Release Notes

No more going into your repo on GitHub to browse through who commented on issues, assigning the tasks and wondering about their progress. You can now do this directly from the OnlyDust platform!

We heard you. It was time-consuming to switch between OnlyDust and GitHub to manage assigning tasks. It lacked centralization, and it was difficult not knowing much about the contributors who wanted to be assigned to an issue—whether they were a good fit for the project or not.

But that is a thing of the past! Now that contributors can apply for a "good first issue" directly on the platform, maintainers no longer need to jump between different GitHub repositories, guess who commented on what, or wonder about a contributor's progress. Now, you can handle everything in one place.

New "Applications" Tab

To address your pain points, we’ve added an "applications" tab where you can see who has applied to your open issues. in order to have this all in one space and invite them to connect onto the project on the platform.

Here’s what you will be able to see when a contributor applies:

• Application date
• Repo details
• Applicant information
• Issue name (currently limited to good first issues)

When you click "review application," a new side window will open where you can review detailed information provided by contributors about themselves and their qualifications. This enhanced view allows you to see who is new to the project, who has been contributing already, and how many issues each person is working on.

With all this information, you can confidently choose the best contributor for each issue.

After assigning, you’ll be taken back to the contributions page, where you can easily track the progress of your contributors.

We also automatically detect applications that are done on GitHub. When this is detected, a comment is directly posted, inviting the contributor to come onto OnlyDust and proceed with the application.

This process is designed to make issue assignment more efficient and to help you better manage your project’s contributors. And remember, this is just the beginning—we’re going to continuously improve this feature with more new things to come 👀!

After speaking to a number of you in the community, we noticed that many of you struggled to find a good first issue and get assigned. You had to browse through a project that you were interested in, go into their repo on GitHub, and comment on the open issue to get assigned.

That is now over.

We are happy to share that you can now directly apply for a good first issue on OnlyDust!

When you go to onto a project page, if a project has good first issues that are open, you will be able to see this on the page. You will also be able to see an overview of the issue and a button to "apply".

When you click on the button to apply, this will open up another window where you will be asked to accept conditions to proceed. We will ask your permission to have "GitHub write permissions" on public repos in order to allow us to write on the latter, on your behalf (you'll see what we mean below).

Once you give us the permissions, you will be directed to another window where you get to apply for the issue.

In this window, you have more information on the issue, how many people have applied, how many comments on the issue etc.

Here, you can write a bit more about your background and how you would approach the problem. Note that this will help project leads to see if you are a good fit to be assigned to the issue.

Once you send in your application, this is where the GitHub written permissions that you granted us comes in handy. We will comment on your behalf on the issue in the repo that you applied via OnlyDust.

This in turn allows project leads to see your profile and to assign accordingly. Project leads will have this feature coming soon...

In the meantime, you can apply!

A new page has been added onto the app that serves as a "homepage"! We're excited to roll this out which will help you have a quicker access to your dashboard and to ensure a smoother experience on OnlyDust.

Depending on whether you are a contributor, project lead, or visitor, you will see different homepage dashboards when you come onto the app!

As a contributor, you'll be able to see a contributor profile card where you can see:

• your pending rewards,
• top projects recommended for you (yay! 🎉),
• a recap of all "first tasks" that you need to complete in order to get fully started!

For the last bullet point (image below), we have provided a list of things to do that will help you start your journey. Once each task is completed, you will no longer see this card!

You will then be left with an overview of your pending rewards and the top projects recommended for you. You will also notice that we have placed a CTA to see your public profile, where the information of your language skills and activity can be seen.

Note that in the pending rewards section, you will be able to see rewards that are awaiting for a request. All you have to do is click to go to the rewards page and fulfil your actions! Regarding the top projects recommended for you, you can easily click on a project and take it from there 😄!

Now, as project lead, you have the exact same thing, except that you'll be able to see the projects that you manage!

For each project that you manage, you will be able to find the name, the description, the number of contributors that you have (and its evolution!) as well as the current budget left in $ equivalent.

Not bad for a quick overview, huh?!

And when you are a newcomer eager to join but haven't signed up yet (or logged out) the below image is what you will be able to see!

A way to start your journey, a section regarding recent contributors activity, our blog post ❤️ and the most trendy projects in the space currently.

A brand new ecosystems page is now up and running! Our goal is to enhance your user experience as you embark on your web3 journey.

The product team has developed a tab where you can explore the ecosystems we currently collaborate with. Based on feedback from our community, we understand the need for guidance on which ecosystem is best to start with, what languages are necessary, and other related questions. This new feature aims to help you find the best ecosystem for your needs, based on what you want to build and the skills required.

You will have an overview of the top blockchain ecosystems and the projects available within them. By clicking on an ecosystem of interest, you can see projects with beginner-friendly issues and explore projects by language.

