers.

• Peers track projects they are interested in.

• Peers gossip about projects. This means tracking and replicating objects from the peers they follow, about the projects they are interested in.

f you have already interacted with other decentralized social networks, this model might remind you of Secure Scuttlebutt. In fact, Radicle is inspired by SSB's design but diverges from it in a few ways, mainly a) Radicle is operating on DAGs, not a single linear feed and b) the Radicle “identity” is not just the public key associated with that feed, but a delegation scheme that allows you to talk about N projects and M persons. To learn more about how Radicle Link works, see our docs.

Implications for end-user experience

The way Radicle Link disseminates data has certain implications for the end-user experience:

• Your social graph determines what type of content you see, interact with, and replicate

  • Assuming you have discovered a project of interest within the Radicle network, then the first thing you have to do in order to interact with it is to track it. Tracking a project signals interest, and by design implies tracking the project’s maintainers, therefore replicating the data within their social graphs.

  • In the context of a project, maintainers of a repository may choose to track the views of other owners (this is called a remote in Git terminology: a named reference to a remote repository). If the remote repository is found to track other remotes, the tracking repository shall also transitively track those, up to a configurable N degrees out (currently in the works).

• Spam and content moderation is naturally handled by the peer’s social graph

  • While this might appear confusing at first, self-moderation is a far more natural model for moderation as it actually mimics real-life communication. By design, it addresses the issues of Web2 content moderation, which are currently handled by biased algorithms or dependent on central hosting.

  • On Radicle, a spammer’s patches or issues will never be tracked by the actual maintainers and as a result, they won’t be seen by the rest of the network (unless explicitly tracked). Similarly, if you are not interested in a peer’s views or contributions to a project, you can simply un-follow them, which stops replication, and ensures you (or your connected peers!) don’t have to view and interact with their data.

• Within the same project, two peers might have diverging views

  • The above design also means that even within the same project, peers have subjective (and often diverging) views.

  • At a minimum, your view of a project becomes the sum of the views of the people you follow, plus the views of the maintainers of the project. In addition, you can expand your perspective by configuring your replication settings to also transitively track other remotes N degrees out from the peers you follow (i.e. peers of your peers / remotes of your remotes) (currently work in progress).

  • This design also addresses the significant problem with decentralized systems relying exclusively on distributed ledger technology, sometimes referred to as “blockchain poisoning”. This is when someone deliberately adds illegal content to an append-only source in hopes to make the sole act of replicating the project legally problematic, as correctly pointed out by Konstantin Ryabitsev of the Linux foundation with regards to a previous version of Radicle that was relying on IPFS.

But what about the “public square”?

While the above design addresses critical problems around user sovereignty, censorship resistance, and spam & content moderation, new challenges emerge.

Specifically, the main challenges that arise from the above design are 1) discoverability, and 2) the ability to contribute to any project within the network. Both have proven to be very important to the growth of free and open-source software, so it’s important to ensure they are taken into account.

Discovery

While Radicle is not designed to be global by default for the reasons explained above, we complemented Radicle Link’s design with opt-in solutions that can enhance any peer’s ability to discover new projects and other users within the network. In order to do so, we’ve introduced two additional concepts:

• Seed nodes

  • Seed nodes are always-on nodes that ensure data-availability in the network by serving content over the gossip protocol. Anyone can run a seed node and have it serve the content they choose. Seed nodes are just regular nodes without a user identity.

  • If they have a stable network address, they serve as entry nodes to the network. Many models of running a seed are imaginable: shared “home servers” (a la fediverse), commercial services, pinning nodes and more.

• An Ethereum-based registry

  • To complement the replication layer we designed an opt-in registry which holds canonical project metadata. This allows projects to anchor important information—such as project state and repository head—with the guarantee of global availability and immutability.

  • As a peer, you will be able to create an account within the Radicle Registry, attest your Radicle Link identity and anchor project information there. (Our Ethereum integration will be covered in detail in an upcoming post, as it enables many more things beyond project anchoring)

Contributing to projects within the network

As explained above, when you are contributing to another project within Radicle, your contributions (patches, issues, branches etc.) might not be visible to the project’s maintainers or other contributors, if no-one in their network is following you.

While this model for collaboration is desirable for some — controlling the visibility & interactivity of content is actually a growing trend even within Web2 platforms (see recent changes on twitter and instagram) — we realize that it might be a limitation for others.

For maintainers of projects who are interested in allowing contributions from peers outside their social graph, all they have to do is to follow seed nodes that promote policies conducive to their preferences. While it’s unclear what kind of seed node policies will emerge over time, combining seed node functionality with the Ethereum radicle registry (that has the benefit of sybil resistance) has the potential to serve multiple models and needs for collaboration, all within the same network.

Finally, it’s important to note that you will be able to see if a project you’re interested in contributing to accepts contributions from only the maintainers’ social graph or from other peers within the network. This empowers maintainers to adjust the preference of their projects accordingly to guide & support their contributors.

Behind every repository is a version control system—the most popular of these being Git, created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds for the development of the Linux kernel. Git marked the rise of distributed version control systems as developers realized the centralized model of SVN and CVS didn't scale well with the number of contributors. In fact, Git was only created when Linus’ free Bitkeeper license was revoked after a Linux kernel contributor tried to reverse engineer its networking protocols. Git brought distributed version control to the forefront and changed the way software is developed today.

Code collaboration platforms, or "forges", started building on top of Git: they introduced search and discovery, canonicity, and social collaboration (issues & code review) to Git-based workflows, albeit not always following the same distributed model that Git was designed for.

Radicle was designed to provide this same functionality while retaining Git’s peer-to-peer nature, building on what made distributed version control so powerful in the first place.

Git gossips well

The earliest version of Radicle adopted a generalized approach to replication—it wasn’t tailored to replicating collaboration artifacts or source code and as we discovered, was ill-suited to the demands of real-world code collaboration.

On the other hand, the current iteration is specifically designed for this use case. The most outstanding difference is the decision to use Git as our storage and replication layer, instead of a decentralized storage network such as IPFS. In our experimentation with decentralized storage, we realized that replicating Git repos on the storage layer didn't permit the use of packfiles, one of the key protocols that makes Git useable at scale. Essentially, this approach would make source code a second-class citizen— making it impractical to store repositories with large histories. The reason is simple: the packfile protocol is interactive, which means before data is transferred between two parties, they determine exactly what needs to be sent over the wire, and the server puts together a packfile on the fly, before sending it downstream. This incredibly efficient approach isn't compatible with simple file storage protocols such as IPFS, which operate on the premise that content is usually static, unlike active code repositories that are constantly updated.

The dumb protocol is simple but a bit inefficient, and it can't handle writing of data from the client to the server. The smart protocol is a more common method of transferring data, but it requires a process on the remote end that is intelligent about Git—it can read local data, figure out what the client has and needs, and generate a custom packfile for it.

