A Toast to Dev Protocol

LOAF
11 min readMar 19, 2021

A few days ago I wrote a thread on Twitter about a token called Dev Protocol, which I have been watching for months. To my surprise, the thread quickly gained a lot of traction, resulting in a price increase of more than 200% in the following days.

While of course, it is great to have something that I own go up, quite honestly it feels even better to think about all of the software developers and creators who will benefit from the protocol getting more adoption.

Since I have recently begun running into issues writing threads as “in-depth” as I’d like to on Twitter (they only allow 25 tweets in a thread), I thought it would be a good idea to introduce and begin my medium page that I plan to begin using to write the more complex and “in-depth” topics on, with a re-cap and appreciation post regarding the thread I wrote a few days back on Dev Protocol.

NOTE: The info on this medium account will also include topics I have discussed on Twitter, random information about decentralized finance that I find interesting, and some cool stuff I find on the hottest tokens out

So, without further ado, lets dissect the thread I posted to Twitter a few days ago about Dev Protocol:

What is Dev Protocol?

Put simply, DEV is building a platform that enables creators and projects to tokenize their OSS creations, unlocking a substantial amount of capital that until now had not been explored.

Through Dev Protocol’s web application called Stakes Social, creators of anything OSS (open source software) can essentially “unlock” the value of their contributions through a handful of different methods.

Some of the integrations Dev Protocol is working on implementing now or in the near future are:

  • YouTube
  • GitHub
  • Spotify
  • TradingView
  • Medium

This means that any creator on one of the applications listed above will soon be able to tokenize their work with Dev Protocol’s technology.

How does it work?

As a creator, there are a variety of options to choose from utilizing Dev Protocol. Whether you want to have your own creator token, OSS token, or tokenize your creations, Dev Protocol has the tools for you to do it on a simple and slick user interface.

Users who support a creator registered on Stakes Social can choose to stake their DEV tokens for the different projects they want to fund, and the protocol then mints a preconfigured amount of tokens periodically to both the patron and creator.

What is even more interesting though, however, is the way their token model capacitates supply growth to the extent of the growth of the network. In other words, the token supply grows at a rate that is dependent on the adoption of the protocol (therefore there is no rampant inflation).

Furthermore, creators who wish to create their own token on the blockchain can easily do so through Dev Protocol’s portal! The process is as simple as inputting a few parameters to your liking (i.e. token name, ticker, and much more), and confirming the transaction in your Ethereum wallet!

All of these services provided above contribute value to the DEV token along with the Dev Treasury, which collects a 7.5% fee in the form of creator tokens for every project launched on the protocol.

The DEV token can essentially be thought of as an index of the OSS projects registered on Stakes Social, whose value will be derived on the demand for supporting different creators in the OSS industry.

The concepts listed are just the beginning of what Dev Protocol allows for, and they have already taken OSS integration to a new level via GitHub.

What exactly am I referring to? Commit farming — A revolutionary idea first pioneered by DEV

This means that OSS projects (including many of the existing projects with tokens today), can offer a unique form of distribution through commits, or the value that they provide to development.

Additionally, the OSS token can represent voting power for the project in question, as well as provide incentives for furthering development, where both the creator and patron are rewarded for their efforts.

It even opens up the possibility of creating a “bug bounty” market powered by Dev Protocol! As you can tell, I am very excited about the future of this token and what it can create, and with good reason…

Open Source Software

Lots of people know what open source software is, but surprisingly it seems that little people recognize the extent to which our every day objects utilize the technology. All of our electronics including vehicles, storage devices, and much more are powered by open source software.

For example, even Linux is an open source software, one of the most commonly used computer software standards for commercial networking devices powering Android, IBM, Oracle, Google, and much more I will not mention for the sake of time.

Despite being worth upwards of $300B and being widespread across the world, open source software has a serious funding problem that goes almost unrecognized in the industry, even more so on the topic of developers working in cryptocurrency.

Nobody wants to work for free, and rightfully so. Because of this, some of the most crucial technology in open source software relies on pure donations to keep up with further development.

As pointed out by Dev Protocol:

  • 83% of open source projects stagnated after a year
  • 54% of popular OSS projects earn the U.S. poverty threshold

These numbers are a serious issue and hinder the development of these useful technologies, but Dev Protocol has introduced a unique idea to fix it, all while rewarding both the creators and supporters of a given project.

Who uses Dev Protocol?

Now that we have a deeper understanding of open source software and what Dev Protocol’s vision is, let’s take a look at who is already using their services we discussed previously.

  1. Chalk — Terminal Styling

Chalk is a popular terminal string styling tool with over 9.3 MILLION installs via package manager.

2. VyperLang — Pythonic programming language targeting the Ethereum Virtual Machine

The Vyper programming language is used by many of the top decentralized finance projects existing today, including Yearn Finance, Curv, and Uniswap.

In fact, Bantg, a core YFI developer even made a tweet about Dev Protocol, suggesting a Yearn Vault strategy to help fund developers of the Vyper programming language.

A short time after, this great idea came to existence with the introduction of Yearn x Dev Protocol vaults.

The DEV vault contains two strategies that support the Vyper Language. “It allows users to stake DEV tokens for Vyper which is a pythonic smart contract language used by Yearn V2, Curve, and Uniswap V1.”

READ MORE: https://medium.com/devprtcl/dev-yvault-launches-at-yearn-finance-v2-b671363a0fd8

Incubator

To kickstart adoption and bring more OSS creators to the platform, Dev Protocol introduced the “Incubator” a few weeks ago. The Incubator is a fund making up 20 crucial open source projects, chosen by Dev Protocol quarterly, with 30,000 DEV ($300,000) placed up for grabs for supporters wishing to stake their tokens and support OSS projects.