Additionally, we’ve provided a leaderboard for each ecosystem, allowing you to check out the most active contributors in the community. This is a great way to view their profiles and contact them for any questions or guidance.

Plus it motivates you to be a top contributor 😉.

Over the last few weeks the team has been working on a few exciting features that will make more than one person happy!

Let's introduce the new and improved contributor's profile, the Hackathons page and the Node Guardians rewards boost 🥁.

Contributor's profile

Having spoken to a number of project leads and partners, we noticed that identifying new potential contributors was something very useful to many. Up till now, a contributor's profile remained basic - you could see their contribution activity, projects that they have contributed to and how much they have earned.

Now, you will be able to see so much more! For contributors, it's a great way to showcase your profile like a "CV" and for project leads, you will be able to identify profiles that you'd be interested in having join your project.

On the new revamped contributor's profile, everyone will be able to see:

• How you rank amongst other contributors on the platform
  • Depending on your ranking, you'll get a fancy name 😉. The ranking is based on a mix between the number of contributions, the number of rewards received and the number of rewards sent.
• a contributor's most active language(s)
  • These are color-coded based on how active you were in that language
• most active ecosystem(s)
  • Same as above, it is color-coded
• The latest PR merged, closed issues and if they were rewarded or not
• Total earned by project (in dollars)
• Work distribution
  • Pie chart with different categories such as merged PRs, closed issues, code reviews...

You will also be able to see the full detail by language and by ecosystem (how many contributions, on how many projects and how many rewards received and earned).

Hackathons page

Most of you will now be aware that we organize monthly hackathons (ODHacks). But we also have had requests from other universes (Dojo 👀 ❤️) that organize their hackathons and jams to be able to communicate via our platform and distribute the rewards directly from there.

The tech-team has therefore done an awesome job by creating a new sub-section on the platform - Hackathons - where you will be able to see the hackathons currently ongoing, the previous editions and sign up for the next ones.

But more features will come out on the Hackathon page, where organizers will be able to select the projects participating in a hack, add in budget and reward winners easily.

Node Guardians boost rewards

Last but not least, with the partnership that we have with Node Guardians (more info here), the team had to find a way to fetch, calculate and apply reward boosts for contributors on Starknet projects. We are happy to say that we have already rewarded 9 contributors who participated in the quest!

As a reminder, the collaboration offers Node Guardians users who tackle Cairo Quests the chance to earn additional rewards on the OnlyDust platform for completing tasks:

• 2% additional reward for those who have completed at least 3 Cairo quests.
• 5% additional reward for those who have completed at least 6 Cairo quests, including quests with a difficulty rating of 3/4/5 swords.
• 10% additional reward for those who have completed at least 10 Cairo quests, including at least one quest with a 5-sword difficulty rating.

New updates on the project lead front! Say hello to brand new insights and a much more fluid way to send rewards.

Project Insights

After having discussed to a number of project leads, we noticed that it was important for you to have useful means to keep tract on your respective projects. When you go into your project, you will see a tab which will detail four sections.

These four sections are the following:

• New contributors
  • This section will give you an overview or who has their first contribution assigned so that you can follow up if needed. This will be updated on a monthly basis. The information is based on the new ones that arrived in the previous month.
• Most active contributors
  • This section will show you the top contributors for your project, from the most active to the least. It is based on the total number of contributions made on the project. You will be able to see how many PRs they closed, how many issues they completed and how many code reviews they made.

• Struggling contributors
  • This part highlights contributions on which contributors are struggling on based on whether a PR is open for more than 10 days, an issue or review is assigned for more than 10 days or a review. This will be color-coded according to how long they have been struggling for.

• Churned contributors
  • Here, you will be able to see contributors who stopped contributing on a project. This allows you to follow up and see their profile.

Reward flow

Good news, we have made it much more intuitive to reward your contributors! 🥳

Now, you can easily find the editable input to put in the amount you wish to reward, and to pick the currency that you'd like to convert to.

The input will always be in USD, but the currency will change according to what you have. If you don't have another currency, there is no need for conversion. We have also added quick action buttons to allow you to pre-fill a define amount in USD and you can also see your current project budget.

Following our last product update where we introduced automated invoicing, this time we will be introducing billing profiles! As mentioned, thanks to feedback from the community, we understand that there are challenges faced in managing accounting and billing, especially if you fall under a couple of categories: individual, self-employed, part of an organization, or leading a project.

Previously, there were only two ways to define yourself: as an individual or as a company. This provided it difficult to change your profile for invoicing (if for instance you were an employee and also self-employed) and some had to create multiple GitHub accounts to be rewarded correctly. Now, you can just have multiple profiles under one account.

Let’s take a look.