— Git Internals

In order to keep Git's efficiency when it comes to data replication, while offering global decentralized repository storage, we chose to design Radicle as a peer-to-peer networking layer on top of Git's smart transfer protocol. Radicle would take care of discovering peers, offloading the actual data transfer to Git.

Radicle Link is a peer-to-peer protocol with a generic distributed version control backend. It aims to be general enough to be used on top of systems such as pijul or mercurial, though it's initial implementation is focused on supporting Git.

Radicle Link extends Git with peer-to-peer network discovery. Taking inspiration from Secure Scuttlebut, a peer-to-peer protocol for social networking, data is disseminated via a process called gossip. That is, participants in the network share and spread data they are "interested" in by keeping redundant copies locally and sharing deltas with peers. With Radicle, we replicate data across connected repositories according to a “social graph” of contributors and maintainers, enabling source code and changesets to be disseminated according to use and value: the more peers who are interested in a certain project, the more available this project is made to the network.

How it works

Repositories are the base unit of replication in Radicle. To publish a repository to the network, it must first be initialized as a project. Projects combine source code, issues and proposed changes under a single umbrella, and carry a unique, shareable peer-to-peer identifier. The entirety of the project data and metadata, including social artefacts such as comments, are stored within the repository. To create a project, the owner of a repository defines a project identity. In the background, a project.json file is created in a predetermined disjoint branch of the repository, by convention rad/id. This file contains important metadata such as the project name, list of maintainers, as well as any related links.

The owner of the repository thus becomes the founder of the project and signs the initial version of the project metadata file (project.json) with their private key. The digest of the initial version, becomes the Project ID.

In addition to the repository, a Radicle project includes the identities of all its maintainers: peers with designated rights over the project's identity. Initially, the only maintainer is the founder. By adding other maintainers to the project metadata, additional layers of trust can be introduced around the project. Any update to the project metadata must be signed by a quorum of maintainers, providing a cryptographically secure way to manage project state & metadata, for example in the case of transferring ownership. The history of the metadata file is backed by the underlying DVCS, and is verified upon replication, ensuring it was't tampered with.

Replication and validation

To ensure data integrity and authenticity in the peer-to-peer network, we adopt an algorithm similar to the root file update process from The Update Framework (TUF). In this process, peers can fetch and verify the project metadata before replicating the latest changesets and revisions. This is important, since it effectively allows data to be served by any peer, in a secure manner. The physical location from which project data is fetched becomes irrelevant to the user.

Tracking and discovery

When a project is published to the network the specific repository or source tree becomes identifiable by the maintainer of this tree. This allows repositories to be addressed by a shareable URL, which is then resolved to a physical location on the network, for the purpose of replication. This URL has the following form:

rad://<project-id>/<maintainer-id>

Peers decide what data to replicate through the tracking of projects. Tracking a project signals interest, and means to impliestracking its maintainers, therefore replicating the data within their social graphs. In the context of a project, maintainers of a repository may choose to track the repositories of other owners (this is called a remote in Git terminology: a named reference to a remote repository). If the remote repository is found to track other remotes, the tracking repository shall also transitively track those, up to a configurable N degrees out.

Availability

To improve data availability, participants in the network can choose to act as seeds. This is similar in concept to a pub in Secure Scuttlebut: seeds are "always-on" nodes that automatically track discovered projects, thereby increasing the availability of these projects on the network. Since seeds may track a large number of repositories for a given project, replicating a project from a seed will greatly increase the connectedness of the tracking graph. Tracking a seed will also increase the number of paths leading back to the original upstream, ensuring that contributions can flow back up to the project maintainers even if they come from participants not within the set of tracked repositories of the maintainer.

Offline and local-first

With the introduction of hosted platforms came new ‘enhanced’ workflows like pull requests, issue tracking, and code reviews. These workflows were unique because they were non-Git native but still tied to source code through rich user interfaces and features. As a result, they have further defined the common developer experience by making collaboration more than just code—the social interactions captured in issues, code reviews and discussions are just as important as the source code itself. However, they've also locked-in developers to the platforms that host these workflows and their artifacts. If you lost access to your GitHub account you'd have access to your source code, but wouldn't have access to any of your issues, conversations, or pull requests. Even worse, access to valuable conversations could be completely lost.

With Radicle, central servers are unnecessary for ensuring the discoverability and availability of changesets and social artifacts. In addition, by returning to a fully distributed model, it enables a more complete offline experience. Not only is the source code available offline, but so is everything else. Radicle is built to provide a convenient collaboration experience without intermediaries or vendor lock-in.

Having Git as the nexus of replication builds on its strengths and decentralized nature. Having issues, pull requests, comments, and reviews locally gives developers the tools to manage and design their workflows as they see fit Radicle will always exist foremost as an open protocol—not a platform.

Throughout the last decade, open source has become a standard for software development. Sharing code freely and publicly has made it drastically cheaper and easier to build software—and tech innovation is surging as a result.

Code hosting and collaboration platforms like GitHub and GitLab have contributed heavily to the growth of open source by bringing it to a mainstream audience. They defined standard vocabulary and behaviors, made git accessible to a greater audience, empowered social coding, and created global communities of developers. It is an undeniable fact that they have completely changed the way people write code.

As the status quo for code collaboration, these platforms also host the largest repositories of open source development made up of not just code, but issues, pull requests, reviews, and comments. Even the social relationships—stars, likes, follows—exist solely within these platforms.

These platforms, however, are owned by corporations. They are subject to corporate law and have the right to define their terms of services. They can implement user bans—like those currently in place against Iranian, Syrian, and Crimean GitHub accounts in response to pressure from the U.S. government. They are vulnerable to censorship as well as capitalist ends, which are often misaligned with the goals of free and open source communities.

In a world where nearly all software relies on open source code, maintaining the resilience and health of the free and open source ecosystem is more important than ever. That's why we believe that dependence on centrally hosted platforms and corporations for the distribution of critical open source infrastructure is unsustainable. Reliance on such centralized services contradicts the values of the free and open source ecosystem and threatens its well-being.

Radicle was conceived as an alternative. Its goal is to eliminate intermediaries and create a peer-to-peer ecosystem that is robust, functional, and secure. There must be an intentional shift in narrative to prioritize the adoption of decentralized alternatives for code collaboration that abide by the principles of free and open source software.

"At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone." — GitHub employees' letter to GitHub

Exploring alternatives

Alternatives to GitHub exist ranging from platforms like SourceForge and GitLab, to more established methods of collaboration such as mailing lists. Platforms like Gitea or Gogs offer self-hosted and open source solutions for code collaboration that have low platform risk but leave developers in isolated environments with no access to the global network of developers. One proposed alternative is federation. Proposals such as ForgeFed and federated GitLab are a step in the right direction, but implementations are underdeveloped or lacking. In addition, federation is dependent on domain names which can and are regularly seized by governments.

