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Positron is building PrizeForge, a production finance model for Open Source. We're shipping our two-dimensinoal fund-matching prototype to bootstrap our development and begin iterating & gathering a community. Check out our vision to learn where we're headed. Sign up now to take part in the bootstrapping PrizeForge Self-Funding Stream!
How PrizeForge Will Work
Unlike existing social finace, we keep the power with the users. Programmers who build our stuff can focus on coding not "selling". Delegates can create accountability and clear communication so you don't have to log in every week or have a PhD in Wayland Compositor programming. Elastic Fund Matching produces recurring streams with dynamic thresholds. Week after week, matched funds will go to the right places without having to raise funds over and over.
Matching Recurs Weekly
Every midnight on Sunday (GMT -12:00, latest timezone, the middle of the Pacific) all streams begin matching again. A weekly cycle enables responsive rewarding of those doing good work while also being friendly to the human-scale rhythm of building things, either during the week or primarily on weekends. Ongoing enrollments will automatically start matching again, setting new thresholds and recruting new contributors.
How We Match Funds
enrolled ➛ matching ➛ matched
- Enrolling funds sets a maximum of what can be matched and paid out each week.
- We break up each enrollment into power-of-two fragments, like the binary representation of a number.
- One by one, each fragment begins matching, waiting for other users' fragments to appear.
- Higher levels only become available when the level below has enough matched and matching funds, so large fragments may require waiting on several rounds of matching to fully match.
- Each level accumulates fragments until one of them triggers.
- When a level triggers, all matching funds in all levels become matched.
- Each level's new threshold is set to double its matched funds (as long as levels below will allow).
Read the full terms of Elastic Fund Matching 1.0.0 for a more detailed breakdown. Our general terms contain more generic definitions that should vary less between versions of Elastic Fund Matching.
Never Leaves You Hanging
Large enrollments won't fully match until there is at least as much matched in the level directly below. Participation from those doing almost as much is a requirement before large enrollments can become fully matched. Nobody wants to do a lot unless other people do almost as much. Nobody wants to do more unless a lot of people do more. It's just one way we will protect the value proposition of the cooperative side of financing larger projects. Protecting the value proposition of large-budget contributors enables them to equitably participate.
PrizeForge is about building things that need to happen. PrizeForge needs to happen. We're using our Elastic Fund Matching to raise revenue to make it happen.
PrizeForge Self-Funding Stream
Use of Funds
We are first focusing on features that can deliver value to user communities immediately while improving on what we have with Elastic Fund Matching. We can do a lot of good while completing our vision.
- Streams - Raise funds for explicit goals. Streams can be broad, like Linux Desktop Environments or very specific, such as critical features in PipeWire. A stream for Linux Gaming can support improvements to VkD3D. Language ecosystems like Rust and individual programs like Emacs and Blender can have streams.
- Delegated Payout Authority - While we have big plans for new social decision models, the first step is to delegate authority so that not every contributor has to evaluate every single git repository. We will start with simple systems and build up.
- Expanding Elasticity - We are moving to quickly support cents and to add an at-least half rule that has cost-averaging behavior when higher levels become too small relative to lower levels. Another feature, Elastic Momentum, is in the design phase.
We believe our solutions can expand well beyond software and that we can build a business with massive impact. All of the founding team will remain deeply incentivized to put every available dollar back into the company.
Until we develop our on-platform communication features, we are relying on 3rd party platforms like Reddit and will continue using it later as an out-of-band relief valve. Subscribe to the sub-reddit to keep up with development and give feedback on new features and plans. We post short updates on BlueSky @positron26. Links to our YouTube and others can be found on our company site where we also plan to have a blog with an RSS feed to discuss our tech and perspectives on unfolding trends.
Can you tackle work in our job listings? Meet up with the team in Busan, South Korea, while we navigate out of the garage phase. Generous equity and career advancement opportunities are available for the right people.
