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Terms and Rules

To ensure Drips Wave remains a fair, sustainable, and high-quality environment for open-source development, all participants—Contributors, Maintainers, and Organizations—must follow these ground rules.

Our goal is to reward genuine impact. To do that, Drips and Wave Program Organizers need the ability to moderate the system and step in when things go wrong.

1. Fairness and Rewards

We automate as much as possible, but open source is complex. To prevent abuse and ensure fairness, we reserve the right to intervene in the reward process.

Adjusting Points

While points are usually calculated automatically based on issue complexity, Drips and Wave Program Organizers reserve the right to:

  • Manually adjust Points: We may add or deduct points if we find errors, manipulation, or exceptional circumstances.
  • Update the Formula: We may tweak the reward formula or the total budget if necessary.
  • Distribute Bonuses: We may use parts of the reward pool to incentivize work that isn't captured by standard points (like rewarding Maintainers for their time).

Our Promise: We strive to use these powers sparingly. If we make significant manual adjustments, we aim to be transparent and explain our reasoning to those affected.

Withholding Rewards

We reserve the right to withhold, freeze, reduce, or revoke rewards in specific cases, including:

  • Unverified Identity: You cannot receive funds if you fail to complete Know Your Customer (KYC) / Know Your Business (KYB) checks.
  • Compliance Issues: We cannot pay individuals or entities in sanctioned jurisdictions.
  • Rule Violations: If you break the Code of Conduct (see below).
  • Gaming the System: If we detect suspicious activity, such as using multiple accounts or colluding to inflate points.

2. Wave Program-Specific Rules

Certain Wave Programs have additional rules set by the Program Organizers. These are:

Stellar Wave

  1. Reward cap: Every individual contributor can earn a maximum reward of USD $10k per Wave.

3. Repository Eligibility

Applying your repository to a Wave Program does not guarantee acceptance. We curate programs carefully to ensure high-quality options for contributors.

  • Selection Process: Drips works directly with Wave Program Organizers (e.g., the Stellar Development Foundation) to review and select repositories.
  • Relevance is Key: We prioritize repositories that are clearly relevant and provide direct value to the specific ecosystem. Projects that are only tangentially related or do not have a clear connection to the Program's goals may be rejected.
  • Removal: We reserve the right to remove repositories from a Wave Program at any time if they no longer meet the criteria, become stale, or if the repository contents or maintainers violate any rules.
  • Appeals: If you believe your repository was rejected in error, please explain your project's relevance and reach out to us via Drips Wave Support.

4. Code of Conduct

We expect professional, respectful behavior. The following actions are considered "Misbehavior" and are strictly prohibited.

🚫 Spam & Low-Quality Work

  • Typos & Noise: Don't submit "typo-hunting" PRs just to farm points.
  • AI Spam: Do not use Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate low-quality, untested code or documentation that you don't understand.
  • Begging for Assignment: Don't repeatedly ask "Can I work on this?" without reading the issue scope or checking if others are already assigned.

🚫 Harassment & Abuse

  • Respect Maintainers: Maintainers are often volunteers. Do not harass them to merge your PRs or demand payment.
  • Be Kind: Offensive, discriminatory, or threatening language will not be tolerated.

🚫 Gaming & Cheating

  • Multiple Accounts: Using multiple accounts (Sybil attacks) to apply for issues or influence the leaderboard is banned.
  • Collusion: Conspiring with others to approve bad work or inflate point values is cheating.
  • Plagiarism: Submitting work that isn't yours without proper attribution is prohibited.

🚫 Security Violations

  • Intentionally introducing vulnerabilities or malicious code into a repository or the Drips platform is a severe offense.

Consequences

If you violate these rules, we may take the following actions:

  1. Deduct Points: We may remove points earned in the current or past Waves.
  2. Withhold Funds: We may cancel pending payouts.
  3. Platform Ban: We may permanently ban your GitHub account and wallet address from accessing Drips.

5. Resolving Disputes

We know that mistakes happen. If you believe a decision regarding your points or rewards was unfair, or if you want to report someone else for breaking the rules, please let us know.

How to get help:
  1. Go to Drips Wave Support and log in with the GitHub account related to your concern.
  2. Clearly describe the situation.
  3. Include links to relevant Pull Requests, Issues, or evidence.

Our support team will review your case. Please note that for the health of the ecosystem, decisions made by Drips Support regarding these rules are final.

6. Liability & Experimental Nature

Drips Wave is an experimental platform. By using it, you acknowledge that:

  • Expect Change: Because this is an evolving experiment, the rules, reward structures, platform mechanics, and availability may change suddenly and drastically as we iterate.
  • No Employment: Drips is not your employer.
  • Code Quality: We are not responsible for the code merged into repositories—that is up to the maintainers.
  • Technical Risk: Using blockchain technology involves risk, and Drips is not liable for funds lost due to protocol exploits or technical failures.