Other well-established open-source projects such as the Linux kernel adopt more bazaar and accessible development environments that aren't confined to single platforms, such as mailing lists. These work, but they falter when held to the usability standard that platforms like GitHub have established.

Peer-to-peer protocols like Scuttlebutt have provided us with alternative solutions to share and host information. These protocols are able to work offline without reliance on servers, but applications built on them lack the ability for users to easily coordinate on a global scale. This isn't too much of an issue for a blogging or social networking use case, but when it comes to software collaboration, a canonical global registry is necessary to meet the usability and discoverability standards of centralized platforms today. The ability for anybody to contribute to any open source project no matter where they are is necessary to cultivate a truly free and open network.

Designing by principles

As we set out to build an alternative, we started by thinking about the values that we recognize as integral to free and open source code collaboration. With that said, we developed the following list of guiding principles:

• It must prioritize user freedom

  In the words of the free software movement:

  […] users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, "free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.

• It must be accessible and uncensorable

  Anyone should have the freedom to use the software to collaborate with others. No single party should be able to ban users from accessing the system, or content from being shared. It must be auditable and transparent. In addition, users should have the freedom to control their interactions and the content they see on an individual basis.

• It must be user-friendly

  The software must be easy to use and not expect tremendous change in behavior from the user. Responsiveness and functionality must meet the standards established by current platforms.

• It must be offline-first

  It must not require internet connectivity, DNS or online portals to function. There must be no single point of failure and it must be always available.

• It must not compromise on security

  Trust in a third party or intermediary must not be required for use. Every artefact of the system must be attested with cryptographic signatures, and verified.

Let’s look at hosting platforms like GitHub or GitLab in the context of this framework: they succeed by being user-friendly and accessible, but since they are centrally controlled, they are censorable, and do not prioritize user freedoms. If we look at self-hosted solutions like Gitea, Phabricator or Gogs, they are free, uncensorable, and user-friendly, however, they are not easily accessible due to gate-keeping and isolated environments: users across Phabricator deployments cannot interact with each other. This is the case for all currently available self-hosted solutions we've looked at. They also present single points of failure and require internet connectivity for most interactions with the system.

Hypothetically, a federated GitLab could fill all the requirements, however, federated services cannot be offline-first and don’t offer sovereignty over user's identity. Users are tied to specific instances and thus subject to some of the same drawbacks as centralized services.

Bazaar-style solutions like the Linux Kernel mailing list succeed at almost all outlined principles, but are limited in terms of user friendliness. It's hard to compare the usability of email threads to the sophisticated workflows possible on platforms like GitHub and GitLab.

Radicle: A p2p protocol for code collaboration 🌱

Radicle adopts the Scuttlebutt social overlay paradigm by establishing a peer-to-peer replication layer on top of distributed version control systems, starting with git. User accounts and login is replaced by public key cryptography, hosted issue trackers are replaced by local peer replication, and the idea of a single canonical upstream is replaced by a patch-based peer-to-peer or "bazaar" model.

To complement the replication layer we introduce a totally-ordered consensus-backed registry which holds canonical project metadata. This allows projects to anchor important information—such as project state and repository head—with the guarantee of global availability and immutability.

The three major themes to highlight are the decisions to focus on a peer-to-peer code collaboration model, to build on the underlying distributed version control system for replication, and to adopt a protocol-first approach.

Revisiting the Bazaar

The Cathedral and the Bazaar describes two approaches to free software development. The cathedral model, exemplified by projects like Emacs, makes releases open and available but keeps development exclusive to so called "individual wizards". On the other hand, the bazaar model—popularized by Linus Torvalds and validated by the massive success of Linux, calls for completely open development with frequent and early releases, delegation throughout communities, and as many "eyeballs" on the code as possible. The conclusion of the essay speaks to the success of bazaar development practices in open source projects. In other words, given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Peer-to-peer networking makes it far easier for developers and maintainers to develop not just a shared, but a trusted representation of project state grounded in actual source code and secure peer identities. With peer replication, patches become more comprehensive because they are tied to local issues, comments, and reviews connected to the development process. With more comprehensive patches, bazaar-style development can retain its flexibility while supporting more sophisticated workflows. This is why Radicle replaces the idea of a single canonical upstream with a peer-to-peer model familiar to the open source hackers of the 90s and early 2000s. It makes bazaar-style development easier and better.

This potential is what caused Radicle to settle on a gossip-based "social overlay" built on distributed version control systems that is free and always available without the hassle of self-hosting or trusting companies with user data.

Git gossips well

The next design decision came as a result of our experimentation with decentralized storage. After building the first version of Radicle on IPFS, we ran into performance and functionality issues. A more detailed analysis can be found here, but the major realization was that replicating git repos peer-to-peer on the storage layer left us no choice but losing the packfile protocol, one of the things that makes git fast. This approach would make source code a second-class citizen—making it impractical to store repositories with large histories.

When reflecting on the above, the almost obvious thought returned: why not use git itself to distribute data? Storing collaboration artifacts (issues, pull requests, comments, ...) in git has been done before and the data structures available in git satisfy all our needs. Paired with a gossip layer, git becomes exactly what's necessary to store, replicate and distribute code and collaboration artifacts.

By building a peer-to-peer overlay on top of git, we find not only a performant solution, but one that is better adapted for code collaboration. Issues, comments and reviews become local artifacts that are cryptographically signed and interacted with offline.

Protocols, not platforms

The story of the big code hosting platforms coincides with the general shift of the internet from open protocols to privately-owned platforms. Most social coding platforms today actually leverage open protocols (git, mercurial, ssh) but have built up closed gardens.

Radicle's approach is meant to return to the protocol-first philosophy by focusing on building code collaboration primitives instead of user experiences, and to reject data collection and siloing by intermediaries. This is reflected in the decision to build on and extend git. Having it as the nexus of replication builds on its strengths and decentralized nature. Having issues, pull requests, comments, and reviews locally gives developers the tools to manage and design their workflows without locking them into a new "experience". Despite any front-end interface that will be built (😉), Radicle exists foremost as an open protocol — not a platform.

To complement the eventually-consistent peer-to-peer replication layer, a global registry that holds canonical project metadata is also desirable. This can provide functionality that is difficult to address at the gossip level, such as globally unique human-readable identifiers, as well as giving the ability for projects to anchor important information about their project in an immutable and totally-ordered way—for example, the latest repository head. This can alleviate weaknesses at the replication layer which is unable to prove to the user that the information shown is the latest available. In essence, the registry can provide users with the trusted, auditable and shared view of the network that is otherwise lacking, delivering the same connected "social" layer that attracted developers to platforms like GitHub. Designing such a system as an open protocol is challenging, and requires a consensus-based approach which we will discuss in more depth in the future.

