WISHLIST GRANT / RFP / BOUNTY : Stacks Libraries / SDKs (multiple languages)

[will-corcoran]

The Stacks Foundation is currently accepting applications for the development of libraries / SDKs that provide the building blocks required to work with the Stacks blockchain for the following languages:

• Rust
• C
• GoLang
• Java
• Python

If you wish to be considered for developing one of these please send an email to grants@stacks.org with the subject line: "Stacks Library for [language name]".

In your email please include the following:

1. Link to your Github repo and any team members
2. Link to relevant Github repo's demonstrating your expertise in the proposed library language
3. Proposed scope of functionality you intend to cover (see these links 1 2 3)
4. Estimated number of hours for the proposed scope
5. Estimated budget for the proposed scope

If you do not see a particular language listed above that you are interested in contributing a library for, please submit a request by following the same instructions!

Thank you!

Will Grants Program Manager

[stacks-foundation]

👋 @will-at-stacks
Thanks for your application! We will do a pre-review and let you know if we have any immediate questions. In the mean time please refer to our review schedule here for a detailed timeline and response dates.
Best, Will

[fluidvoice]

I don't see why GoLang and Java can be on this list but not Elixir voted stacksgov/grants-program#2 most loved lang after Rust in the 2022 Stackoverflow survey... and the Elixir framework Phoenix voted stacksgov/grants-program#1 most loved framework.

[will-corcoran]

@fluidvoice Elixir was covered here: https://grantsdashboard.stacks.org/dashboard/grants/555

The list came from Kenny and JW - and there is an option for people to suggest whatever language they want.

[fluidvoice]

@fluidvoice Elixir was covered here: https://grantsdashboard.stacks.org/dashboard/grants/555

The list came from Kenny and JW - and there is an option for people to suggest whatever language they want.

Thanks Will. Very glad to see it. I hope we can attract some Elixir devs. There are some big brain bro's in that tribe.

[rswol]

@fluidvoice StacksOnChain.com backend is written in Java. If we had SDK already, the development would be way easier. StacksOnChain is part of Stacks infra with multiple projects relying on its work. It would also enable Clojure for free.

As for GoLang - it is a very popular language for building infra projects. Once you start integrating with cloud providers and external services, you quickly find that Java and GoLang are the most convenient choices.

[fluidvoice]

@rswol sure popularity should probably be the top metric to look at. But eg., Discord used to be written in Go and they had to rewrite it in Elixir and Rust to improve scalability.
Different langs are important for different reasons.

[rohitverma007]

Hey @will-at-stacks, Are you by any chance still accepting proposals for this? Specifically Python?

[will-corcoran]

Hi @rohitverma007 -

Yes, we are! Please feel free to email the broadstrokes of your application as outlined above.

Thanks! Will

[friedger]

Can you please cc me? I am interested to see what is worked on.

We will work on C.

[jruffer]

We did most of our grant work in Golang and started a sdk for it but it never found a home. Did someone else submit or finish a goland sdk already?

[fluidvoice]

Here is what ChatGPT reports as top 5 languages per their 2021 data. And for 2022 it looks unchanged: https://octoverse.github.com/2022/top-programming-languages

Should Python be the highest priority due to this?

[friedger]

I suggest to focus on the language that brings the most benefits to the ecosystem. Maybe chatgpt can help maybe not.

[fluidvoice]

I suggest to focus on the language that brings the most benefits to the ecosystem. Maybe chatgpt can help maybe not.

The point isn't about ChatGPT. That's just generating a consolidated search result. Github Octoverse latest data agrees with the result as shown below.
Do you mean to say that (app) lang popularity isn't the most important criteria for choosing what is most likely to bring the most benefits to the ecosystem? I was under the impression that THE most important thing is attracting the most app devs. Isn't that why Javascript was the first focus?
If Python isn't the most important then what is, Rust? And why? Btw, Python isn't my personal favorite, I'm just looking at the reports.

[friedger]

I don't know at what data Github Octoverse is looking but I guess it is not looking at which languages are most used in the web3 ecosystem.

[fluidvoice]

I don't know at what data Github Octoverse is looking but I guess it is not looking at which languages are most used in the web3 ecosystem.

Maybe it's not definitive but it's supportive ;-)

[fluidvoice]

Also as I'm sure you know Python is used quite a bit in AI, ML (machine learning): https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/machine-learning-programming-languages/ So is Go lang (I think).

[fluidvoice]

question: "the building blocks required to work with the Stacks" is vague to me.
Can we elaborate on what the goals and focus is here?

There are so many possible reasons for focusing on a particular language. Eg., Rust is very fast and used in smart contracts on Polkadot and Solana in addition to Stacks core.
But is this grant/topic more focused on dapps and app developers or smart-contracts, or...?

[fluidvoice]

PS. even though there is an endless list of articles like this, gonna drop this I just bumped into in the event it's helpful... https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/23-blockchain-languages-driving-future-programming

[will-corcoran]

Closing this issue as it has been superseded by targeted Critical Bounties (one per language). Rust and Python are the most pressing and are being funded first. Please apply if you are interested.

stacksgov/critical-bounties#4 stacksgov/critical-bounties#5