Bounties are opportunities to do work on Urbit in exchange for address space or other funding. Bounties can be provided by companies, DAOs or individuals ("sponsors") in the Urbit universe. To the extent that they benefit the rest of the universe, the Urbit Foundation will chip in on funding.
For workers, bounties offer substantial funding opportunities and, compared to apprenticeships, are a way to take on larger challenges in a more autonomous manner. Learn how to work on a bounty here.
For sponsors, bounties allow you to scale your workforce through the Urbit community, get critical tools built, or just fund cool projects that you want to see exist. Learn how to post a bounty here.
Work on a Bounty
You can see open bounties here, which can claimed by filling out the form on each individual bounty.
How it works
After applying, the Urbit Foundation will circulate the details of your application to the sponsor and schedule a follow-up interview to see if you would be a good fit for the project. Should your application be accepted, you will undergo a quick KYC process and recieve a contract for signature. Some bounties may also entail additional direct compensation from the sponsor for which the Urbit Foundation is not responsible for managing; please discuss these parameters directly with your sponsor.
The sponsor of the bounty is ultimately responsible for signing off on completed work. They'll also be the primary point of contact while work is underway, although the Urbit Foundation may assign personnel to assist on bounties that it is particularly invested in.
Sponsors are vetted by the Urbit Foundation as trustworthy to ensure their ability to fund the work that they post. The Urbit Foundation also collaborates heavily with sponsors to ensure that the bounty is well-specified, which ensures that your project is both properly scoped and technically viable.
Getting Paid
After you've finished your work on a given milestone, you will need to get signoff from your sponsor. To do this, contact your sponsor with the details of the milestone completed, any relevant instructions, github repos, or app download links, and solicit review from your sponsor. They can submit their approval to the Foundation by contacting ~marfun-pacpet, at which point you are ready to submit an invoice. Once the Urbit Foudnation receives approval from your sponsor and an invoice for the amount agreed upon in your grant or milestone, the Foundation will pay your star allocation to the Ethereum address you have provided.
We approve and issue payments within 30 days of invoice receipt and approval, although often payment is made more quickly. If you have any questions regarding getting paid or submitting an invoice, please contact ~marfun-pacpet for assistance.
Post a Bounty
To get started posting a new bounty, submit it via this form.
We at the Urbit Foundation will work with you to ensure that all bounties have clear specifications — this ensures that they get what you pay for. If your bounty submission is missing details or could be otherwise improved, we'll provide that feedback and work with you to refine your bounty.
Well-specified Bounties
A well-specified bounty generally has these elements:
- Overview: A clear description of what the worker will do to complete this bounty. It's a good idea to include a problem statement or rationale for the work.
- Project Requirements: An articulation of what constitutes complete work. User stories, Figma designs, interface specifications, and other technical constraints are all examples of requirements. It is recommended to reference any specific requirements — such as key user stories — on a milestone level to ensure clarity in which requirements need to be met at each stage of the project.
- Worker Requirements: A description of the skills and/or qualifications required of a prospective worker. Technologies or skills known, years of experience, work schedule (e.g. time availability), and demonstrable accomplishments are all examples of this.
- Milestones: Logical segments of work that can be considered done on their own. Breaking the project up into smaller pieces will help a new worker pick up the work should that be necessary, keeps the worker motivated with incremental achievement and remuneration, and is generally a sign of a clear specification. Milestones don't always make sense; sometimes there's only one.
- Timeline: If you're trying hit a certain deadline, make sure to specify absolute dates on the milestones. Otherwise, use relative dates (e.g. two months) to give the worker an idea of how long each milestone will take. This helps form an agreement between the sponsor and worker on volume of work, and grounds to seek other arrangements should schedules be missed.
The more detail in the bounty's specification, the better the results and the smoother your working relationship will be with a contributor. Once a contributor has been selected, parameters such as absolute dates or other open ended questions will be updated prior to contract to ensure there are clear expectations for all parties involved
Funding
You're free to fund your bounty with as much of your own capital as you'd like. You can also request funding from the Urbit Foundation.
We fund projects based on their benefit to the whole network. If your bounty is for contributions to Urbit itself, or other technical infrastructure, we might fund all of it. If the bounty is to build or contribute to your company's product, we'll be open to funding less of it.