The vast majority of the world’s software today is open source. The global open-source developer community has, in recent years, created and shared an enormous amount of code that has benefited the world in uncountable ways.
Open-source software is extremely popular, and used by more than 89% of all companies, according to one recent study. Most people don’t realize it, but virtually every single application on their smartphone relies on some sort of open-source software, be it databases like MySQL or MongoDB, infrastructure services such as Kubernetes, data streaming platforms like Apache Kafka, and developer hubs such as GitHub and GitLab.
Open-source software is truly the foundation of our modern, digital lives and yet despite the impact it has had on every single one of us, developers often struggle to receive any rewards for their contributions towards it. The vast majority of maintainers of key open-source projects perform their work for free, at least ostensibly. There are ways to obtain compensation for this work, such as through grants and sponsorships, consulting work, freemium software, maintenance services, and so on. But there’s no established framework in place, and open-source developers have to explore a variety of options to finance their efforts.
This is clearly not fair, because some developers are far better at monetizing their efforts than others. It means that the rewards they earn are not commensurate with the effort they put in, but are more related to how good they are at marketing themselves to others.
Open-source software developers clearly deserve a better deal, and that is precisely what they’re being offered with Radix, a unique layer-1 blockchain project that’s building a platform for the next generation of decentralized finance.
Introducing Radix’s Developer Royalties
With Radix, developers will be able to receive compensation that corresponds to both their skillset and the amount of effort they put toward building a more advanced DeFi ecosystem.
Radix is aiming to host the next generation of DeFi services and applications on its unique network that does away with the need for smart contracts, replacing them with “components” and “blueprints”, which can be thought of as the building blocks of dApps. Its developer royalties system has been conceived to reward developers proportionally for the amount of work they do, providing a strong incentive for them to lend their expertise to the platform.
Developers will be able to set their own rate of incremental royalties for the components and blueprints they create, with the rewards paid out in accordance with how often their contributions are used. With Radix, anyone can create a component and make it available through the Radix library. From there, anyone else is free to use that component to build their dApps, assets, and financial services. Already, Radix offers an extensive range of components that can be slotted together and customized to create fully functional dApps for a range of purposes. The developers simply set their own royalty fee, which will be paid out each time a transaction is made through a dApp that uses one of his or her components. In this way, it incentivizes developers to create more useful and impactful components that will be utilized time and time again by the rest of the community. The more popular their component is, the more they can earn.
The basic idea with this scheme is that by incentivizing the best developers to contribute, Radix will be able to improve its network and services and make them more useful to others.
It’s an incredibly simple and fair system that promises to create real opportunities for developers who’re interested in building a new generation of safer and faster DeFi applications. As the Radix platform scales and grows in complexity, the developer royalties will likely increase. That’s quite unlike traditional development funds, which are usually exhausted very quickly. Developers who create the core components that power Radix-based DeFi will benefit from an ongoing revenue stream that grows exponentially as the network becomes more popular. What’s more, the entire system is fully decentralized and baked into the underlying protocol, so no one can cut off a developer from their earnings.
An incentive for safer DeFi
Radix’s developer royalties is a fool-proof system that’s designed to ensure the rapid growth of DeFi. The prospect of earning rewards commensurate with their efforts can inspire developers to fast-track the development of core functionality for DeFi dApps. In turn, this will accelerate the progress of dApps being deployed across Radix’s infrastructure. With all of the necessary functionality already available in the shape of components, building dApps simply becomes a matter of putting them together, akin to building with lego bricks.
It will provide big benefits for DeFi users too. One of the biggest issues with DeFi today is the prevalence of hacks, the majority of which are due to smart contract vulnerabilities. With Radix’s trusted components, vulnerabilities will become far less common, resulting in fewer opportunities for malicious actors to apply their trickery and make off with users’ funds.
In other words, Radix’s developer royalties are a win-win for all parties involved, giving developers access to a sustainable revenue stream in return for building a reliable infrastructure that powers the next generation of finance.