               _(_)_                     _(_)_                                      _(_)_     

   @@@@       (_)@(_)        @@@@       (_)@(_)        @@@@             @@@@       (_)@(_)    

  @@()@@ wWWWw  (_)\        @@()@@ wWWWw  (_)\        @@()@@ wWWWw     @@()@@ wWWWw  (_)\     

   @@@@  (___)     \|/       @@@@  (___)     \|/       @@@@  (___)      @@@@  (___)     \|/   

    /      Y       \|         /      Y       \|         /      Y         /      Y       \|    

 \ |     \ |/       | /    \ |     \ |/       | /    \ |     \ |/     \ |     \ |/       | /  

 \\|//   \\|///  \\\|//    \\|//   \\|///  \\\|//    \\|//   \\|///   \\|//   \\|///  \\\|//  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

With all of these pieces in place, we see Radicle starting to take shape as a high-potential alternative to code hosting platforms like GitHub. Our goal is to develop Radicle to support the resilience and health of the free and open source ecosystem in a sustainable way. We have a lot to share over the coming months so please stay in touch.

On Monday, January 10th, the Radicle community voted to fund the first wave of the Radicle Grants Program. With six months and a $1M budget, the Radicle Grants Program will fund contributions that improve the Radicle ecosystem, and in turn, improve tooling for decentralized, open-source collaboration.

With these Treasury-funded community grants, we believe we are planting the first seeds of will grow to become a new model for funding open source. The aim is to directly support open source initiatives that help grow the Radicle product, the Radicle community, and the greater FOSS and Web3 community at large.

In essence: funding open source to grow open source 💫

The Committee

The Grants program will be managed by a committee made up of Radicle community members:

• Grants Lead: Bordumb (Radicle Community)

• Abbey Titcomb (Core Team)

• Kei Kreutler (Ecosystem)

• Nader Dabit (Ecosystem)

• Nassar Hayat (Core Team)

• Reverie (comprised of Derek Hsue and Larry Sukernik from the Radicle Community)

This group will act as signers of the Radicle Grant Program's multi-sig, which will ultimately fund projects. All Radicle Grants operations & budgets will be publicly managed and hosted on Radicle via the grants.radicle.eth org. The repositories are also mirrored on GitHub.

What is the scope of these grants?

We are open to funding anything that improves the Radicle ecosystem or the greater FOSS and Web3 community at large. Generally speaking, we have two categories of grants to do so:

🌱 Seed Grants

Seed grants are meant for smaller contributions, both in terms of complexity and cost. These grants are for individuals or small teams looking for less than $50,000 in funding.

Applications for seed grants are reviewed by the grants committee on a rolling basis. If accepted, applications are then published publicly in our repositories.

🌲 Tree Grants

Tree grants are meant for larger teams, companies, or foundations working on a contribution larger in scope and complexity. They can provide funding from $50,000 - $500,000.

Applications for tree grants are reviewed and discussed by the grants committee and community at large on a rolling basis. They may take more time to review.

How do I apply for a grant?

There are two ways to apply for a Seed or Tree grant:

🎨 Freeform

Submit an application for any work you think deserves funding, whether it's a contribution to Radicle, FOSS, or Web3 in general.

• Copy and fill out our handy markdown template here.

• Create a new post in the grants category of radicle.community.

💌 Request for Proposals (RFP)

Submit an application towards an existing request for proposals, most likely posted by us on Discourse forum. RFPs describe work that the Radicle core team & community would like to see developed and/or prioritized!

• If we've posted an RFP, just drop a reply on Discourse with some details on why you'd be a good fit. You can see some of the details we're looking for here.

If you don't want to work on a grant, but have an idea, feel free to create an RFP using our template and post it on the grants category of radicle.community.

Which application is right for me?

🌱 If your project is smaller in scope, has a shorter timeline, and/or can be clearly defined by a set of deliverables, a Seed Grant is probably best. It's a faster process.

🌲 If your project is larger in scope & timeline, features more complex technical work, and/or requires longer-term collaboration, we recommend a Tree Grant. Tree Grants are also best fit for partnership proposals.

What happens after I apply?

If applying for a Seed Grant, your application will be reviewed by the Grants Committee on a rolling basis. You should receive a response within a week.

For Tree Grants, once your application is published via radicle.community, the application will remain open for public discussion. Unless further discussion is warranted, you should receive a response within two weeks.

After an application is submitted and reviewed, the committee will vote to approve funding. Once approved, you will receive a first payment (40%) to kickoff the grant work. Upon completion, you will receive the remaining 60%.

Where can I find more info?

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on the Grant's #general space on Radicle's Discord. Or contact the grants lead at bordumbb@gmail.com.

You can find more information in the Radicle Grants workspace. We also archive info, such as past grants, on the Grant Program's GitHub repo.

You can also view this repo on Radicle by entering the following into your browser to track it in Radicle Upstream:

radicle://link/v0/rad:git:hnrkphrmf3xgtwjxuw9frfpdhuksurbw9s97o

It's that easy!?

Yup, that's it.

Head over to Discourse and apply today!

An 💎 Ethereum protocol for generating 📮 recurring income with subscriptions and memberships

What’s a Drip?💧

Drips is a new Ethereum protocol and social network that allows anyone to generate continuous income, without relying on bank accounts or extracting platforms.

At its lowest level, Drips allows any Ethereum user to stream funds periodically to any other Ethereum user, while also enabling collecting from multiple streams with just a single transaction.

In addition, within Drips, creators & developers can also issue and sell NFT memberships, potentially giving fans unique benefits in exchange for recurring financial support. Using the permissionless financial infrastructure of Ethereum, Drips memberships are represented by Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). These memberships are available to anyone and can enable benefits across any application on the web that supports Ethereum (Discord, Telegram, Reddit, Snapshot, Radicle Upstream & many more).

Fans can support and engage with their favorite creators and communities by purchasing memberships and/or by “dripping” funds to any address in the network in recurring configurable intervals.

Finally, Drips puts redistribution at the center, allowing any Ethereum address to spread the love every time they get paid by specifying a percentage of their incoming funds to be automatically Dripped to other users. The recipient could be a charity, a software dependency, or another collective or creator that makes their work possible. We believe that splitting funds through Drips has the potential to become a new cultural norm and building block for a sustainable creative economy.

Recurring Web3 Payments 💸

While most payments within crypto networks today are one-time payments, an increasing number of use cases require a recurring approach. For instance, many DAOs currently make monthly payments to regular contributors or for recurring infrastructure expenses through cumbersome and repetitive grant processes that are clearly not designed for periodic payments.

Similarly, to take the perspective of developers and digital artists working in FOSS and crypto, most would prefer to receive stable, predictable income over the endless hustle of grant applications and NFT drops. Meanwhile, in the institutional world, many treasuries and DeFi protocols face technical challenges around trying to send recurring payments using tools that were designed for one-off transactions.

At its most basic level, Drips is a foundational protocol that makes it easy for any user with an Ethereum address to send recurring payments to any other user. Setting up a recurring DAI payment to any Ethereum address or ENS name is straightforward and simple.

