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Drips Wave

Drips Wave is a recurring bounty cycle designed to help ecosystems attract developers, accelerate maintenance, and grow their communities. Instead of one-off grants or long-term commitments, Wave creates a predictable rhythm of contribution where developers can "Fix, Merge, and Earn."

By focusing on short, structured cycles, typically running for one week every month, Wave bridges the gap between available funding and the day-to-day work that maintainers need help with.

Browsing issues part of a Wave Program.
Browsing issues part of a Wave Program.

Who is Drips Wave for?

  • Ecosystems such as the Stellar Development Foundation use Drips Wave to broadly incentivize contributions across their entire open-source ecosystem.
  • Project Maintainers within those ecosystems use Wave to attract new contributions, clear their backlog, and grow their community.
  • Contributors earn rewards while building a verifiable portfolio of work in top-tier open-source projects.

The Anatomy of a Wave

One or more Wave Programs run on a predictable cycle, with Waves occurring at regular intervals. Each Wave Program is centered around a specific open-source ecosystem (e.g., Stellar). A Wave is a synchronized event that concentrates community energy. While parameters can be adjusted, a typical Wave follows this lifecycle:

  1. Scoping: Ecosystem maintainers apply their repositories to a Wave Program. Once approved by the program's organizers, maintainers add issues that they want the community to tackle during the upcoming Wave. These issues are tagged with specific Point values based on their complexity and impact.
  2. The Sprint: The Wave opens for a set period (e.g., one week). Contributors browse available tasks, log in with their GitHub accounts, and submit pull requests to fix issues. For each resolved issue, contributors earn Points.
  3. Reward: Progress is tracked automatically via points and leaderboards. Once the cycle concludes and work is verified, rewards are distributed to the successful contributors according to their share of Points earned during the Wave.
The Wave lifecycle: A recurring frantic sprint and reward payout.
The Wave lifecycle: A recurring frantic sprint and reward payout.

Why Run a Wave Program on Drips?

Wave is built to solve the "maintenance gap" in open-source funding. It provides the tooling to turn a budget into tangible code progress with minimal friction.

🔄 Predictable Rhythm

Regularity breeds engagement. By running monthly cycles, you create a habit for contributors to return to your ecosystem. It keeps existing developers engaged while providing a reliable schedule for new ones to join.

🎯 Focused Impact

Grants are great for big ideas, but Waves are for getting things done. Maintainers can direct community power toward specific roadmap blockers, bug fixes, or documentation needs that often fall through the cracks.

🚀 Accessible Entry Points

For new developers, a massive codebase can be intimidating. Waves present scoped, manageable tasks that allow contributors to build a track record and earn trust (and income) quickly. It is an ideal funnel for discovering future core contributors.

🤖 Automated Operations

Drips handles the heavy lifting of tracking contributions, managing the review flow, and calculating rewards. This reduces the administrative burden on maintainers, allowing them to focus on code reviews rather than spreadsheets.

Getting Started

Whether you are an ecosystem looking to boost activity or a developer ready to earn, here is how to get started.

For Maintainers

Learn how to leverage Drips Wave to clear your backlog and grow your contributor base.

For Contributors

Ready to fix, merge, and earn?