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Sphere · Whitepaper

QuestBoard

Basic Idea

Section titled “Basic Idea”

The QuestBoard is a dapp that provides a token-based reward system for the development and maintenance of open source projects. A project’s “QuestBoard” is a web interface for requesting and funding changes to a project that can then be implemented by the project’s developers, claiming the associated reward.

Goal: Connect the need for specific features in code projects with economic models to encourage development.

How It Works

Section titled “How It Works”

A designer might require a specific export function to be added to a photo editing tool. They can create a quest with a corresponding feature request and fund the quest with some amount of money. Other people seeing and liking the request may also add additional funds to the quest.

All these funds are locked in a smart contract for the predetermined lifetime of the quest and are returned if the quest is not completed. However if a developer decides to implement the feature, they can accept the quest, thereby locking it for some processing time. Once the feature is implemented and the quest is completed, the creator verifies the functionality and releases the funds to the developer.

If there are any irregularities or fraud attempts (like the creator of a quest claiming it is not completed when it actually is) there are protocols for arbitration that can include third parties. Additionally, Social Tokens can be used to track past behavior and thereby create incentives and disincentives for behavior within the network.

Extension to Real World

Section titled “Extension to Real World”

While mainly aimed at digital, open-source projects, QuestBoards could eventually be extended to include real world tasks if a proof of completion can be verified to a satisfactory level.

A complex proof of completion might have high costs to verify (a person might have to check some fact in the physical world like if a bridge was built) but would only be required to settle disputes and irregularities in the protocol execution.

Benefits for Users of Open-Source Software

Section titled “Benefits for Users of Open-Source Software”
  • Request features in projects without having to develop them
  • Prioritize certain features over others and steer development
  • Speed up development
  • Contribute and give back to a project and its community
  • Invest in a project’s development (project honor tokens for large contributions)

Benefits for Open-Source Developers

Section titled “Benefits for Open-Source Developers”
  • They get paid for independent open-source work
  • More developers are attracted to open-source work
  • Newer developers can earn money by completing small quests
  • Hard problems accrue challenge rating and reward money — brilliant developers can grab larger pots
  • Funding gives clear user feedback and increases development speed
  • Project leaders can create and suggest quests they see as important (optimization, network code, data management — invisible but important code)

Democratic Funding

Section titled “Democratic Funding”

Possibility for more democratic protocols using Governance Engines:

  • E.g. 20% of every quest fund is submitted to a common pool that gets redistributed via democratic vote among project members
  • Crowd funding projects where people contribute to a general pot distributed democratically among features
Section titled “Related Concepts”