Open source, junior developers and bounty collection

#1

I am working on an article for developers interested in collecting the bounty. The article would discuss the areas of importance you would expect to see in a winning wallet open source project. I’ve put some of the links I thought would be useful in the #wallet-bounty Slack channel. However, I did receive feedback from one very enthusiastic developer, who I feel is already cashing the check, that has given me the reason to ask the following questions:

  1. How developed do you expect submissions to reach? (i.e. alpha, beta, etc.) Should teams have a development timeline for adding mobile? I realize the size of the dev team and their marketing reach have an effect on this, correct?

  2. If you have two similar wallets would you focus more on user adaptation numbers vs. “working” features? Are you looking for quantity or quality end-users?

  3. Would you give high marks to a project with Mockups or other ways for your team to provide feedback? Not to say you would have the time, however, at some point when you have to judge, will you be leaving feedback in the form of issues on the Github?

Again, I know the team is really busy getting things ramped up for this next evolution of blockstack. However, with the scarcity of Senior blockchain developers in the space, the more useful information I can provide new developers - like the ones in Free Code Camp, the better it will be for the entire blockstack space. Free Code Camp portfolio piece is usually with a non-profit. However, why couldn’t it become open-source bounties or contributing to projects?

Free Code Campers could come together and create an employee-owned company. Stranger things have happened.

But mostly in this day and age of non-technical users looking to enter the space, I feel like the more user-friendly the discussion of this bounty is to new devs, to better traction your project will have over the competition. Not to mention, I want to see more teams than just the aforementioned one. Don’t you?

I look forward to your thoughts @xan :slight_smile:

#2

Here’s one of the sites I’m targeting for my article submission: https://www.cybrary.it/cybrary-0p3n/contribute/

I am still assimilating the information contained in this piece: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-authoritative-guide-to-blockchain-development-855ab65b58bc

There is a growing interest in closing the gap between jr. and Senior developer. Does anyone else in this forum know of any other blogs accepting article submissions?

#3

Appreciate the questions! (1) We purposefully set what should be very achievable minimum requirements for the bounty. Beyond that, the further a team is able to develop their wallet app, the better chance they clearly stand at winning. The direction the team decides to take that is entirely up to them (for example deciding to spend more time on polishing the UX vs. adding new features, prioritizing mobile, etc…). For past bounties, we’ve seen submissions span the range from pure proofs of concept to more or less public beta status.

(2) Given the timeline to actually create the app is two months, I would be surprised to see meaningful adoption numbers, but it’s certainly possible. As adoption is more a measure of the success, and not the subject of success, I would definitely say teams should focus more on the actual functionality, features, and experience.

(3) In the past we’ve offered to provide feedback in a 1 on 1 setting with each and every team that submitted, and will probably do the same for this bounty. The feedback typically centers around overall feedback from the deciding judge(s), feedback from a code audit, and for this bounty specifically probably feedback from a security review as well.

#4

Follow up question: I naively assumed I could sort this becoming a Blockstack developer business all on my own, however, the closest I could get was this article on becoming a bitcoin developer.

Do you have something more direct to the Blockstack approach?

#5

Hey! So the good news is applications on top of Blockstack don’t have to worry about the underlying infrastructure, including the blockchain. In general, Blockstack apps are just user facing Javascript that runs locally in the user’s browser. This approach not only makes them scalable, but also drastically lowers the barriers to innovation. Hope that answers your question, but please let me know if not!

-Xan

#6

I am working in a new iOS developer into the community. How do I get him an invite to this Slack? He’s taking a look at what you have and then he’s going to look at my questions and fill in the gaps. He currently works with erc 20 that’s Ethereum right? So he get where I’m twisted around. Since he has to learn tour system he’ll understand my questions better. Does that makes sense to you?