One of our internal guiding principles at AIKON is doing things with a “Developer First” attitude. It’s our mission to empower developers everywhere to build the decentralized future and get paid fairly for their work.
Internally, we talk about what this means from both a product and a business perspective but I wanted to put some thoughts down in writing about what this means for our community.
I’m proud to share that we recently launched the alpha version of API.market with a strategy that ensures that the first people to get our ORE tokens are the developers who are using our alpha.
While API.market is a marketplace for developers to find, buy and sell dServices (blockchain-enabled APIs that can be used in both dApps and traditional software applications) — for us, this isn’t just about building a marketplace, it’s about building the decentralized economy of the future. It’s about building a global platform where developers will be able to find and sell the tools and services they need, no matter where they live and who they are. We want anyone who participates to be fairly rewarded for their contributions to the platform.
This is where the ORE (Open Rights Exchange) token model comes in.
The primary purpose of the ORE Tokens is to manage the access control, health and monetization of API endpoints. They are designed to be tools for developers so it seemed fair that developers would get them first.
Early adopters have been able to earn ORE tokens for being the first to test our platform; by making their first API call and sharing their feedback.
Not only did we want to give the first tokens to alpha users, we also want to ensure that the first engineers who use the system actually get a meaningful number of tokens. An engineer that actually tests the system can earn 500 or more ORE tokens fairly easily, and we’ll be creating many more opportunities for active developers to earn tokens. (Tokens aren’t circulating yet, but they are being recorded on our blockchain.)
I’ll detail the early adopter rewards for developers below, but first I’ll share a few examples of how our developer first orientation has been built into our product.
Developer first products should make developers’ live easier!
All blockchain developers are developers, but not all developers are blockchain developers.
Even though we’re a blockchain company, we don’t expect our users to understand the mechanics of smart contracts, blockchains or cryptocurrency.
We want all types of developers to benefit from the ORE protocol. That’s why we built API.market: instead of asking our users to interact with our smart contracts directly, we have hidden the complexity of the protocol and the blockchain from developers that want to use it. We want to give everyone the benefit of the underlying technology, while still allowing AI developers to focus on AI, security researchers to focus on security, etc.
Our tokens are developer first
Developers using a blockchain create value, so they should own a piece of that blockchain.
Want to get started?
If you’re a developer that’s interested in our project, we’d love for you to test the ORE Protocol using our API marketplace. You’ll be giving us great insights, and we’ll give you a piece of the network that you’re helping to create.
- Use Github to login to API.market (+50 ORE), you’ll receive credit for making free API calls
- Use your free CPU credit to make your first API Call (+200 ORE) and take a survey (+200 ORE). personally I’d recommend taking part in the Deep Space Bounty Hunters Challenge for the chance to earn even more tokens — the next challenge will be announced soon.
- Then take our First time caller survey (+75 ORE) to give us your feedback
That’s your first 500 ORE. If you like what you’ve seen, you can also invite other developers and both of you will earn 50 ORE.
Soon, we’ll be rolling-out API publishing, which requires staking ORE tokens to reserve network capacity. By using the platform and taking the survey, you’ll receive 525 ORE which will allow you to get multiple APIs into the marketplace if you want, or you can save it for future APIs you might want to publish.
[Of course, we know people will try to game the system — although it would be great if you didn’t :) — so we’re only allowing Github accounts that were created before July 15, and we’re weighting the rewards towards actual engineering activities like making API calls.]
More developer services coming soon!
While right now, we’re launching the first iteration of our product, we’ll be launching many more services in the months and years to come. If you’re a developer building a dApp or a developer looking to monetize an existing dApp, we’d love your feedback about where you need help the most. Leave a comment on Medium or look me up on Twitter.