Round one of the Dev Protocol incubator included Signal, Python, WikiMedia Foundation, Prysm, Jekyll, Ether.js, Rust, Rotki, WalletConnect, ESLint, Vite, Web3js, and a lot of others!

Ironically, Signal recently made a tweet mentioning their need of donations, and they are accepting cryptocurrency…

Could supporters on Dev Protocol begin staking to support one of the world’s largest privacy messaging apps endorsed by Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey? Time will tell.

And with all of the information covered so far, it is important to remember that DEV serves as an OSS ETF, due to its treasury holding an underlying basket of OSS tokens utilizing the protocol. The impact of one of these companies (like Signal) utilizing the unique token economics of Dev Protocol would prove to be substantial.

Extra Information

One tweet I dug up while looking deeply into Dev Protocol, was a post from a Japanese Microsoft Twitter Account, telling its followers about Dev Protocol and encouraging them to check it out.

The post also linked to a panel discussion with officials including Sota Watanabe CEO of Plasm Network, a smart contract and dApps hub built on Polkadot, and Kazumi Hirose, a Microsoft Azure Tech Professional.

The purpose of the panel discussion? To exchange ideas on the mission of Dev Protocol!

TRANSLATED:

#ブロックチェーン Introducing a special interview article focusing on people who are active in the industry. This article covers the “Dev Protocol,” which is growing while involving many overseas users. Please take a look. http://msft.it/6014TAlys

Don’t you find this pretty notable, considering the fact that Dev Protocol is working to tokenize GitHub, something that Microsoft just so happens to be the owner of?

Still not convinced this has any significance?

Well, did you know $DEV was also selected for the Microsoft for Startup program in October of late 2019…?

GitHub Activity

This is one of the topics I could not go the entirety of this article without mentioning, because it is so impressive. The team building Dev Protocol is consistently beating even some of the top projects in activity on GitHub, and it is not even a close race.

The consistent commits to all of their repositories at all times of the day were what first really caught my attention on Dev Protocol. Personally, I can tell they are very dedicated to the platform they are building.

FISM

Dev Protocol announced a very interesting partnership with a big social influencer company in Japan called FISM last year. The company provides influencer networks and data analytics for over 300 clients and has a capital partnership with PPIH.

FROM DEV PROTOCOL:

To me, it sounds like Dev Protocol has some special collaboration with FISM and their SPAD social networking app. Thousands of influencers will be able to tokenize their creations and create their own token to unlock the value of their contributions.

They will be exposed to a “sustainable economy where local products and services are tokenized,” all thanks to Dev Protocol. Pretty significant, right?

The Future

So far, $DEV has earned creators more than $5M, and I can only begin to imagine what this number will look like when entire networks of clients begin to use them.

I think we have good reason to believe this number will be in the hundreds of millions in the future.

Source: Stake Social

Gitcoin

There have also been some discussions which lead me to believe that Dev Protocol has plans to be partnering with an industry leader who shares the same type of visions as them.

Take, for example, this tweet from Gitcoin in response to someone suggesting a partnership between the two.

Gitcoin is one of the largest hubs for donations, supporting thousands of Web3 projects with hundreds of millions of dollars being donated through them.

It will certainly be interesting to see where Dev Protocol can play into a collaboration with Gitcoin.

Monex Ventures

Now, like my thread originally posted on Twitter, I will finish off with the last piece of notable information I found on Dev Protocol. Among their investors, was Monex Ventures who invested 40M JPY last year.

Dev Protocol Investors

Monex Ventures is the parent company of CoinCheck, Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Dev Protocol also hinted at an upcoming exchange listing, so I think we may have a good idea at who may be listing DEV on their exchange soon…(;

Conclusion

There aren’t many projects that get me as excited as Dev Protocol does, because of all the catalysts in the pipeline and consistent development coming from the development team, I have some very high expectations for them. They appear to be working with several big names already, and have a well configured foundation and token model to solve the existing issues plaguing the open source software industry today.

Combine that with one of the most supportive communities constantly spreading the message, coming up with new ideas, and supporting the things powering our every day lives, and I think you will begin to see why I am still very confident in the future of DEV.

Open source assets are estimated to have a value worth upwards of $300B, and Dev Protocol is working to help creators unlock that value.

This concludes my “in-depth” write up of Dev Protocol, I want to sincerely thank all of you for the support you have shown me since getting started last week! If you enjoy content like this and want to see more of it in the future, please consider giving me a follow on both Medium and Twitter!

MEDIUM: https://medium.com/@toasteth

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/LoafEth

LINKS FOR DEV PROTOCOL

WEBSITE: https://devprotocol.xyz/

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/devprtcl

DISCORD: https://discord.com/invite/VwJp4KM

TELEGRAM: https://t.me/devprtcl

GITHUB: https://github.com/dev-protocol

DOCS: https://docs.devprotocol.xyz/dev-protocol/

MEDIUM: https://medium.com/devprtcl

STAKES SOCIAL: https://stakes.social/create

UNISWAP INFO: https://info.uniswap.org/token/0x5caf454ba92e6f2c929df14667ee360ed9fd5b26

DEXTOOLS: https://www.dextools.io/app/uniswap/pair-explorer/0x4168cef0fca0774176632d86ba26553e3b9cf59d

COINGECKO: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dev-protocol

DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice, just personal opinion based on fundamental analysis. I have not been compensated to make this post, and I made it out of pure appreciation for the protocol!

I hope you all enjoyed, there is a lot more to come!

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