RoboCopDoge is an Ethereum based ERC 20 protocol token that helps bridge the gap between capitalism and the open-source web by providing monetary benefits to the contributors. It is inspired by WeiDai’s vision and aims to reward the contributors similarly to miners in the bitcoin blockchain.
Previous articles has tried to explain the gaps in open source web and how $RoboCopDOGE is trying to address that. This article will go deeper into working and how $RCDOGEDAO will be rewarded based on Proof of Work to the open-source contributors.
Phases of distribution
To channel it as a bridge between investors and the open-source community, there will be 2 significant mechanisms for the distribution of tokens.
- One time distribution to investors
- Distribution to developers based on ‘Proof of Work.’
Both have their significance and own fashion of distribution to strike the right balance between investors and developers.
Distribution to investors
There will be single tranche distribution to investors at a predefined price without any locking. Investors can invest in the vision at presale or later stages and realize the value of the token basis collective understanding of the market. The tokens should be freely traded on exchanges for users to buy/sell at market prices.
Distribution to developers based on ‘Proof of Work.’
Here comes the most exciting concept, i.e., distributing tokens based on proof of work. Contributors will be awarded periodically for the code changes done by them in various public repositories. There will be multiple variables involved to make sure the more impactful changes get rewarded proportionately. The distribution will occur in a timely fashion, with a count of tokens awarded getting deprecated (like bitcoin) over a period of time. Thereby virtually appreciating the token value assuming the same hard work is done by contributors in both the timeframes.
Distribution Formula
Variables used:
Cycle: Cycle means a particular timeframe when the public method of the smart contract will be triggered. Currently, it will be powered by cron job or bots (similar to liquidation bots in the derivative market)
Tcycle: Tokens to be distributed in the current cycle
CV: Absolute value of the formula (normalized later and converted to CW)
CW: Commit weight, i.e., the proportional weight of a particular commit (between 0–1) against the total set of commits considered in this cycle.
R: Repo where user-contributed as commit
Mtoken: Count of total tokens minted/released in the current cycle
Rstars: Stars/loves/likes of the repository by the community
Rfork: Forks/Copies of the repository
Ufollowers: Followers of a users profile (where followers count is not available, it will be considered as default 5)
Rduration: Number of months since when a repository is created
Clines: Lines change in particular commit
Rcommit: Total count of commits made by dev in a current repository (to avoid exploitation by contributors)
Although master/main direct commits are not promoted by contributors but to keep it as the right practice, Only PR merge will be rewarded to these branches. Direct commits will be ignored. More details on this handling will come later.
Role of Oracles
We are building a decentralized ecosystem where code will fetch immutable data and reward the contributors proportionately. However, we foresee that contribution of developers will happen in available centralized solutions (GitHub, GitLab, bitbucket, etc.) for a foreseeable amount of time (till storage cost per GB reduces to less than a cent on the blockchain). Hence, there comes a need for oracle, which can connect with available VCS/codebase solutions and fetch relevant values from their publicly available APIs. Oracles will be the building block for rewarding the contributor’s tokens against their effort put.
How can contributors/developers request rewards?
Developers can submit a triplet of <username, VCS, repo_link> to publicly available functions of a smart contract as a one-time activity to register themselves for the rewards. Post that, all the commits made by that user in a particular repo will be automatically included while calculating ‘commit_weight.’
Our uber goal is to make the open-source community dominant to private organizations and create an ecosystem where anyone can do innovation and put it free to re-use. Let RoboCopDoge take care of monetary rewards for the contributor :)
Discard patents, earn money by open source!
