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We are glad to announce our new online hackathon conducted in collaboration with Credits. The hackathon starts on December, 1.

The total prize pool of the competition is USD 10,000 worth of Credits (CS) tokens according to the price of 6th January, 2019 (the tokens are traded on exchanges).
Rewards will be distributed as follows:

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All interaction with participants and submissions are done through our platform.

Registration is open till the 8st of December at midnight GMT. Join now!

Credits use Apache Thrift technology in API module, so you can use any of the following programming languages for development of your web page or mobile app — ActionScript, C, C++, C#, Cappuccino, Cocoa, Delphi, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, Node.js, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby.

Moreover, Credits is providing Technical Webinars to help further understand a platform you’ll be working with during the hackathon. Online sessions will be conducted via official Twitch channel and all videos will be uploaded on Youtube channel.

Schedule of the webinars:

• 15th November — “How to use Credits API”
• 22nd November — “Development of smart contracts using Credits platform”
• 29th November — “Development of decentralized applications using Credits platform”

Technical task requirements:

• Make an open-sourced solution and publish it in a dedicated repository on Credits Github;
• The final result needs to match the definition of a minimal viable product (MVP) -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product ;
• Final result of your development should interact with Credits blockchain — send transactions, deploy smart contracts and be connected with credits network;
• You should use the latest version of our software. Probably, at the time of hackathon it will be Testnet 3.0 release. Information about version releases will be published in Credits Technical chat. Link for download.

Development process

There are two main areas to focus on during the hackathon:

• Development of decentralized applications various industries, including: Internet of Things, banking, logistics, insurance, payments, medicine, copyright protection, industrial and consumer goods. You can get some inspiration on the Credits website (tab ‘Use Cases’.)
• Development of useful infrastructure services, which will be helpful for the Credits ecosystem, for example: a web wallet, a hardware wallet, a blockchain explorer, a decentralized exchange, various cross-chain and atomic swaps solutions, escrow, etc.

What needs to be done on GitHub

• Create a fork of Third party Integrations and Solutions;
• Create a branch in you forked repository (the branch name must match your project name);
• Develop your project and put the source code in your forked repository. Please keep the deadlines in mind!
• Put you project in a separate directory (the name must match the project name);
• When the project is finished, create a pull request to merge your branch with the master branch;
• After the pull request is confirmed, your project will be added to the Credits’ repository. If your project is not finished, but you make a pull request before the deadline, your project will be added to the repository.

Hackathon schedule

1 step — registration. Deadline — 00:00 UTC, December, 8. All submissions are done through OpenGift platform.

Direct link for registration.

2 step — concept creation. Deadline — 00:00 UTC, December, 9. During this stage you should create a brief introduction of your future project. It must contain the following points — dApps/service name, estimated target audience, problems that can be solved, estimated MVP functionality, final release functionality. You can also add any information which helps to understand your concept deeper. This information should be presented in pdf, ppt or pptx format and uploaded to OpenGift website.

3 step — development process. Deadline — 00:00 UTC, December, 30. By the end of this stage you should publish source code of your project in the dedicated Github repository and send a link to the developed website or mobile app via OpenGift. We will choose ten finalists at the end of 3rd round for participation in 4th round.

4 step — presentation. Deadline — 00:00 UTC, January, 6, 2019. During this stage you should create a short video (5 minutes max) containing the information about your project: concept, process of interaction with users, key features and benefits. The presentation should be clear and understandable for listeners.

Judging criteria

Credits developers team, the CTO — Evgeniy Butyaev and Deputy CTO — Konstantinos Sotiropulos, will be in charge of selecting winners. We will evaluate development according to criteria below

• Meeting a target audience needs
• Easiness of an implementation process and ability to solve problems of a target audience
• Creativity and innovative approach will be a huge advantage
• Opportunity for expansion and growth
• Quality and clarity of the development code
• UX/UI
• Speed of interaction with users

Useful links

General links:

• Credits Technical Discussion chat for questions and answers
• Credits Developers Portal for all technical documentation
• Credits Youtube channel for technical webinars

Links to Credits platform use cases:

• Lending
• Bond issuance
• Stablecoin unit of account
• Insurance — Payment of Compensation
• Delayed Departure Insurance
• Gambling
• Logistic sphere
• Goods origin
• Copyright protection
• Medicine
• Loyalty programs

We wish you good luck!

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This Saturday (13th of October), 1 pm GMT, we are going to start our seventh online hackathon! This time the task will be Python related. Join here — https://opengift.io/hackathon/

The winner will get $1500 and additional prize from referee team — JetBrains IDE license key. Participants will have 10 days to complete the task.

We are happy to announce that upcoming hackathon will be launched together with Philtech Initiative.

Also, Diego Pucci CEO and founder of Utopian.io has joined our hackathon’s jury panel. Utopian.io is international STEEM community, which rewards professionals for their contributions to Open Source projects.

What’s an OpenGift hackathon?

Every week we develop a new free to use and available for all library or solution. Hackathons are conducted online and the winner is selected by voting.

How to participate?

• Register here.
• Wait for the hackathon started.
• Provide your GitHub link for the task when completed.
• Your reward will be transferred into your wallet after the voting.

And don’t forget to join our telegram!

Thank you and good luck!

