Announcing The $100k Vechain Improvement Proposal (VIP) Bounty Campaign
In 2022, we opened our Technology Centre with the mission of building out a robust developer ecosystem for both enterprise and individual developers. Now, in 2023, we’ve seen rapid growth in ecosystem tools, SDKs, wallet and developer infrastructure, and expansion across multiple other areas of the VechainThor blockchain protocol.
We want to increase this pace of growth. Accordingly, we’re formally launching the Vechain Improvement Proposal (VIP) campaign, with initial funding of $100k, to encourage community developers to propose ideas or solutions in the form of VIPs to benefit VechainThor. For each VIP, we’ll award $2k USD!
Read on for a breakdown of how you can submit your own VIP, or head straight to our GitHub and find out yourself!
What’s a VIP?
A Vechain Improvement Proposal (VIP) is a developer-suggested upgrade relating to the VechainThor ecosystem. It can be relevant to many aspects of the ecosystem, including the core protocol, client APIs, digital assets, smart contract development or decentralized applications (dApps). Essentially, a VIP is an alteration, improvement or addition of code that addresses some element of the VechainThor blockchain.
In the spirit of openness and transparency, authors of VIPs also carry the responsibility of fostering consensus among developers and acting upon feedback. Through this approach, we collectively arrive at the most favoured version of the proposal ahead of its integration.
VIP Categories
VIPs are broken down into four main categories:
- Core Protocol: VIPs that focus on improvements to the VechainThor protocol (e.g., the consensus algorithm, transaction model, account model, runtime etc)
- Interface: VIPs that concentrate on improving interoperability and consistency for client implementations
- Application: VIPs that establish standards and conventions at the application level, potentially relating to standards of digital asset types, name registries, smart contract libraries, SDKs for developing dApps, and similar.
- Information: These VIPs describe design issues or provide general information to the community. Although they do not propose new features, they serve to share valuable insights and knowledge within the vechain ecosystem.
Submitting a VIP
If you think you’ve got an idea you’d like to submit as a VIP, then follow the below steps to kick off the process!
- Write the VIP using the VIP template
- Submit a PR with the VIP to the vechain/VIPs repository.
- Create a new topic on the Vechain Builders forum and share the PR link along with the VIP description to initiate community discussion and gather feedback.
- Update the VIP based on the community’s feedback and suggestions.
- Request a review from the operation team (@necosherry) under the PR once the VIP is ready.
- The operation team will review the format and request the reviewers to review the content and technical details.
- The proposal will be reviewed by VIP reviewers who will provide feedback and propose changes to improve the proposal.
- To have the VIP merged, the author needs to receive at least 3 approvals from the reviewers on the PR. All the reviewers who approved the VIP will form a working group and have a private channel for discussion on Discord.
- The operation team will assign a number to the proposal and merge the PR, moving the proposal to the Draft state.
The VIP Submission Process
Below, we detail the process for VIP submissions and approval:
Stagnant: Any VIP in Draft or Accepted inactive for a period more than 6 months will become Stagnant. A Stagnant vip could be resurrected and move back to Draft if the author resumes work on it.
Rejected: A VIP will be marked Rejected if reviewers cannot reach a consensus on its technical contents.
Withdrawn: A VIP will be marked Withdrawn if the author has formally withdrawn it. This state has finality and can no longer be resurrected using this VIP number. If anyone would like to work on this idea, it is considered a new proposal.
Superseded: A VIP will be marked Superseded if it has been replaced by a newer VIP.
VIP Review Team (Including YOU)
To encourage openness and transparency, we invite community developers to review and contribute to proposals alongside our technical teams.
Core Dev reviewers include:
Vechain’s CTO team reviewers include:
We invite the community to join us in the channels below to contribute thoughts, feedback and inputs to help guide VIPs to finalisation:
- Discourse: The first stop in publicly presenting and discussing VIPs — A Forum dedicated to vechain’s builders.
- Discord — Community channels to more casually discuss VIPs as they evolve. Join the vechain Discord server, open “Channels & Roles” then “Development on vechain”. “Builder community” will show in the side bar — join it and the discussion with your peers!
Contribute To The Future of VechainThor
We are throwing open the doors to the talent of the community, inviting you to build and submit your ideas about how we can improve the VechainThor protocol together. When we work together, we grow together. And when we tap the genius of our massive community, we lay even more solid foundations, built and vetted by you.
Get those thinking caps on and head on over to the VIP template to begin the process of submitting your ideas to the community and team. We can’t wait to see what ideas you have to support the continued growth of VechainThor!
About vechain
Vechain, headquartered in San Marino, Europe, is the curator of VechainThor, a world leading smart contract platform spearheading the real world adoption of blockchain technology.
Through leveraging the capabilities of ‘trustless’ data (information without intermediaries), smart contracts and IoT technologies, VechainThor has enabled solutions across a wide array of fields. Vechain now turns its attention to the greatest challenge of all — building digital ecosystems to drive sustainability and digital transformation at global scale.
Visit https://www.vechain.org to learn more.
