vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com 2 days ago
I just finished this:
Grantless
Grantless — The Invisible Handout
Crowdfunded grants for open-source work, on Catallax. A permissionless, pleb-funded grant ecosystem on Nostr.
 It's a new, permissionless, 100%-nostr-based Open Source Software crowdfunding protocol, based on #catallax, #WoT and #dlists . If you've ever been rejected from a grant application, you might enjoy Grantless :) It's kind of like OpenSats, in that money goes from donors to software teams, except it's run by you and the people you trust. Grantless is cypherpunk. There's no middleman, platform or legal entity involved. No KYC nor AML. Anyone can curate, anyone can review work, anyone can handle/escrow funds, anyone can put themselves up for funding (there's no "applying" because you can't be denied a shot at raising money from the plebs). It's crowdfunding done right: where the crowd calls its own shots. We use decentralized lists for basic curation and spam prevention - but we're just scratching the surface of what we can use dlists for... Let me know if you have any questions about how it works or if you'd like to have your project show up on #grantless but you don't feel like going through the **permissionless** legwork of getting yourself on there - I can help out with that. I'll publish a roadmap soon with what I'd like to add to this client in the (near) future. And I'm probably not looking at notifications tonight, so if you reply here I'll talk to you tomorrow. Enjoy!

Replies (51)

vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com 2 days ago
It'll be a lot cooler when it's not empty. Proper product marketing people probably would have secured a bunch of users first. ...but this isn't a "product" and I'm not "marketing". Use it if you want - or don't; but I think you should.
2 replies ↓
mleku's avatar
mleku mleku@smesh.lol 2 days ago
i put a project up for completing the smesh forum and marmot DMs. can't see any info on the page about what i put in the form tho. happy to beta test this
2 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com 2 days ago
i just tagged you - which means when I am selected as a "curator", people will see your project. (also true for anyone else who publishes a 30392 trusted list with you on it - i'm not special) check the page again. so now you need to find someone to act as the escrow and "arbiter" (was the work good, etc) - or you can fill that role yourself if you think people will trust you to act as your own "third party". i'd be happy to do it if you trust me enough. cold start problems :)
1 replies ↓
mleku's avatar
mleku mleku@smesh.lol 2 days ago
super excited about this. nostr has been needing a crowdfunding system for a long time. the output of opensats/hrf projects has not really pushed the envelope so far.
1 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com 2 days ago
The Opensats/hrf drama this week is what pushed me over the edge. Luckily, the #catallax protocol basically had everything ready to go already, just needed a slightly more focused client and some dlist integration to keep things properly decentralized and open. gonna be offline, I'll catch up with you tomorrow. it's awesome you posted a project! Once you have an arbiter assigned I'll happily help kickstart the crowdfund.
1 replies ↓
Sean's avatar
Sean 21Sean@primal.net 2 days ago
If there's no middlemen involved, what does this mean? It looks like the risk is being shared to people you trust, but to build trust takes time and reputation. I like and trust the team at OpenSats are doing a good enough job, so how does this differentiate from what they already do? It's the same but sold differently, right? The trust mechanism is still there. image
2 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com yesterday
the teams seeking funding themselves could act as their own arbiter if they want. i should have said "middleman optional". this basically would let a thousand OpenSats bloom. (if there is any appetite for such a thing. it may just be the case that enough people feel the way you do that the couple charity bodies continue to reign unchallenged). so i also could have said "a marketplace for all different varieties of middleman - from 'none' to 'demonic' " maybe someone takes it upon themself to curate only performance improvement tasks across all clients that have a budget less than 100,000 sats - something "beneath" a large charity organization... i don't know how people may use this, but i hope we'll see!
Matt - Spook, CEO NanoStrategy's avatar
Matt - Spook, CEO NanoStrategy matt@gitcitadel.com yesterday
Yeah but that's really only different in crowd size. The main benefit I can see over that is keeping the pool small enough that limited funds actually help some projects. A million projects getting a thousands sats is hardly meaningful. 100 projects hand picked for millions of SATs each might actually make progress. Pros and cons.
1 replies ↓
Satsman Says's avatar
Satsman Says yesterday
Great Idea but I see how this could instantly fracture and become political
james's avatar
james jqw22@nostrplebs.com yesterday
In the short/medium term would some form of relationship with @OpenSats be beneficial? OpenSats could recommend #grantless to all applications they were unable to fund. They could even act as an Arbiter for selected projects they are unable to fund, but still wish to succeed. If @OpenSats are truly interested in the Nostr ecosystem and growth this would seem like a no brainer, so long as your processes are clear and robust. (Also probably a good idea to clarify some of the questions asked in the comments before making any approach.)
1 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com yesterday
yes! good points. a few thoughts there: - "I" don't have any processes - this is just an client instantiation of a draft NIP:
GitHub
Propose NIP for bounties backed by zap-native, trusted escrow agents by vcavallo · Pull Request #1714 · nostr-protocol/nips
This PR is to propose a new set of Kinds for facilitating contract work marketplaces backed by trusted escrow agents. I've referred to it as NI...
 (more exposition to read at
Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies
Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...
 ) - 100% right! OpenSats could utilize #grantless ; I would love to see this happen. - I'll collect common FAQs across nostr posts over the next days/weeks and add them to the About. I don't want to be too duplicative with similar pages on
Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies
Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...
 - after all, this is just a kind of narrower UI over that protocol Thanks for your thoughts!
3 replies ↓
YODL's avatar
YODL yesterday
Figured I'd fund what seemed like a cool project, a lil bit anyway. Allocate it wisely
1 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com yesterday
not necessarily anything _wrong_ with them, just different approaches for different use-cases, risk and compliance profiles, budgets, etc. In my opinion, they're just not extremely decentralized nor permissionless nor appropriate for very small projects. #grantless / #catallax is composed **purely** of nostr events, there's no platform anywhere.
image image
Angor is cool, just sort of complex, at least compared to basic zaps and a handful of Kinds -
Angor Documentation
Project Creation
A comprehensive guide to creating projects on Angor Platform
3 replies ↓
Freedom Tech Co.'s avatar
Freedom Tech Co. ftc@nostrdev.com yesterday
Angor is decentralised, the founders have explicitly designed the platform with this goal (deplatforming) in mind Granted (!) it's more geared towards a more serious raise, with milestones and on-chain transactions We used it to claim our @npub1d0cs...zhlq award and the process was smooth. Disclaimer - we've supported Angor in building their product. Catallax looks great, I wonder if it could become a standard for donations
1 replies ↓
vinney...axkl's avatar
vinney...axkl vcavallo@vinneycavallo.com yesterday
I've now tagged you so that you show up under my curation view - your project is visible now (and it looks really great!!):
Grantless
Grantless — The Invisible Handout
Crowdfunded grants for open-source work, on Catallax. A permissionless, pleb-funded grant ecosystem on Nostr.
 You _do_ need to assign an Arbiter, though. Read the About page to see how that works, or read up more on
Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies
Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...
 (the protocol that underlies Grantless). I believe I'm the only Arbiter under my curation at the moment, but that absolutely should not stay that way... I'd be happy to do it for you, but if you have someone else in mind let me know and I can tag them in. (or, if you don't want all this reliance on me, you can set yourself up as your own curator ;)
2 replies ↓
↑