Skip to content

Participating in a Wave

As a Project Maintainer, Drips Wave allows you to leverage your community to accelerate development. By identifying "good first issues" or critical maintenance tasks, you can attract contributors who are ready to build. Participation is entirely free for maintainers, and Wave Organizers (e.g. the Stellar Development Foundation) provide a funding pool to reward contributors for their work, allowing you to incentivize contributions without impacting your budget.

To participate, you join a Wave Program (e.g., the Stellar Wave Program). A Program is a long-running initiative that spawns recurring Waves (sprints). You add issues to the Program, and they become available for contributors to tackle during the next active Wave.

Setting Up Your Organization

To participate, you must first onboard your GitHub organization and apply your repositories to a Wave Program.

  1. Sign In: Go to the Drips Wave app and log in with your GitHub account.
  2. Navigate to Onboarding: In the main navigation, select Maintainers → Orgs and Repos.
  3. Install the App: Follow the prompts to install the Drips Wave GitHub App on the organization hosting your repositories. This allows Drips to track issues and labels.
  4. Sync and Apply: Select the public repositories you wish to sync. You must explicitly apply these repositories to a specific Wave Program. Only apply to Programs that are relevant to your ecosystem.
  5. Wait for Approval: Repository applications require approval from the Wave Program organizers. You will receive an email and an in-app notification once your repositories have been accepted. You can also check the status of your application at any time on the Maintainers → Orgs and Repos dashboard.
Synchronizing repos with Drips Wave.
Synchronizing repos with Drips Wave.

Adding Issues to a Wave Program

Once your repository is approved, issues from that repo will appear in your Maintainers → Issues dashboard. From here, you can select which issues to add to the Wave Program.

Setting Complexity and Points

When adding an issue, you must assign a complexity level. This determines the total Points a contributor earns for resolving it:

  • Trivial: Worth 100 Points (Base). Best for typos, small bug fixes, or minor copy changes.
  • Medium: Worth 150 Points (Base + 50 Complexity Bonus). Standard features or involved bug fixes.
  • High: Worth 200 Points (Base + 100 Complexity Bonus). Complex features, refactors, or new integrations.
Selecting issues and assigning complexity levels in the Maintainer dashboard.
Selecting issues and assigning complexity levels in the Maintainer dashboard.

The GitHub Label Workflow

Alternatively, you can manage issues directly from GitHub without leaving your code.

When an issue is added to a Program, the Drips Wave bot will post a comment and apply a label (e.g., Stellar Wave). You can also add an issue to a Program simply by applying this label yourself on GitHub. This only works if the repository has already been approved for that specific Wave Program.

During a Wave

As soon as a Wave cycle begins, contributors can start applying to work on the issues you have added to the Program. You will be notified via email and in-app notifications when you receive applications.

Assigning Contributors

Speed is critical. Maintainers are urged to review applications and assign contributors quickly to ensure they have enough time to resolve the issue before the Wave ends.

You can accept an application in two ways:

  1. Via Dashboard: Use the Maintainers → Issues dashboard to view applicant stats and accept one.
  2. Via GitHub: Simply assign the contributor to the issue directly on GitHub.

Tracking Progress

The Maintainers → Issues dashboard is your central hub. It allows you to filter and quickly see:

  • Issues with pending applications.
  • Issues with open Pull Requests requiring review.
  • Issues that are assigned but stale.

Resolution and Rewards

When a contributor submits a Pull Request, you review and merge it as normal. Once the issue is marked as resolved during an active Wave, the contributor earns the Points allocated to that issue.

Giving Compliments

For outstanding work, you can award Compliments within seven days of the Wave ending. These act as bonuses for criteria such as:

  • Good Communication
  • Fast Shipping
  • High Quality Code
  • Creative Problem Solving
Giving compliments for a job well done.
Giving compliments for a job well done.

Issue Rollover

If an issue is added to a Wave Program but is not resolved during the current Wave, it automatically remains in the Program. It will be eligible for applications again in the next Wave cycle unless you explicitly remove it.