Bankless - StarkWare Sessions #6 | Open-Source Funding with Gregoire of Only Dust

Starting point is 00:00:01 Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. And sometimes that frontier is at a conference. Like last weekend, where over 1,000 developers, founders, builders, and investors attended the Starkware sessions in Tel Aviv in order to participate in growing the Starknet ecosystem ecosystem ecosystem ecosystem systems. This is Bankless's StarcNet. Which are nine bite-sized episodes interviewing the founders, builders, and ecosystem developers of Starknet. Every once in a while in the crypto world, a conference happens. not everyone is available to attend. Don't worry. Bankless has your back because I go to basically every conference that's out on the frontier and I bring an entire podcast studio in tow with me in order

Starting point is 00:00:41 to make sure that the Bankless Nation stays on the frontier of what's happening in crypto. In this interview, we are talking to Gregor from Only Dust. Now, Only Dust is an application on Starknet to help developers start building in Starkware using Starknet. It's like a developer bounty board, a kiosk. There's jobs for you to go do. And this is perhaps a an entry point for getting started in building in the world of Starknet. There is money associated with this. So if you are a developer looking to make money while also growing your knowledge base about Starknet, this episode is for you. So let's go ahead and get right into it. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

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Starting point is 00:03:15 and today we're talking with Gregor of... What's your project called? Only dust. Only dust. How did you come up with only dust? I think to create stars, you need only dust. So it's like all developer of the community just just dust

Starting point is 00:03:26 But with them we can create stars We can create new ecosystem And just wonderful And it's a little joke Because it's like an OD You know, so overdose And in French It's a Poudre de Perlin-Pan

Starting point is 00:03:39 It's a private joke for French But yes Okay, so what does OnlyDust do? OnlyDust It's a peer-to-peer A grand platform So we have the money of the foundation Within Only Dust

Starting point is 00:03:52 and all developers can grant each other. So it's not like a committee, a borrowing committee with some paperwork. It's a developer who is like, okay, I like your job, I want to grant you. Some old developers are granting each other and it's very, very effective. And it has a very strong network effect because developer unbound their friends, who onboard their friends and it's working very well. And it's all transparent. So we have no fraud on the platform.

Starting point is 00:04:16 It's just completely amazing, completely committee-driven. So this is perhaps a little bit like Gitcoin in the sense, It's a grants platform, but it's different from Gitcoin in that projects on Starknet are giving grants to other projects on Starknet. Is that right? Exactly. In the same repository on GitHub, a project can give grant to other contributors. And a lead can, for example, if a developer see an amazing opportunity with a good developer,

Starting point is 00:04:42 he can grant another developer, and this developer can grant developer on his repository. So it's just contributor granting contributors, yes. So if a developer is in. interested by Starknet, but they don't know where to go. Perhaps this is a place to get started. Is that fair? I think it's the best place. And we are working right now.

Starting point is 00:04:59 We will work with the Eterl Foundation. And a lot of over our blockchain are coming to us because we have a very, very strong growth. And it's working very well. So I think when we are talking with foundation, a lot of foundations, we're like, we don't want to have a grant program because it's not effective. It's not cost efficient. And when we see our results and our community, are like, I want to do this. I need this.

Starting point is 00:05:22 And for example, it's a bit strange because I was in a meeting with a big foundation. And we're like, so we have a business model. We have a take rate on all grant. And we're like, you are not, you need to increase your price. I'm like, what the fuck? Like I have a 50% take rate. But I'm like, no, 20 on 25 minimum. So yes, it's amazing to see this kind of product market fin because grant program has a long history of failure,

Starting point is 00:05:48 according to me. And we are reinventing this with the community for the open source. so it's very cool. Okay, where does the money come from for the grants? A foundation of companies. For example, Starnet Foundation is the biggest client right now, and we are very happy to work with them. And for example, a company like Carriage,

Starting point is 00:06:06 so I think you have an interview with them, they are like, okay, we can give you some money because we want to support this kind of open source projects. For example, Teodo is another sponsor of this event. They're like, okay, we will give you 100 or 200K for this kind of project. So we have private company and we have big foundation. Okay, so is this a way for, this isn't really, this is not specific to the Starknet Foundation, right?

Starting point is 00:06:30 No. So you guys are your own independent company that's meant to facilitate grants inside of the Starknet ecosystem? Yes, in the Starnet, it's an open source ecosystem. So right now it's the Starnet, but open source. If it's open source, it can be funded. For example, the Starknet Foundation right now with us is funded, non-Starknet project because they think interested for the public goods. So it's a new way to fund public goods, we think.

