Questions on your design considerations

[fretchen]

Hello everyone,

first I wanted to say congrats to this really interesting effort. I did not yet get around to use it, but I will certainly have a deep think about it. While I was looking into the product I started to some parallels to a project that I am working on. It tries to get quantum hardware providers closer to endusers. And it is set up in a fairly decentral and open source fashion. The basic tech works nicely on the permissions side and is described here. However, the whole stack now also needs to have some proper payment build in and I am starting to contemplate different options. It was at this stage that I started to wonder about your considerations as you also tried to set up a system with the features:

• Connect technical people (devs) with endusers.
• Work on a system that allows them to get paid flexibly.
• Do the whole thing in an open (decentral?) fashion.

So looking at thing it would seem that it is a similar task as gitcoin had already attacked once via the blockchain, while you are going done the more "standard" route.

• Would it possible to explain if you even considered fancy new blockchain technologies ? And if you considered them why you decided against them ?
• I also wondered how you approach the decision on of specific platforms. You seem to have made clear choices of Github and Stripe at the beginning and from there you will see how you get more options in ? Is this true ?

Regards,

Fred

[birkjernstrom]

Thank you @fretchen for the kind words - much appreciated! :) Responses inline below.

Would it possible to explain if you even considered fancy new blockchain technologies ? And if you considered them why you decided against them ?

Yes, it was definitely considered upfront and remains under consideration for the future.

The core problem we want to tackle with our mission is driving more capital to developers behind their open source- and/or indie initiatives. So we need to maximize (and help) potential capital inflow top of the funnel and that's where crypto (or crypto only at least) fell short since only a portion of individuals & businesses use it as a means of exchange vs. fiat.

Everyone with crypto has fiat. Far from everyone with fiat has crypto or a desire/aptitude to use it. So it didn't make sense to limit the potential market size of capital in a space where the status quo is a struggle of getting capital to begin with.

With that said, I'm personally excited about a select few chains and the underlying intent behind them. So it's an ongoing consideration for the future as additional options (expanding the market of capital - next point). However, there are a lot of issues & concerns with crypto and especially within the open source ecosystem imho and those need to be ironed out and thought of with care before going down that path. So all-in-all, it's not a near-term priority in full transparency.

I also wondered how you approach the decision on of specific platforms. You seem to have made clear choices of Github and Stripe at the beginning and from there you will see how you get more options in ? Is this true ?

GitHub because the absolute majority of all open source software is hosted there. I did some analysis on a few million open source libraries from registries (NPM, PyPI etc) and about 98%+ where hosted on GitHub.

Stripe: Most feature complete offering based on our short- to mid-term needs. Plus I had a lot of experience with them at former companies.

However, as with the crypto question above, we're continuously evaluating our roadmap & efforts ahead for the maximum potential towards our mission. So expanding payment options, platforms etc is definitely something we consider & discuss for the future. Our choices today are simply the ones that made the most sense in terms of potential impact towards that mission, but that doesn't mean it will remain true for all time into the future.