Handshake micro grants

The purpose of Handshake micro grants is to support open source developers in the Handshake ecosystem, because the Handshake protocol undoubtedly remains the best shot at an open naming layer for the internet.

How it works

Submit a 2-3 paragraph proposal, via a pull request or email. All proposals must be completed within 2-4 weeks. Any proposal that's open source and creates value for the Handshake protocol is warmly welcomed. Creativity is encouraged. Extra points for technical elegance and depth. This initiative is purposely light on overhead, placing a significant premium on execution velocity and having fun.

Template questions:

What have you built previously? [Include link to GitHub profile] What will you be building? Why is that a valuable open source contribution to Handshake? What are completion criteria? When will this be completed (max 4 weeks)? What is your contact information?

Submit a pull request or simply email open@opensystems.dev with your proposal.

Cadence

Grant cycles are roughly every two weeks for ~6 months. Deadlines to apply below (updated on an ongoing basis). We will notify you of whether your application has been selected shortly after each deadline.

Grant cycle 1 awarded to Anunay Jain for work on a HIP featuring Lockup Loans

Grant cycle 2 awarded to Nathan Woodburn for work on easy hosting of Wordpress websites on Handshake domains

Grant cycle 3 awarded to Handshake Enthusiast for setup and maintenance of a Handshake seed node

Grant cycle 4 awarded to Ryan Moon for work on dir.ectory, an accessible directory of resources for new Handshake users

Grant cycle 5 awarded to Paul Webb for work on a key, cert, and DNS records generation GUI for Handshake TLDs

Grant cycle 6 [Special Thanksgiving edition with 200,000 HNS award] awarded to Handshake Enthusiast for work on a two-pronged approach to onboarding developers into the Handshake ecosystem

Grant cycle 7 [Special Holiday edition with 200,000 HNS award] awarded to Rithvik Vibhu for work on a reference browser integration for stateless DANE

Grant cycle 8: ecosystem integration award

Grant cycle 9: ecosystem integration award

Grant cycle 10 awarded to Simon for work on refactoring/optimizing and open sourcing the importer/indexer and database of HNS Explorer

Note: Ecosystem integration awards are reserved for Handshake ecosystem partners to maximize EV of this initiative for the community

Grants

Each grant is 100,000 HNS. The scope of the initial experiment is 10 grants - i.e., 1,000,000 HNS will be distributed to open source developers in the next ~6 months. Grant recipients receive 10,000 HNS upon being selected and the remaining 90,000 HNS when all (self-stipulated) completion criteria have been satisfied.

Feedback

This will probably be a bit clunky in the beginning. Please let us know how we can improve. The intention is to be of service to open source developers. You can reach out at open@opensystems.dev.

Future

The original idea was intended as an entirely community-run effort. Based on initial feedback, though, we will start off more hands-on. Hopefully, this can get to a place where it is entirely community-run.

Nobody is getting paid doing this

It's all on a volunteer-basis, a nights and weekends thing. By the community, for the community.