Starting point is 00:06:55 But a lot of the money for grants does come from the Starknet. Yes, right now it's okay, yes. Okay. And so it's a way to distribute value from the Starknet Foundation to the rest of the Starknet ecosystem for now? Totally, yes. And it scales very, very well. And so teams inside of the Starknet ecosystem can get bootstrapped

Starting point is 00:07:16 because they're getting financial resources from the Starknet Foundation, but it's getting allocated by OnlyDust? Yes, it's with OnlyDust platform. Right, yes. Yes, but by developer, yes. Right. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Okay, so say I'm Argent, how would I use OnlyDust? And what would I use it for? They come to us and say, okay, for this type of project, for this type of feature, it's open source. We want to have contributors. And they're like, okay, let's go. We push the project on our platform. We have a lot of contributors. We want to work on this project.

Starting point is 00:07:47 We introduce them to Argent. They begin to work on GitHub. And at the end of the week, the lead of Argent, we said, okay, I want to pay this contributor, this kind of $1,000 or $1,000 or $2,000, this one, $200, this one, exact. And all week is doing that. And at the end of the budget of the Argent, there is some developer who are saying, okay, what we are doing with Argent and other contributors on this repository, it's so cool.

Starting point is 00:08:19 we want that they need to have more money, so they click on a button on our product, and they have more money and more money and more money. If it's not cool, if it's not useful, and if other contributors think that it's not very well-executed, for example, they have no more money. So it's very violent because sometimes the project just ends because there is not enough quality, not enough value for the ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:08:45 And so how do teams like Argent or other projects that are building on Star Wars? How do they get money from the foundation? Do they have to apply for a grant from the foundation? No. They can sometimes direct talk with the foundation, but when we talk with us, they just have to talk with other developers.

Starting point is 00:09:01 So they don't talk to the foundation. So we have some, for example, Teodo or Quadratic. They are building on Starknet, and they didn't talk to a member of the foundation. They are just talking with developers of the community. So for the foundation, it's very cool because they don't have to talk to every company. and if they want to have a specific interaction with the company,

Starting point is 00:09:21 they contact them, but normally they don't have to talk to the foundation. Right, okay, but the developers don't have to talk to the foundation, but someone talks to the foundation. Us. Just you. Yes, we have an annual contract with the foundation, and we have a dashboard with all the results, all the developers, all the churned developer.

Starting point is 00:09:40 It's like the developer reports, you see. But there's a stark net ecosystem, and it's actualized day-to-day. and they see this data and they are like, okay, we like what we see so we give you more money and more money and more money so right now we have a contract for 2023 and we will negotiate a contract for 2024

Starting point is 00:09:57 and so we are negotiating for the world ecosystem with the foundation. So this is like only does it's like a kiosk of jobs for the Starknet ecosystem and as a developer you can go to this kiosk like oh that job looks cool it's not a job, this project is cool

Starting point is 00:10:15 I want to work on this project. It's not job, it's not Buntis, it's project. So you apply to a project, you go in a telegram group, you're told with our developer, you ship some, you merge some P.A. on GitHub, and you are paid for this. But there is no job, it's, it's project-centric. We have tried the Bounty-centric approach. It was devastating.

Starting point is 00:10:37 It was, because, yes, Bounty, I think, don't work. Right, okay. Amazing. So I'm a developer. I'm interested in getting started. Where do I go? We go to your website, you see all the project, you can contact directly the developer in charge of the grant of the project. You talk with him, you go in his telegram group, you work, and at the end of the week, you are paid.

Starting point is 00:10:59 How much am I paid? Normally, it's $500 a day. It could be more, if you're more experience. It could be less if you are a junior developer. But it's your lead, the lead project of the, it's a developer of the open-such project. We will decide. And what kind of jobs are available? What kind of gigs?

Starting point is 00:11:17 Right now we have a lot of, for example, some smart contract developer in Kero. We have a need for data scientists. We need a rust developer, a lot of road developer front. So we need a lot of need. Right now we have 45 open source projects and we are going to very fast. We have 300 developers.

Starting point is 00:11:36 And so if you come, it's impossible to not find a good project and if you don't find a good project right now just contact us and I have a team dedicated to this they just make the introduction awesome and what's the website only dust.xy zed only dust.xyc. Yes. Awesome

Starting point is 00:11:53 great word, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Cheers.

Bankless - StarkWare Sessions #6 | Open-Source Funding with Gregoire of Only Dust

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