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 ("benefactors") 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, like apprenticeships, are a good way to get hired by other organizations. Learn how to work on a bounty here.
For benefactors, 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 benefactor and schedule a follow-up interview should your application be accepted — think of it like a job application.
The benefactor 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.
Benefactors 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 benefactors to ensure that the bounty is well-specified, which ensures that your project is both properly scoped and technically viable.
Post a Bounty
To get started with a new bounty, submit it via this form.
We at the Urbit Foundation 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.
- 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 benefactor 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.
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.