Oscoin
Decentralized incentive network for open-source software development.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor investor investor | €0.0 | round |
N/A | - | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Oscoin was a Berlin-based software development company that aimed to create a decentralized network and cryptocurrency to incentivize and support the open-source software (OSS) community. The company went out of business on July 1, 2021. Founded in mid-2017 by Eleftherios Diakomichalis and a team of developers, Oscoin's mission was to address the persistent challenges of funding and maintenance in the open-source world. The team included co-founder Alexis Sellier, also known as 'cloudhead', and Tyler Neely.
The core of Oscoin's proposed solution was a blockchain-based platform designed to fairly distribute economic rewards and governance power among developers and contributors, independent of centralized gatekeepers like GitHub. The platform intended to combine distributed version control, decentralized storage, and its own blockchain with a native cryptocurrency called 'oscoin'. The economic model was based on 'inflation funding', where newly minted tokens would be distributed to reward valuable open-source projects. A key mechanism was a treasury system that would allocate a portion of each block reward to network operators (miners/validators) and another portion to OSS projects based on their value to the community. Project value was to be determined by a voting system where token holders could 'stake' their coins behind projects they supported, signaling their importance without losing ownership of their tokens.
This system aimed to provide a continuous, algorithmic funding stream for developers, allowing them to earn a living from their contributions. The oscoin token was also intended for use in an open marketplace for developers to exchange tokens for work, and for companies to fund specific features or purchase support. In February 2018, Oscoin raised €2 million in an early-stage venture capital round from investors including BlueYard, Placeholder, Fabric Ventures, and Coinbase founder Fred Ehrsam. Despite its vision and initial funding, the project ultimately ceased operations. The original idea is now being pursued by a project called Radicle.
Keywords: open-source software, blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralized network, developer incentives, OSS sustainability, decentralized governance, token economy, version control, crypto-economy, smart contracts, inflation funding, staking, peer-to-peer protocol, git, code hosting, developer tools, financial services