New billing profiles creation and management

You will now be able to create new billing profile(s) according to the situation that fits you best. This will allow you better flexibility to sort out your payment preferences and to manage your accounts. Check out the options:

• Individuals can create billing profiles without a legal structure, limited to rewards of up to $5,000 per year. If you pass this limit, you will be asked to create a legal structure. Read over here for more info.
• Self-Employed users with a legal structure can create profiles, but make sure you verified your profile (KYB).
• Organizations are those that manage a team of contributors with a legal structure, also requiring KYB verification.
• Employees of organizations can join their employer's billing profile.

Along with your new billing profile(s), you will also be able to:

• Delete, disable, or leave billing profiles.
• Manage your payout preferences easily and setup different payout information depending on your profile. If you are a contributor on different open-source projects from different organisations, you can connect each project accordingly.

• Access a dedicated invoices tab for streamlined billing management.

Management as an organization

If you are an organization, you have a specific billing profile to manage your team. For example, you can activate or deactivate coworkers mode. This allows you to manage your team according to contributors of the project and the “core team” that work with you on a daily basis.

You can add your co-workers and define their roles in the company. They will receive a notification that they are part of your organisation.

Product update: Invoicing

Following invaluable feedback from our community, we’ve recognized the challenges faced in managing accounting and billing, whether you're self-employed, part of an organization, or leading a project.

In response, we’re happy to announce several new features to simplify your financial management! But before we dive into all the features that will come out ASAP, first off, let’s introduce the automated invoicing.

Automated invoicing

To further streamline your financial transactions, every payment request will now come with an invoice or a payment receipt - keeping things compliant, error free and up to date. Basically, when you receive a reward, you will need to request the payment to receive it.

When you make a payment request, you will be able to notify which rewards you want to include or exclude.

Our system will automatically generate these documents for you depending on your profile:

• For individuals, payment receipts will be generated automatically.
• For companies, you have two choices, either you accept our invoicing mandate or you opt-out.

Either way, once you accept the invoice or the payment receipt, you will see your status changes from "pending request" to "processing".

Now let's go back to accepting our invoicing mandate for a company.

Accepting our invoicing mandate gives us the authorization to automatically generate an invoice on your behalf. Our system makes sure that all your information is correct, up to date and according to the recommended norms.

Moreover, we take care of calculating the VAT and the total amount to invoice with updated token exchange rates, ensuring that all invoices reflect the most accurate and compliant financial data.

If you prefer not to accept invoicing mandate, you can opt to upload your invoice manually. We will also guide you to make sure that you have all appropriate information.

Additionally, invoicing details will now display the dollar equivalent for every reward, calculated based on the most recent of the following events:

• Reward sent.
• Token unlocked.
• KYC/KYB approved.

Big update for the community: introducing KYC & KYB!

The team has been hard at working addressing two very important topics: security & invoicing (more on this part in a future update).

As OnlyDust continues to grow, ensuring the security of transactions (even more) has become necessary. Our aim is to eliminate all funny business and stay in compliance with legal requirements.

To achieve this, we are introducing KYC (for individuals) & KYB (for businesses) —a streamlined process designed to verify individual identities.

This will be required when a payment is pending.

On your billing profile (whether for an individual or for a company), when you have received a payment and haven’t yet verified your identity, you will now be asked to do so.

Start the verification process, make sure you have a valid identity card at hand and proof of residency. We will keep you posted along the way and you will see the status of process (pending, processing...etc).

If there are problems with the process, we will notify you and you can re-do your verification. You can equally contact us whenever needed.

If you have done the verification process, but your payout information is missing, we will give you a heads up for you to fill it out.

Besides the KYC & KYB feature which the team had worked hard on, we have also made a few cool updates that you may like.

• For example, on your profile page, you will now be able to refresh your GitHub account. For instance, if there were updates made (such as a change in your handle name), you can easily resync the account with the new information. You can also personalize your profile page even more, by adding a banner.

• On the "browse through projects" page, you will notice that the layout filters have changed. Now you can filter projects according to whether you are looking for an active community, a fast-paced environment, or where newcomers are welcome! Each project is tagged with a label that has been calculated dynamically. Below each tag:
  • Hot community: project that have a high number of active contributors.
• Newbies welcome: project that onboard new contributors regularly
• Likely to reward: project that can reward a work well done.
• Work in progress: project that have open issues ready to tackle.
• Fast and furious: project that is moving fast with a lot of contributions completed
• Big whale: project that have rewarded big.
• You will also be able to browse through the ecosystems that you'd like to contribute to. Remember, we currently work with Starknet, Ethereum, Optimism, Aptos, Aztec and Zama. More to come 😉.

For project leads, in the "Rewards" tab, we have built a feature where you will now be able to see a whole overview of the remaining budget that you have (in the currencies your project works in) as well as the total amount spent.

This was a highly requested feature, so we are happy that this is out!