Roles
- There are two types of users in a project community: collaborators (also called participants or members) and organizers (also called maintainers)
Currency
- Every project has an associated virtual currency, called credits
- Credits are owned by collaborators and the project’s treasury.
- Credits represent equity in the project, and
- Credits entitle their owners to participate in project governance.
- Credits can be earned for code contributions and for participation in governance processes (such as voting) that lead to real positive outcomes
- Members participate in governance by staking a desired amount of credits to an issue or a PR, which entitles them to exercise a weighted vote “for” or “against”.
- Votes can be adjusted during the lifetime of an issue or a PR.
- Stakes are returned to their owners when the issue or PR is closed.
The issue and pull request cycle
- We assume a common methodology for using issues and PRs for collaboration:
- Issues describe goals
- PRs resolve issues
- Issues
- Every issue is associated with a priority score, continuously computed from the votes “for” and “against” it
- When a PR that resolves the issue is approved (and merged), the PR author is awarded a contribution reward of newly minted credits in an amount proportional to the resolved issue’s priority score
- Due to this reward mechanism, the priority score of an issue can be viewed as the value that the community assigns to the issue being resolved. For short, the value of the issue.
- This mechanism incentivizes contributions for higher priority, higher value issues
- PRs
- Every PR has a claim on resolving one or more issues.
- Every PR is associated with an approval score, continuously computed from the votes “for” and “against” it
- When a PR’s approval score reaches a desired threshold, it can be merged. (Organizers control merge decisions and can overwrite the approval mechanism.)
- As mentioned earlier, when a PR is merged the author is rewarded a contribution reward of newly minted credits, amounting to the sum of the priority scores of all issues resolved by the PR. We also refer to this reward as the value of the PR.
Incentives to participate in governance
- In addition to incentives to contribute, collaborators need an incentive to take part in governance.
- Governance participation is incentivized using the following mechanisms:
- Issues:
- When an issue is closed due to being resolved by a PR, participants who voted for the issue are awarded a participation reward in proportion to their votes
- When an issue is cancelled, participants who voted against it are rewarded analogously
- PRs
- When a PR is approved, participants who voted for are awarded a participation reward in proportion to their votes
- When a PR is rejected, participants who voted against are rewarded analogously
Economics
- The total supply of credits always equals the value of all merged PRs, plus any credits issued by the treasury, minus any credits burned by it.
Organizers
- Organizers are distinguished users with community management privileges
- Organizers can perform a variety of privileged operations, always transparently:
- Accept or reject new member applications
- Issue or burn credits
- Transfer credits to and from any accounts
- Overwrite PR approval decisions (possibly against the popular vote)