Developer Incentives for Loyalty to Tezos Chain

While talking to some developers about “The Tezos Opus”, that have contributed to the Tezos ecosystem, I noticed an opportunity to further enrich the developer community on chain. It was apparent to me, that in this technological wild-west, developers were spending a lot of time and effort pulled in different directions and by different platforms. The developers will often create an app or a platform in the miniscule amount of free time they have because they truly enjoy creating things. However, this doesn’t pay the bills. These were some brilliant minds that would take projects working for other chains or companies because having stability is, of course, paramount when it comes to placing food on the table and a roof over your children’s heads.

This led me to an idea for a project following “The Tezos Opus” (r/thetezosopus for anyone wondering). I was thinking it may be beneficial to implement a preference system when it comes to grants issued by the foundation in order to streamline the process and expedite development, all while increasing the quality of Dapps entering the Ecosystem. It will reduce the risk of devs, who want to work primarily with Tezos, from not being able to pay rent or ingesting Ramen in biblical proportions just to survive.

I am a business owner with the “set aside” of SDVOSB (Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business). What this means is that the US Government has allotted a certain amount of government spending to be allocated to SDVOSBs. For instance, if there is work to be done at a VAMC (Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center) it is 100% set aside to be awarded to a SDVOSB. Meaning if there is a reasonable offer, from a trusted company that holds the set aside it will have a much higher change of being awarded to that contractor. If a contractor does not have the SDVOSB set aside, they must fulfill as much of the subcontracted work with SDVOSB, or VOSB (Veteran Owned Small Business) work as they can to increase their chances of being selected as the awarded contractor.

There are multiple areas of set asides like WOSB (Woman Owned Small Business) Section 8 (Disadvantage Business) and Hub Zone (Historically Underutilized Business) That all have preference on certain projects and give the ability to smaller companies to compete with “the big dogs”. More information can be found: Set-Asides and Special Interest Groups | GSA

The idea I would like to propose to the community, as well as ask for any insights you might have, is to develop a point system in which previous developers on the Tezos Ecosystem are incentivized for returning to do repeated, quality work. I’m Thinking a point system up to 1-10 that can be used as a “fast pass” or “First choice” when it comes to applying for grants.

If you have completed 2 projects within a one-year time frame, you get 1 point for each project. Only one project was completed in the proposed timeframe but you still receive 1 point, instead of two. The projects have been incorporated with three new developments and those earn you another 1.5 points, and has increased the volume on Dexter by $2.5 mil… 2 more points. This is of course off of the top of my head and not a true system but this would give a Developer a 6.5 preference when applying for the next proposal for a grant. The points could somehow be used to award ideas that the community has to developers, instead of having to apply for every idea via proposal. If the community were to say “TF we should do this” and the Tezos Foundation agrees that it should be done, The TF can offer the project to the pool of devs with preference. The top devs getting the first right of refusal.

I think this could keep quality developers in the Tezos Ecosystem and not scrambling from chain to chain and language to language. This is a very rough idea but I’ve had a lot of offers to help with the Opus so I’d like to put this out there to see if anyone might have some ideas for my next project as well. Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Edit: Shout out to Felix, Ryan, Luke and Keefer!

2 Likes