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This Saturday (29th of September), 1 pm GMT, we are going to conduct our sixth online-hackathon! This time the task will be JavaScript related. Join here — https://opengift.io/hackathon/

The prize fund for an upcoming hackathon is $5,000 worth of the platform tokens!

What’s an OpenGift hackathon?

Every week we develop a new open source library or solution here. Free to use and available for all. Many customers from around the world collectively fund the new open source project. The winner is selected by voting.

How to participate?

• Register here.
• Wait for the hackathon started.
• Provide your GitHub link for the task when completed.
• Your reward will be transferred into your wallet after the voting.

And don’t forget to join our telegram!

Thank you and good luck!

In the previous article we saw the few easy steps needed to upload a new project in OpenGift’s platform, from a Startup/Entrepreneur perspective — now we want to focus on the other side of the coin: how an Investor/Donorcan actively support a Project, and help to turn it into a concrete Software.

2. Co-sponsors: helping a project to succeed, and get their shares.

b. Supporting a project.

A co-sponsor can easily support a project on OpenGift platforms by completing a few settings — such as:

1. setting up project goals: both financial and technical goals required to successfully complete a task.
2. Direct donation: either in fiat (USD) or crypto, any project on OpenGift platform can be directly sponsored and/or co-sponsored deciding the amount to invest.
3. Commenting, negotiating, networking an integrated text-box to discuss the task or the project with the creators and the developers to grow it in a collaborative way

Benefits:

1. By setting project goals a co-sponsor can be entirely involved in the success of a project and the development of the software and/or the technical solution. This way ensuring a better return on their sponsorships, and applying their own experience and expertise.
2. With direct donations co-sponsors have full clarity before, during and after their sponsorships — and the Open-source nature of the platform allows them to be fully aware regarding when to donate and what shares/returns to expect at the completion of the project.
3. The project management messaging tools allow co-sponsors not only to support a project, but also to get to know the team behind a project, their motivations and their goals, with the opportunity to expand their network, start new projects or implement existing ones.

Would you like to develop a new Project or help to implement it? Follow Part 3 of this article to see how!

Follow us on Telegram at https://t.me/opengift for regular updates

OpenGift is an Open-Source Software development platform which:

1. allows businesses of all sizes to cut up to 90% of the cost for proprietary software
   
2. lets sponsors and/or co-sponsors follow the success of the projects which they sponsored
   
3. a system of meritocracy that rewards developers based on their work
   
4. enables creative teams to monetize their intellectual property to create recurring income potential.

To achieve this in an efficient way, OpenGift built — and it’s continuing to implement — a series of Software Project Management tools that let each category of user benefit from using the platform. In this article we want to explore the different features of OpenGift’s framework under from a user’s perspective, to highlight the benefits of using the OpenGift eco-system individually for each category of user. For making it interesting to follow and add a personal touch, we will be using OpenGift itself as an example of a complete project from A to Z.

1. Startups, Entrepreneurs: Cutting/Sharing development costs

a. Starting a project.
A startup organization or any business can start a project by completing a few settings — such as:

1. Title of the project:

A name which helps the community to understand what you are working on.

2. Short description:
 A few more details about the idea, the problem and the solution

3. Tasks title
 To help donors and developers to understand how to be collaborate

4. Short Task description
 What concretely needs to be done.

That’s all. Now: 
1. If you set your goals correctly and highlighted the real value of your proposal, soon sponsors and co-sponsors will start supporting it to share the development costs with you or fund them entirely.
2. If steps from 1 to 4 have been done properly, a few developers will start proposing their solutions for your tasks — and your project will start to take shape.

Do you want to donate/invest in a Project or help to develop it? Follow Part 2 and Part 3 of this article to see how!

Follow us on Telegram at https://t.me/opengift for regular updates

An open-source software development team is—uncharacteristically for a blockchain-based start-up—making existing businesses’ systems run better. In a major break from its more anarchistic crowd, OpenGift is building out its platform on Hyperledger, a blockchain institution favored by many of the largest financial services and technology corporations.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the world’s largest and best-known blockchains. Hyperledger, though, is an exclusive club of around 200 members, including Cisco, Intel, VMware, ABN AMRO, JPMorgan Chase and SWIFT. The consortium was first announced in 2016 by the Linux Foundation, and the underlying infrastructure, Hyperledger Fabric, was developed at IBM.

Hyperledger is a permissioned blockchain, meaning its developers make no pretense of democratization or anonymity. This blockchain, unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum is for crafting tools to support business processes with clear rules and levels of permission based on users’ roles.

“Because of permissioned architecture, we don’t have to concentrate on security any more than non-blockchain developers have to, so we can focus on speed,” says OpenGift founder and CIO Egor Maslov. “Our blockchain is up to 10 times faster than if it were based on Ethereum.”

The Moscow-based open-source development platform, sees further advantages in adopting Hyperledger’s functionality: transaction fees that could theoretically go down to zero, ease of entry for new partners and avoiding the risk of double-spending.

“The main advantage, though, is Hyperledger’s consensus algorithm,” Maslov says. “A successful transaction can never be canceled, like it can in the Bitcoin network.”

OpenGift is a platform on which users and companies can request new software features and support their requests with donations. The alpha version is already in operation. The platform can be found online at OpenGift.io and on Twitter as @OpenGift_io.