Overview of Committable

Introducing Committable: A decentralized identity protocol revolutionizing the open-source landscape for developers.

Since the late 90s, the majority of open-source software (OSS) projects have struggled to sustain themselves and support their participating developers. The sustainability process is often inconsistent, with over 99% of OSS projects becoming inactive, while only a select few projects backed by enterprises like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, thrive.

One of the primary reasons for this inconsistency is the lack of fair compensation for developers, leading to project stagnation and eventual disengagement (Calefato et. al, 2022). Ineffective project hand-offs to new owners (Khondhu et. al, 2013) further contribute to the disruption of growth and long-term success.

On the other hand, OSS projects supported by tech giants benefit from ecosystem support through targeted activities such as conferences, workshops, and competitions (Kuwata et. al, 2015). Without such backing, project stakeholders lose motivation and engagement, resulting in inactive projects.

These challenges pose a threat to the entire OSS ecosystem in the long run.

Open-source developers use platforms like GitHub and GitLab to contribute to community projects, host their work in public repositories, and showcase their skills. While these channels effectively promote their portfolio to a certain extent, developers still face scrutiny from employers or other stakeholders regarding the authenticity of their profiles and the validity of their work. This can lead to an underrepresented demonstration of skills and expertise, especially in large projects with numerous contributors.

Committable aims to transform the validation and compensation of developers’ work while addressing the industry problems mentioned above.

Committable is a next-generation decentralized open-source protocol for developers and related projects, which systematically converts full-lifecycle commits on software artifacts (e.g., specifications, makefiles, code, test cases) into COMMIT assets.

By building on trusted software analysis technology (e.g., automated and algorithmic workflows, verifiability with computational proof), Committable ensures a secure, unbiased, and accountable tokenization process while also certifying a developer’s identity and showcasing their past contributions.

Moreover, with trusted software analysis at its core, Committable can trace and securely record all stages of a project’s life cycle from a developer’s contribution perspective. This record is stored in a COMMIT, which can later be traded between stakeholders, showcasing all aspects of a project’s evolution and facilitating a seamless and effective work hand-off.

Committable’s innovative economic design ensures proper compensation for contributors and incentives for all stakeholders, fostering continuous motivation and engagement for successful project development.

In collaboration with initiatives like the Digital Civilization Conference and leading industry contributors (e.g., University College Oxford Blockchain Research Institute, ACSAC), Committable aims to establish a strong and active community with industry leaders, ensuring continuous activities to educate, exchange, engage, and motivate all its participants, ultimately sustaining the OSS ecosystem.

Developers might wonder how a basic function like a commit hash can revolutionize the open-source ecosystem.

However, every commit hash corresponds to essential information about individual developers’ contributions, which can be analyzed in a trusted environment. Once analyzed, Committable generates a meta commit, a computational proof, and a permanent digital signature of all collected data.

As a result, interested parties can review the summary of the meta commit without examining the code itself, enabling a fair valuation of any contribution made to a project by a specific developer. Developers can choose to embed their project-specific metadata into a COMMIT NFT and list it on a marketplace for future trade.

COMMIT is a non-fungible token native to Committable, which securely stores a developer’s contributions by linking to a piece of metadata.

Developers use COMMIT as their personal digital identity asset, as Committable associates all COMMITs, traded or not, with a developer via their connected wallet and linked GitHub account. This allows developers to showcase their professional experience and skillsets autonomously while independently managing their own identities.

Committable distinguishes itself by unlocking the value of a developer in the context of software development, creating an identity system within the open-source ecosystem.

COMMIT is designed as Committable’s financial vehicle to claim open-source incentives, with pre-specified financial capabilities in the open-source ecosystem.

Our key vision is to establish a self-sustained decentralized open-source economy where all stakeholders (e.g., developers, project managers, sponsors) contribute to projects for valuable returns (e.g., ownership, earnings, credibility).

Committable manages a blockchain-specific mining pool and a project-specific fund pool, which collects royalties from COMMIT trades and automatically distributes them to COMMIT owners in the project.

This concept ensures that COMMIT owners receive greater rewards over time as more COMMITs are minted and traded, leading to a progressively growing fund pool.

Sell a COMMIT: Earn developer royalties

At the foundation of Committable’s ecosystem, a developer mints a COMMIT to strengthen their identity while creating a financial tool that helps them earn potential royalties. Since minting a COMMIT requires a fee, developers are expected to mint valuable non-trivial COMMITs that secure an economic return once traded.

Becoming a COMMIT seller ensures fair representation of the project and fair remuneration for the developer-seller, maintaining engagement and motivation in the project.

Purchase a COMMIT: Claim community rewards

On the other end of each trade, a buyer purchases a COMMIT to gain ownership of contributions made to a specific project, which allows them to:

1. earn development bounties,
2. earn royalties from the fund pool,
3. claim community rewards from the mining pool, and
4. become part of an innovative, disruptive, and trendy community.

Becoming a COMMIT buyer activates the financial mechanism of Committable, ensuring fair incentives allocation and an incentivized work hand-off and project continuation in the broader ecosystem community.

Support a project: Sustain the ecosystem’s growth

At the core of each ecosystem lie sponsors who donate to promising projects as believers in their growth or as industry enthusiasts. Committable sponsors support key events in developments (pull requests) and maintain a vote in the governance of the ecosystem, receiving a Committable governance token upon donation.

Becoming a Committable sponsor guarantees a voice and a vote in the consensus governance of the ecosystem, ensuring community engagement and motivation, as well as ecosystem growth through tailored community activities.

Committable is a user-friendly, secure, and transparent platform set to revolutionize the open-source industry and the web3 ecosystem as a whole. By becoming part of the next-generation decentralized open-source protocol, COMMIT buyers, sellers, and sponsors can collaboratively shape an evolving novel economy in a growing digital era. Committable promotes secure and private analysis of all contributions to open-source software while fairly and generously compensating stakeholders for their participation in the ecosystem.

Share your thoughts on how Committable can further contribute to the open-source software ecosystem. We value your input and look forward to incorporating your ideas as we continue to develop and refine our platform.