To set up a Drip, first the sender adds funds (in DAI) from their own account into the DripsHub smart contract. Funds locked in DripsHub act as the user’s balance for making payments, and can always be withdrawn up until the point when they are spent.

Once the sender has some funds in DripsHub, they can create a recurring payment – a “Drip”. All that’s needed is the Ethereum address (or the ENS name) of the recipient, as well as the amount of DAI to be sent each month.

After the Drip is created, funds are sent continuously from the sender’s DripsHub balance to the recipient, and can be collected by the recipient at the end of each month. Drips are gas-optimized so that once a Drip is created, the payments will continue to flow automatically, without any additional gas fees or transaction costs, no matter how much time passes. The receiver just pays a single transaction fee when they’re ready to collect.

Today, the Drips protocol allows users to make recurring payments in DAI, collectable monthly. But the Drips Team is already working on adding support for additional ERC-20 tokens and more flexible payment intervals without the need for wrapped tokens or 3rd parties.

NFT Memberships for Your Community 🎟

In addition to recurring payments, Drips allows creators and developers to raise financial support from fans by issuing NFT-based memberships with unique benefits, effectively attaching an NFT to a recurring stream of funds. In Drips, we call these crowdfunding spaces Communities.

To create a Community on Drips, the creator first sets a funding goal and specifies a minimum contribution which supporters must pay to become a member. The creator also decides whether memberships will be subscription-based, or based on a one-time payment.

Once the Community is created, fans can purchase NFT memberships whenever they wish by using the Drips app, which interacts directly with an ERC-721 Ethereum contract which is owned and controlled by the creator. In addition to serving as badges of support, the NFT memberships also act like pre-paid cards which Drip funds automatically to the creator each month, and must continue to be funded by supporters to remain active.

In exchange for support from their fans, creators can also offer unique benefits to the fans who have become members. Some examples of possible benefits include access to a private channel on the Community’s Discord server and participation in “soft” Community governance through polling on Snapshot. Many other kinds of benefits are also possible, and in principle, any kind of benefit that can be tied to NFT ownership can be offered by creators.

Finally, the creator of the Community can choose to “spread the love” by splitting their incoming drips, which automatically pass along a percentage of funds received along to others in the ecosystem.

Splitting Funds With Drips 💌

Drips means redistribution and splitting funds with Drips is one of the simplest and most powerful features of the protocol. Anyone with an Ethereum address (not only Communities as seen above) can set up Splits and automatically redistribute a portion of the funds they receive to others.

A key aspect of Splits is that they can be set up at any time, regardless of whether a user has any funds coming in or not. Configuring your splits is a way to signal support for individuals and Communities in your ecosystem that you wish to support. And when you do eventually get paid, the ones you depend on will get paid too. We’ve put Splits front and center in the Drips application. Simply head to any user’s profile and click their “Drips Out” tab and you will be able to see who they are sharing funds with.

In addition, because Splits are redirected automatically by the protocol and never hit the Splitter’s account, you don’t have to worry about having custody of funds and the complexities that can sometimes come with that.

We believe that sharing funds through Splits has the potential to become a new cultural norm in crypto and a fundamental building block for solving difficult problems like the funding of public goods and promoting more redistributive crypto economics. Today, using Splits, users can easily donate to public goods like the Gitcoin Matching Pool Fund or the Giveth Platform and the Drips team is working hard to make contributions to public goods even simpler in the future.

Finally, for developers looking to raise funds for software development using Drips, the Drips Team is working on a number of powerful future features – like allowing FOSS projects to automatically split funds to other open source projects they depend on simply by scanning their dependencies. There’s an active conversation within the Radicle community around these and other future features of Drips so if you have input or feedback, please get involved here.

The Drips Protocol – Why We’re Excited

Here are a few things that have us super excited about Drips:

Protocols, Not Platforms – Using the Drips protocol for recurring funding doesn’t lock users into any one platform. Drips is 100% open source software built on open standards.

Application-Agnostic – Drips is built on public Ethereum contracts and ordinary ERC-721 NFT membership badges. Users can interact with these components using whichever wallets and tools they prefer. We’ve created a web-based front end that’s available as a default, but users can just as easily create their own front end to interact with Drips, or even call the smart contracts directly from code.

Trust-Minimized – Maintainers can set up projects on Drips without trusting companies, governments, or anyone else. Funds can never be embargoed and communications to supporters cannot be censored. Organizations like Wikileaks could raise funds using Drips if they wished.

New Ways to Engage Your Community – Today, Drips Communities enable creators to offer unique benefits to members, like access to private Discord channels and polling through Snapshot spaces. But because membership badges are NFTs, we expect that many new benefits will become possible in the future as NFT-based tools continue to evolve.

New Cultural Norms Around Giving - Most importantly, Drips was built with one idea in mind: “we need new cultural norms to support the people and projects we depend on”. Drips is a protocol and social network built with this idea at its center. Fans drip funds to their favorite creators, who further drip funds to the users and communities they depend on. Together they create a circular and redistributive funding ecosystem.

Try It Out 💫

Head over to drips.network or follow @dripsnetwork and check out where teams like Solidity, Walletconnect, Gnosis-Safe, Gitcoin, R-group and more are dripping.

When I drip, you drip, we drip 💧

NOTE: The current version of Drips is a beta release and the smart contracts have not yet been audited for security. In the worst case, it could be possible for users to lose funds if bugs or vulnerabilities are discovered.

2021 was the year the Radicle project introduced the Radicle token (RAD) - its native governance token - making it the first open-source, community-led, and self-sustaining network for software collaboration. A major step towards the decentralization of Radicle, RAD has enabled a number of Ethereum-based features as well as the communal ownership, collective governance, and long-term sustainability of the Radicle network. The first year of governance held some exciting new developments for Radicle as well as provided a lot of learning opportunities for the core team. This is a summary of the most notable developments and summary of important proposals.

The Governance Working Group

The creation of the Governance Working Group has helped grow the capacity of our governance capabilities and bolstered expansion of governance resources. The Governance Working Group has primarily consisted of Abbey Titcomb, a core Radicle contributor, and Shelby Steidl, a governance facilitator, as well as key partners such as Larry Sukernik and Derek Hsue from Reverie. The Governance WG is in charge of facilitating and coordinating the governance process for the Radicle community. The governance team launched the Radicle Governance Hub, a collection of all important information and resources needed to get started with Radicle governance as well as outlines the Radicle governance process. We also launched the Radicle Governance Twitter page which acts as a ticker account for all important governance-related announcements and reminders. 

