Gitcoin & Arweave Open Web Fellowship

Details

Team recently wrapped up the Arweave Open Web Incubator. The resulting projects were an outstanding success and a testament to the weeks of collaboration and innovation from the whole Arweave ecosystem. Since the launch of the incubator team have seen the creation of over 15 major new profit sharing communities (PSCs). Of these incredible projects, at least 9 have already been exploring funding options with world-leading venture capital funds, and 7 are finalising their first fundraising rounds!

The core Arweave team is simply blown away by the recent progress in the community. To support this powerful momentum, today team are very proud to announce next ecosystem development initiative: The Arweave Open Web Fellowship.

The Open Web Fellowship programme will run for six weeks, and you can sign up now. At the end, team will be hosting a Demo Day, where founders will showcase their brilliant projects live to the wider Arweave community and beyond, attracting new users, contributors, and potential investors. 

Make sure to register on Gitcoin, join on Discord, and follow on Twitter so you don’t miss out on programme events.

This programme is for both new and existing Arweavers:

• New permaweb creators and founders will be supported with developing the initial building blocks of their new profit sharing community. For example, team will host a range of masterclasses from how to design your token economics, all the way to presenting your project like a pro to potential investors.
• Team will also be offering tailored support for existing permaweb apps and projects, assisting founders and creators who are in the process of building out their communities with additional contributors and collaborators. For example, guest speakers will deliver masterclasses and offer support with finding product-market fit and expanding your app’s user base.

As well as potentially receiving investment in your project, you will be able to:

• Attend masterclasses delivered by industry experts on a range of topics: from designing your project’s token economics, to refining your marketing strategy, or pitching techniques and beyond.
• Showcase your project live to the whole Arweave ecosystem on Demo Day: pitching to users, contributors, and receiving valuable feedback from world-renowned investors.
• Benefit from insights and support from leading profit sharing community founders and seasoned Arweave community members.
• Participate in exclusive community events and discussion spaces.

Profit sharing communities are a fundamentally new way of incentivizing founders to build web services. Profit sharing communities couple profit sharing tokens (PSTs) with an on-chain governance structure. This enables you to earn a stream of tips from the usage of a permaweb app, as well as to monetize access to these futures profits. You can find out more about PSTs here, and about PSCs here.

The aim of this programme is to offer tailored support, resources, and guidance to both brand new and existing PSC founders who wish to push their projects to the next level.

Bring a Founder

There are referral rewards available for anyone bringing amazing new profit sharing community founders into the ecosystem. If you refer a founder who builds a community that team invest in as part of the fellowship programme, you will receive 35% of the profit sharing tokens that team purchase from them. To be eligible for this reward, the person that you referred to the programme simply needs to provide your contact details (either email address, Discord username, or Gitcoin/Github handle) when they register on Gitcoin.

Resources

• You can find the docs for getting started deploying your first permaweb app here.
• The docs for the JavaScript library that allows you to read from and write to the permaweb are here.
• Team’re providing some free tokens so you can get started building and deploying - grab your wallet here. For guidance on how to use the Chrome web extension wallet, check out this user guide.
• Blog post about profit sharing tokens can be found here, post on SmartWeave can be found here, and information about profit sharing communities can be found here. 
• A guide for spinning up your SmartWeave PST can be found here.
• You can create your profit sharing community here.
• If you need technical support, join developers’ Discord here where core Arweave team members and community members can offer you guidance.

Rules and Criteria

Successful submissions will meet the following criteria:

• Apps must be open source, with the full source code available on Github or another open code hosting repository. Feel free to use whatever OSS licence you prefer.
• Your application must incorporate a profit sharing community. The owners of the associated profit sharing token receive royalties from usage of the app.
• Your submission must include a link to a live, functioning, and running instance of the app itself, as well as a link to the repository it is stored within. It must also be published to ArweaveApps (see the submission process below).
• All applicants must join Discord Dev server and share your submission in the #on-the-arweave channel upon completion.

Investment details

The Arweave core team will be investing $100,000 in winning projects submitted during the Open Web Fellowship programme. This investment will be made in the form of the Arweave team purchasing selected projects’ profit sharing tokens. The winning projects will be selected by the core Arweave team following the Gitcoin submission deadline on the 25th of November, then negotiations for token purchase will be made individually with each project and its founder(s).