Please describe your proposed solution

We, The Stable Order, are a decentralized and open organization with more than 70 members (and, proudly, 0 employees and 0 chiefs). We have a total of 60 repositories (https://github.com/orgs/DjedAlliance/repositories and https://github.com/StabilityNexus) of projects aligned with our mission of making the world stable. These repositories include all known open-source implementations of the Djed Stablecoin Protocol (Agenor/SigmaUSD, Belus/MilkomedaDjedOsiris, Zephyr), of the Gluon Stablecoin Protocol, as well as implementations of self-stabilizing staking protocols, fair fundraising, prediction pools, …

To know more about who we are and how we work together, collaboratively,

read the following:

• https://docs.stability.nexus/about-us/the-stable-order
• https://docs.stability.nexus/about-us/the-stable-order/knights-and-benefactors
• https://docs.stability.nexus/about-us/the-stable-order/code-of-honor
• https://docs.stability.nexus/about-us/the-stable-order/cats

Over the course of software development, it is normal for code to accumulate technical debt and code smells. Bugs that were not noticed during the initial development may be uncovered. And, furthermore, it is generally necessary to maintain the code, to keep it up-to-date with the latest libraries and standards.

Because developing new projects is always more fun than maintaining older projects, maintenance-related issues may end up being neglected.

For a decentralized organization like ours, a decentralized bounty program appears to be the most suitable way to tackle such software maintenance challenges.

Our bounty program takes inspiration from the eXtremely Distributed Software Development methodology (https://www.xdsd.org/) and from Ergo's bounty program, and adapts itself to our context.

So, how will it work?

• Any issue in any of our repos is potentially eligible for a bounty.

• Members of our organization will tag issues with a "Bounty Available" label.

• We will create a unified list of all tagged issues in our github accounts, using github's "project" feature. Such unified lists will make it easy for devs to find issues that are incentivized with bounties without having to browse all our 60 repos.

• The unified list will also contain a column with the ADA amount offered for solving an issue.

• Members of our organization will be responsible for the initial ADA amount associated with each issue.

• To ensure that the amount is reasonable, simple market mechanisms will be explored and evolved throughout the program. The initial market mechanism is as follows: If a dev proposes to solve an issue, there will be a time period of, usually, 1 week before assigning the issue to the dev. During this period, any other dev can offer to solve the issue for a lower amount. The decision of which dev to assign to the issue will take into account the requested amount and the experience of the dev, as well as our task assignment guidelines (https://docs.stability.nexus/about-us/the-stable-order/code-of-honor/the-task-assignment-corollary-a-guideline).

• The bounty amount will only be released to the dev when the PR that fixes the corresponding issue is merged into the main branch.

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

All our repos are for projects that are related to Cardano. The bounties will further improve the code quality of these projects and, therefore, will benefit Cardano.

Furthermore, this could serve as an experiment into decentralized software development that could pave the way for similar methodologies to be applied to the development of Cardano itself, should the Cardano community ever decide to decentralize this development from the currently IOG-centered development or should IOG decide to hand over development to the community.

This experiment could also serve as inspiration for other projects building on and for Cardano.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Dr. Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo (a.k.a. Zahnentferner) has already received and managed more than 1 million USD in research grants in several countries and always achieved the goals of the proposed projects.

• He is the founder of the Djed Alliance and of The Stable Order.
• He is the main author of the Djed paper, author of the Gluon protocol and one of the 5 engineers who participated in the R&D of Djed/SigmaUSD.
• He is a former Director of Engineering at IOG, where he did his best to try to decentralize Cardano's software development processes in a department that counted with around 120 engineers, including employees and contractors.
• Among his works for Cardano are:
• the design of Cardano's native assets, which is an essential feature for almost every project on Cardano,
• the chimeric ledger approach to unifying UTxOs and accounts, without which the efficient distribution of rewards on cardano would not be possible.
• He is also the founder of AOSSIE, a not-for-profit charity in Australia, dedicated to open-source software development since 2016, which now counts with almost 2000 developers and with the support of Google through the Google Summer of Code program.

The Stable Order now counts 76 members, including both knights and benefactors. Together with the almost 2000 devs from AOSSIE and many devs from the Cardano Talent Network, with whom we maintain a close relationship, we have a large pool of devs that could contribute to the bounty program, making it a success. The devs have a wide range of experience and familiarity with our code bases. This will allow us to assign simpler issues to less experienced devs, but will also allow us to assign more difficult issues to more experience devs with previous knowledge of our code bases.

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: Output: create the unified lists of issues with bounties available

Acceptance criteria: the lists should be in github, using github's project feature.

Evidence of milestone completion: links to the lists.

Milestone 2: Output: 12 "Bounty Available" issues fixed.

Acceptance criteria: PRs fixing the issues should be merged into the main branch of the repos.

Evidence of Milestone completion: links to the PRs.

Milestone 3: Output: 13 "Bounty Available" issues fixed.

Acceptance criteria: PRs fixing the issues should be merged into the main branch of the repos.

Evidence of Milestone completion: links to the PRs.

Milestone 4: Output: 12 "Bounty Available" issues fixed.

Acceptance criteria: PRs fixing the issues should be merged into the main branch of the repos.

Evidence of Milestone completion: links to the PRs.

Milestone 5: Output: 13 "Bounty Available" issues fixed.

Acceptance criteria: PRs fixing the issues should be merged into the main branch of the repos.

Evidence of Milestone completion: links to the PRs.

Final Milestone: Close-out report and close-out video, according to catalyst's criteria.

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Dr. Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo (a.k.a. Zahnentferner), founder of the Djed Alliance and of the Stable Order, will be responsible for setting up the program.

All other 70+ members of The Stable Order will be able to propose and tag issues. (Join our Discord to see who are the members.)

Any dev will be able to fix a bounty issue.

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

The funds requested will be used to pay bounties of variable amounts to issues of variable difficulties. The funds requested will also be used to advertise the program and to manage the program, while keeping the marketing and managing overheads as low as possible.

Thanks to the fact that we have a large number of repositories and projects as well as access to a large number of devs, we will be able to run this program with low overhead, thanks to economies of scale.

No dependencies.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

As described in our milestones, we aim to fix at least 50 issues.

150000 ADA / 50 = 3000 ADA per issue on average, including overheads for management and marketing of the program.

Considering that, on average, issues may require deep knowledge of the code and refactoring that may take several days of work, the cost per issue above is a cost-effective way of maintaining our repos, in comparison with the cost of hiring highly skilled devs.