Governance Proposals by Stage in the Governance Process

Governance Proposal (on-chain vote)

• The Radicle Grants Program (v2) was one of Radicle’ largest community development projects of 2021. The proposal for the RGP went through two rounds of Formal Review (see V1 here) and two Snapshot polls (V1 results, V2 results). The proposal’s Formal Reviews both failed to meet participation requirements, which triggered a general re-evaluation of Radicle governance parameters. Despite this setback, we decided to push the proposal forward to an on-chain vote. Reasoning is outlined here. As of Monday, January 10th, the proposal officially passed an on-chain vote with 5.23% of RAD holders voting in support of funding the Radicle Grants Program.

Formal Review

• Remove name registration fee: This proposal was put to a Snapshot vote in early December 2021 (see results here). Although it obtained a majority of in-favor votes, it failed to meet participation requirements. It has been paused and will be picked up in 2022 after issues with voting participation have been addressed.

Notable Temp Checks

• Treasury covers costs for creation of Radicle Orgs

• Re-evaluate participation requirements

Key Community Proposals

• Use Success Tokens to diversify Radicle Treasury with a Token Swap (Chandler from UMA)

• Partner with Gro Protocol on Treasury Management (Joyce from Gro Protocol)

Challenges & Important Discussions

While there were many exciting developments for Radicle governance in 2021, there were also a few challenges. Although we would participation in voting rounds from a wide variety of the community, we struggled to reach the minimal voting participation threshold - 4% of total RAD supply. This led to discussions around re-evaluating participation thresholds and brainstorming ways we could activate larger token holders in the community via promotion of delegation. 

Focus Items for 2022

Education via organized/accessible information: We want to continue to reorganize content in a way that is easy for any community member to understand. We want to make sure everyone can find the information they are looking for within a few clicks and that governance processes are so clear your grandma could figure it out.

Delegation/Voting Activation: We want to perform a more detailed stakeholder analysis and formulate targeted activation for each of these groups. One way we are already working to do this is via delegation and a Recognized Delegation Platform mentioned above. 

Improved Governance Infrastructure: We want to demystify and simplify “governance” within the Radicle ecosystem. We’ll be exploring how to develop (or adopt) new tooling for improving our governance operations. The goal is to make it easier for community members to delegate, vote, and propose governance actions. In addition, we’ll be focusing on how to best support our Core Teams as the Radicle project continues to decentralize product development.

Events: Community input and participation is what makes the DAO world go ‘round. We want to provide opportunities for the community to come together to discuss the most pressing, challenging, and exciting issues around governance. We will try to host a few of these discussions (both virtually and HOPEFULLY in person).

Thank you for all of the contributions and support throughout 2021! We are looking forward to where the Radicle community will take governance in 2022.

Radicle is a Web3 network for software collaboration. Radicle provides truly decentralized infrastructure for developer communities, enabling anyone to fund and manage software using NFTs and multi-sigs. It features an opt-in Ethereum integration that enables unique global names, decentralized organizations, and experiences that help maintainers sustain their open-source work. A more detailed overview of Radicle can be found here, and more technical details about the protocol here.

Radicle Orgs: Tooling for DAOs

At Radicle, we see DAOs as a necessary part of the emerging Web3 stack. That is why we built Radicle Orgs, a decentralized code management tool for DAOs coordinating the development of open source software (see more here👇)

https://radicle.mirror.xyz/LC1gmqihYDbxGi_kWqm6Em7Gou1F1WzG_cjkdsrSSpo

With Radicle Orgs, you can host their repositories peer-to-peer while maintaining an auditable & transparent project history on Ethereum. This allows DAOs to create an organizational identity that is sovereign and unconstrained to a single platform, ensuring their codebases are accessible to anybody in the world, no matter where they are.

The goal of this tutorial is to help DAOs get started with Radicle so they can decentralize their infrastructure and create a sovereign org identity. This tutorial will help you get started using Radicle by teaching you how to create an org, anchor projects, and customize an org profile. You will also learn how to setup an org seed node to make your Radicle repositories available via the browser.

At the end of this tutorial you'll have done the following:

1. Create an identity

2. Deploy a Radicle org

3. Add projects to your org

4. Set up an org node

5. Register & configure an ENS name

6. Share your org

Let's get started!

1. Create your Radicle identity

The first step is to create an identity on the Radicle network. Your Radicle identity (called a Radicle ID) is a unique cryptographic keypair linked to your local machine. You can create one via Radicle Upstream, an open-source desktop client for accessing the Radicle network.

👉 download the latest version here

Once downloaded, follow the steps in our Getting Started guide to create an identity and configure your system! From here, you create, collaborate, and share repositories peer-to-peer.

1.1. Connect your wallet

To interact with Radicle's Ethereum features, you must connect your wallet to your identity. To do so, head to the wallet tab in the sidebar of your Radicle Upstream client and click Connect your wallet. From here you can connect a WalletConnect compatible wallet like Metamask or Rainbow.

1.2. [Optional] Link your ID

Once connected, the next step is to link your Radicle ID to your Ethereum address. This means that your Ethereum address can be found based on your Radicle ID and vice versa.

Start by clicking Link your ID. After clicking Link your ID you'll be prompted in your wallet app to confirm the transaction.

Once it's confirmed you'll see the transaction in your list of transactions, this means your Radicle ID is now connected to your Ethereum address!

2. Create a Radicle Org

You can create an org in Radicle Upstream or app.radicle.network. This tutorial will focus on Radicle Upstream, but will include screenshots of the web client for additional reference. To create an org, choose your client, and connect your wallet.

Once your wallet is connected, you'll see the Create an org button in the sidebar of the client.

Before proceeding, double check you are on the right network! Radicle Upstream supports Rinkeby testnet if you'd like to do a test run first. You can check which network Upstream is set to in the Settings tab.

2.1. Select type of org

Once you click the Create an org button, a modal appears that allows you to choose between creating a Single-signer or a Multi-signer org.

A single-signer/existing org means you're deploying an org contract owned by a single Ethereum address or an existing owner. To create a single-signer org, select Single-signer and input the Ethereum address that you'd like to control the org. In Upstream, the address of your connected wallet will automatically prefill, but you can choose to enter any valid Ethereum address you control.

💡 If you already maintain a Gnosis Safe for your DAO, choose this option and use the address of your Safe

A multi-signer org means you're deploying an org contract and a new multi-signature contract. In Radicle Upstream and on app.radicle.network, deploying a multi-signature org creates a Gnosis Safe and sets the address of the connected wallet as the first member. The Gnosis Safe becomes the owner of the org.

After you confirm and sign the transaction, Upstream will deploy the contract and notify you when your org is ready for you. Once created, you can now view your Org page in the app.

You can navigate to your Org page on the web by using the following URL:

https://app.radicle.network/orgs/<YOUR_ORG_ADDRESS_HERE>

2.2. Add members

To add members to a multi-signer org, use a Gnosis Safe interface to add owners to your multi-sig.

💡 If members have ENS names or Ceramic identities, their information will be shown in your org profile page!

3. Add a project to your org

Great! Now that we have an org, we can start adding projects! To add a project to an org, you must anchor it.

An anchor is an on-chain agreement between the owners of an org about the state of a project's source code. Anchors are comprised of the org address under which the project lives, the Radicle ID of the project, and a commit hash from the projects history. Anchoring a project to your org lets everyone know that this is a repository that you and your team work on!

3.1. Create a new project (if you haven't already!)

Creating a project is as easy as initializing a repository in Git. You need to use Radicle Upstream to create or upload a project on Radicle.

In the Upstream client, you can create a project from scratch or from an existing repository. Creating a project on Upstream will publish it to the Radicle network, making it available to any of your connected peers - so make sure there's nothing private there!

3.2. Anchor the project to your org

Once you have a Radicle project you'd like to add to your org, navigate to your org, and click Anchor project. From here, you'll be asked to select the project and choose the branch that you'd like to anchor.

Clicking Confirm in your wallet will send the transaction to your wallet to sign. If you have a single-signer org you'll be able to confirm the transaction in your connected wallet. If you are a member in the multi-signer org you'll need to confirm the transaction then execute it the transaction through your Gnosis Safe interface.

Once the transaction is confirmed, you'll be able to view your anchored project in your org page. Hovering over the anchor icon will show the transaction hash as well as the commit hash. Clicking on the commit hash will bring you to the project.

Once a project is anchored, you can also view them in app.radicle.network.

To view the source code of your anchored projects in the browser, you need to complete Step 4. Onwards!

4. Set up an org seed node

Now that you've set up an Org, you can view your Org profile page on app.radicle.network at app.radicle.network/orgs/<YOUR_ORG_ADDRESS>. Here, you can view the metadata associated with the org including its members and anchored projects.

If you'd like to make your repositories available to anyone on the web, you can set up an org seed node to enable source browsing. With source browsing, you can view, clone, and pull from any anchored project without requiring a Radicle identity or client. This makes it possible to make our repositories globally available while hosting them peer-to-peer.

To enable source browsing, you need to set up an org seed node. An org seed node is a type of node that replicates and distributes Radicle projects under one or more Radicle orgs, making them freely and publicly accessible on the web, and via peer-to-peer protocols. You can run an org seed node on a server or instance in the cloud.

This section will run you through how to set up an org seed node with Docker Compose. For more documentation on running org seed nodes, please refer to the radicle-client-services repository.

4.1. Setup and run with docker-compose

As an alternative to building the containers yourself, a docker-compose.yml file is included in the radicle-client-services repository.

Install Docker and Docker Compose

To install Docker Compose, run:

sudo apt-get install docker
pip install docker-compose

Clone the repository

Clone the radicle-client-services repository and cd into it:

git clone https://github.com/radicle-dev/radicle-client-services radicle-client-services
cd radicle-client-service

Set the necessary environment variables

Set the following variables either in the environment or in a .env file in the current directory:

• RADICLE_ORGS = the address of your org (you can find this on your org profile page)

• RADICLE_DOMAIN= your seed node's domain, eg. seed.cloudhead.io

• ETH_RPC_URL = an Ethereum JSON-RPC WebSocket endpoint, eg. ws://localhost:8545 or a third-party provider such as Infura or Alchemy.

Start the radicle-client-services via Docker Compose

Finally, pull the containers and start the services:

docker-compose pull
docker-compose up --detach

Your org node should now be up and running!

4.2. Connect Upstream to your org seed node

It is recommend to configure your Radicle clients to use your org node(s) as seeds, so that updates to your projects are made available to the org node as quickly as possible! This supports the availability of your data across the Radicle network.

To add your org node to your list of seeds, navigate to the Settings page in your Upstream client and add your org node's seed address. The seed address of your org node is the "Seed ID" from the eth.radicle.seed.id text record combined with the host address (the RADICLE_DOMAIN variable) and port, eg. —

hynkyndc6w3p8urucfkobzna7sxbgctny7xxtw88dtx3pkf7m3nrzc@seed.cloudhead.org:8776

5. Registering and configuring your org

After your org has been created, it can be found on app.radicle.network/orgs/<YOUR_ORG_ID>. To make it easier to discover, you can configure it with an ENS name.

5.1. Registering a name

Peer-to-peer systems lack the global namespace of centralised platforms and the discoverability that comes with it. In Radicle, you can register a unique ENS name, under the radicle.eth domain (e.g. cloudhead.radicle.eth) for your profile or org. This will be a name that other users can use to recognize you not only within the Radicle network, but also the global Ethereum network.

You can register an ENS name in Upstream or in app.radicle.network. Here are the directions for registering a name via Upstream:

1. From the Upstream org page select the options (...) dropdown on the right and select 'Register ENS name'

   If you don't have the RAD token in your wallet you'll need to buy at least 10 rad to register a radicle.eth name. Learn how to buy RAD.

1. Enter the name you'd like to register for your org.

1. Sign both transactions with your connected wallet.

2. Wait a few minutes for registration commitment to confirm. Confirm the transaction in your wallet one more time.

There you have it. Your ENS name has been registered!

5.2. Configure your org

Once you've registered a name, the next step is to update its records to customize your org profile with additional information. After registering a name in Upstream, you'll be given an opportunity to add a website, avatar, org node, and social handles.

💡 To enable source browsing, be sure to add your org node seed address to the Seed ID record field (See step 4.2 for help finding your org node address!)

After adding your data, confirm the transaction to update the records.

5.3. Link your org

After updating the ENS records, you need to link your newly created name to your org. Upstream autofills the fields for you - all you have to do is confirm the transaction!

After a couple of minutes, you should see your name and metadata on the org profile page in Upstream.

6. Share your org!

After creating an org, you can view and share it with others via the Radicle web client, app.radicle.network. You can either search for it via the search bar on the homepage, or click View in the browser from your org profile page in Upstream.

Congratulations! You've successfully set up your DAO on Radicle!

That’s it for this tutorial! If you're a DAO who's decentralized your infrastructure with Radicle, we'd love to hear from you. Share your org profile with us in #community on our Discord or tag us on Twitter.

                                                                  🌱

“Community infrastructure” includes the project’s content hubs. While radicle.community is the official forum for discussions related to Radicle development & governance, our website blog is also used to distribute project-wide content and announcements.

As the project grows, Radicle’s community team sees a need to create more accessible channels for content contributions from the Radicle community. We believe that as an open source project, not only should anybody be able to contribute blog posts, onboarding guides, tutorials, and other content.

Mirror ✍️ + Radicle Orgs 🎪

Today, we launched radicle.mirror.xyz, a community blog for the Radicle project. Anybody is free to submit content to be published to the blog as long as it meets the following guidelines:

• Must be Radicle relevant 🌱 \n Content must be related to Radicle in some shape or form. Onboarding guides, tutorials, partnership announcements, and industry-specific thought pieces are all fair game.

• Must pass official review by Radicle Community maintainers 👀 \n At the moment, Prema Tsamy & Abbey Titcomb are the maintainers of radicle.mirror.xyz and conduct formal review of all submissions.

With Mirror and Radicle Orgs, we’re decentralizing the ownership, management, and collaboration of the community blog.

Dogfooding 🐶🦴

Recently, we launched Radicle Orgs, a decentralized code management tool for DAOs. Radicle Orgs are a platform-agnostic, and more secure alternative to organizations on centralized forges like GitHub and Gitlab. Relying on smart contracts instead of admins, they allow developers manage and anchor their codebases on-chain. Radicle Orgs give DAOs a way to truly decentralize & own their collaboration infrastructure without relying centralized accounts & platforms.

https://radicle.mirror.xyz/LC1gmqihYDbxGi_kWqm6Em7Gou1F1WzG_cjkdsrSSpo

After deciding to launch a community blog, we decided this could be a great opportunity to dogfood Radicle Orgs. While Radicle Orgs are a perfect solution for codebases, they can easily be used to decentralize management of any version-controlled repository. At Radicle, our website blog was already version-controlled and hosted on GitHub.

We created an org for the Community Team and a repository for managing content submissions. Ownership of the radicle.mirror.xyz domain will be transferred to the Gnosis Safe that owns the Radicle Org as soon as Mirror offers multi-sig support. For now, ownership of the publication will be controlled by the lead maintainer.

Contributing

Contributors can submit a post for review by creating and publishing a patch to the radicle.mirror.xyz repository on Radicle. Contributors can clone the repository on app.radicle.network.

Once the patch is reviewed, maintainers will either merge the post or request changes. Once merged, the repository will be anchored on-chain and published promptly to radicle.mirror.network.

As the blog continues to grow, we can explore automating the publishing process, distributing ownership among the community, and rewarding contributors (cough Radicle Funding cough 🤭). Let the dogfooding begin!

Join our Discord 👾

Join the Radworks Discord Server!

Check out the Radworks community on Discord - hang out with 3941 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

https://discord.com

Get started with Radicle 🌱

https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/connecting-to-ethereum/overview

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“Open source code has enabled trillions of dollars to be generated by software companies that use it, but the communities that develop that code typically haven’t had a means to capture much of the value directly.” - Jesse Walden

Open source software is the backbone of the internet. A movement that started in response to the rise of proprietary software, publicly-available code soon became the foundation on which GAFAM built their powerful platforms. Today, many significant open source projects are backed by big tech. While the pros and cons of its involvement are highly debatable, it’s hard to ignore the influence these corporations have had on the open source ecosystem.

If you think about it, the very fabric of human coordination at this point is hierarchical. Hierarchy successfully allowed a few individuals to assert power and authority to control the coordination of large groups of people. Since then, it has become the de-facto form of organization for most institutions.

This reality is reflected in the way Big Tech has designed the internet. For example, centralized platforms like GitHub have made it easy for developers to produce and distribute open source software. However, convenience comes at a price — freedom. Access to your GitHub account and repositories can be banned or limited at any time, leaving your developer identity, work, and reputation confined within a walled garden.

Centralized admin models and corporate-owned platforms dominate our day-to-day experience on the web, resigning us to hierarchy and extraction. But now, blockchain and crypto are changing that.

The Rise of DAOs

The crypto space, currently growing at an exponential rate, is decentralizing the very foundation of what our internet, global economy, and corporations are built on. The ecosystem’s ethos of ‘don’t trust, verify’ has eliminated our implicit reliance on trust-based “agent-principal” relationships.

One particularly interesting area that has emerged as a result is the use of Ethereum smart contracts to support decentralized human coordination and governance. The term coined for this new phenomenon: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or “DAOs”.

“The ideal of a decentralized autonomous organization is easy to describe: it is an entity that lives on the internet and exists autonomously, but also heavily relies on hiring individuals to perform certain tasks that the automaton itself cannot do.” - Vitalik Buterin, 2014

Traditional organizations entrust managers, boards of directors, and shareholders with decision making. They rely on the legal system to enforce contracts and settle business or organizational disputes. The main advantage of a DAO compared to a traditional organization is that contracts between two parties are enforced on a distributed global ledger. The ledger is immutable and anyone can access it to verify transactions in a permissionless manner.

Additionally, a incentive network can be deployed on top of the ledger, enabling a built-in value network of project-specific cryptographic tokens. These tokens can be used to align incentives and coordinate governance between network participants as they steer the project forward as a collective. This method of incentivized coordination is a way for development teams to coordinate their mission in a transparent and verifiable way. In this light, a DAO can be viewed as borderless, self-sustaining and self-enforcing entity for running online communities.

As the DAO space matures, the need for specialized tooling & scaffolding to support this new type of organization becomes increasingly clear.

Radicle Orgs 🎪

At Radicle, we see DAOs as a necessary part of the emerging Web3 stack. That is why we built Radicle Orgs, a decentralized code management tool for DAOs coordinating the development of open source software.

While designing Radicle’s Ethereum integration, we realized that multi-sigs can be used for more than just the distributed management of digital assets. Radicle Orgs — on-chain entities owned by multi-sigs (i.e. Gnosis Safe) — offer a transparent & universally verifiable way to manage and distribute ownership of codebases.

Relying on smart contracts instead of account admins, Radicle Orgs allow developers to collectively define the rules and permissions around repositories in a trust-minimized way. With orgs, developers can host their repositories peer-to-peer while maintaining an auditable & transparent project history on Ethereum. This allows teams to create an organizational identity that is sovereign and unconstrained to a single platform, ensuring their codebases are accessible to anybody in the world, no matter where they are.

Modular by design, Orgs can be integrated with other DAO tooling to create unique frameworks for coordinating and governing project collaboration. In a larger sense, we see Radicle Orgs becoming an essential component of the DAO stack as they give teams the ability to truly decentralize their collaboration infrastructure.

To learn more about Radicle Orgs and how to create one, check out our user docs 👇

https://docs.radicle.xyz/docs/connecting-to-ethereum/creating-an-org

In closing: DAOs 🤝 Open Source

Open source software is a standard in blockchain and crypto, yet our codebases and collaboration remain locked into centralized platforms. This reality is antithetical to the values of decentralization and censorship-resistance that the crypto ecosystem aligns with. In addition, the disruptive nature of crypto foretells an uncertain regulatory future that could exploit the centralized nature of software tools and forges — an institutional “rug pull” if you will.

We believe the future of open source software is self-sustaining, community owned/governed, decentralized online organizations. However, our dependence on third-parties for the production and distribution of critical open source infrastructure is inherently unsustainable. Utilizing Radicle Orgs can make crypto-native projects unstoppable and unruggable in the face of pending retaliation from centralized institutions.

We’re currently onboarding DAOs interested in decentralizing their collaboration infrastructure with Radicle Orgs. If you’re interested, reach out to abbey@radicle.xyz.

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