Episode 282: Devconnect 2025 With Lucas Fada  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Align Funders With Their Past Behavior** - Drips aligns funders with OSS needs by asking funders about prior OSS funding and motivations. - Lucas uses those conversations to design protocol features that match funder strategies. Transcript: Lucas Fada Yeah, sure. So as I was saying before, I'm not usually asked questions. I ask other people questions to bring money into open source. So, yeah, a lot of my work is around talking to different ecosystems, understanding what they want to fund in open source, and find ways in which our protocol and products that we build On top of that can service some of those needs. Eriol Fox So what are the most common questions that you're asking funders? Words, but what are the most common questions or topics that you end up having with these funders for supporting open source projects and the ecosystems that you're funding for? Lucas Fada Yeah, that's a great question. So actually it starts before talking to the funders and understanding if they have done some work or some funding around open source. So whenever we find some of that information, we try to see who's the one talking about it or who's behind those things. So those people tend to be more aligned with funding open source, right, in that specific ecosystem. So once we talk with these people, we try to understand how funding those open source repositories or public goods came about, why they do it, how does it align with their strategy. ([Time 0:01:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/12c72882-e693-42c0-b4da-c19d63ca3fec)) - **Visibility Bias In Funding** - Funders tend to support high-visibility libraries rather than deep, low-profile dependencies. - Drips builds a dependency graph so funding can Transcript: Lucas Fada Yeah, for sure. So typically the projects that are more visible are not like down the tree in their dependency tree. So sometimes very famous libraries like Ethers.js or WebM, for example, OpenZeppelin are the ones that you hear the most. But that's what we are trying to do at Drips. You can fund those, but then you're allowing those dependencies to fund their dependencies. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the funder needs to understand or needs to fund all their critical dependencies, just the ones they think are the most critical. And then they pass the ball to those dependencies who can pass it on to their dependencies. That's how we are building a dependency graph. ([Time 0:03:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ca409c4-0f3f-4026-b2ff-d36c4992e305)) - **Signal Funding Options Clearly** - Do make it easy for funders to find and fund your repo by adding clear funding signals like logos and priority links. - Use Drips to accept funding on-chain so donors can fund repositories without needing to know maintainers. Transcript: Lucas Fada I think there are two parts to that answer. In my work with talking and working with maintainers from these projects, I realized that a lot of them are not in for the money. And some of them are not even comfortable talking about money. Some others are. But then outside from that, they are builders. They don't want to market themselves. And they don't feel comfortable marketing themselves. So there are some strategies they can apply to market, like having a disc or like some sort of community. Adding certain logos into their website or into the repo. Giving priority to certain funders. But in my experience, they don't want to do that because this is not why they are in for. That's a problem we are trying to solve. Your drip list, anyone can fund you. You will also signal what's important to you, what percentage goes to the maintainer, what percentage can go to their dependencies or to other contributors. And then our work is to find funders as well. We've been successful at it. I think we can do a better job. ([Time 0:05:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1ea5a945-a0e4-482e-ab21-8c79ed88b805)) - **Add A No-Fee 'Fund Me' Button** - Try adding a visible, low-friction funding button on your repo so contributors can donate immediately. - Drips' GitHub 'Fund Me' button routes funds on-chain with no fees, ensuring full transfer to the repo. Transcript: Lucas Fada Yeah, there are certain things that they can do. So something that we launched, for example, is a fund me button on their GitHub repository. But there is buy me a coffee and other things they can do, right? GitHub sponsors. The cool thing about that is that we don't take any cuts and it's crypto. So all the money goes to them. So that's one of the things they can do. And these people go to a lot of conferences. They are part of communities. So just highlighting that there is a way for them to get funding and that that funding will go to them because with Drips you're funding the repository itself. You don't need to know who's behind the repo. So you can find that thing that you use and then they can signal where is the money going and that the money is going somewhere because it's all on chain. ([Time 0:08:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/658bcf00-bd40-4ad9-97e5-a5106ce47bd7)) - **Share Marketing Resources** - Try pooling community marketing help so maintainers don't feel forced into self-promotion. - Lucas suggests a shared community 'marketing department' to help projects tell their story. Transcript: Lucas Fada Just brainstorming. There are many things they could be doing. And maybe something we need to do as a community is to have some sort of like marketing department where we go around different projects, part of the community, and help them market in Different ways. This way they don't feel they are just selling their soul to corporations. ([Time 0:09:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75a0d053-f89d-48a4-a665-af8e897abf27)) - **Ask Your Developers First** - Talk directly to engineers inside ecosystems to learn which dependencies are critical and why. - Ask developers for their top 5–10 critical libraries and hypothetical impact if removed. Transcript: Lucas Fada A really good point. Like, what can they be doing? What can funders be doing in order to understand the value of open source? I think the most important thing for a funder to do is to talk to the developers within those companies projects because the developers are the ones who are the closest to the code and If you ask pretty much any developer and you give them 10 to 15 minutes they will come up with their top 5 to 10 critical dependencies and why they are important you just ask them if you took One of these dependencies out, what would happen? If we forked this and we needed to maintain this, how many people would need to work on something like this? And I think that will bring realization into the funders on why essentially it's important to fund their dependencies. Aside from what we discussed before, security issues, attracting developers, and many other things that are out there. ([Time 0:11:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9f721a24-a824-4a42-84e3-95bad85237b8)) - **Web3's Natural Fit For OSS Funding** - Web3 naturally aligns with OSS because blockchains and tooling are often open and modular. - That ecosystem provides grant models and incentives that attract open builders. Transcript: Lucas Fada Why Web3? It's one of the most open source ecosystems out there, right? It's modular. It's part of the ethos, even though there are many projects that are not open source. I think we start from there. And then the second part about Web3 is that most of it are ecosystems and ecosystems are open for builders to come in and write open source code in the languages that these ecosystems Want. Using the libraries, these ecosystems want them to use. So yeah, I think Web3 is a very open source driven ecosystem because the different blockchains are typically open source and they try to attract builders and give them grants if they Build in the open. So how can we move out of the philanthropy kind of discourse for funding open source? It's hard work because it's around aligning with what they want to do and offering a solution for that in a way that doesn't extract money that goes to the open source builders. Because there are solutions to fund open source, but I think they're very extractive. So I think that's the hard work. And sometimes it's being a bit more pragmatic around what we build for funders to fund instead of to, how can I put this? Yeah, purist around open source, right? ([Time 0:13:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/214c9702-c368-4bd9-8450-5677b4b29eaa)) - **Match Funding To Maintainer Stage** - Offer multiple funding pathways that match a maintainer's stage: dependency funding, direct grants, retroactive grants, and bounties. - Drips builds these tailored options so maintainers can progress from contributors to full-time maintainers. Transcript: Lucas Fada Make open source maintenance a viable career. That's our core. How can we do that? So we are building solutions for different stages of their maintenance or building path. So we started with dependency funding and dependency funding typically funds critical dependencies and those that are like widely used, like ethers.js, right? But then we launched direct grants or we are launching direct grants. So that's the traditional grant process. Retroactive grants, which is projects in an ecosystem that may have built something. And then batch holders or a jury decides what the impact is and they reward them for that. And lastly, we just launched Drips Wave, which is bounties for open source builders. And those are typically just starting out. And maybe they don't consider themselves even open source builders, but they start seeing the value by contributing in the open and getting rewarded for that. ([Time 0:15:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4e3067b6-5a05-4160-85cd-049faaf5c3c6)) - **Pilot With UNICEF For Digital Public Goods** - Drips is working with UNICEF to fund five widely used Digital Public Goods. - Lucas envisions governments in the global south engaging youth in bounties to build skills and careers. Transcript: Lucas Fada I see something that gets me excited is we are also working with UNICEF on essentially giving a funding mechanism for their DPGs, digital public goods, for launching our first triplets With five of their most used repositories. So anyone can fund them. But something that is exciting for me personally is that they work with lots of governments that are trying that their youth get into tech. Governments in the global south, the first one that comes to mind is Sierra Leone. And we haven't done anything yet with those governments and UNICEF, but it's an idea for them to start coming into these open source bounties, learn skills, apply them in real life, Get some funding, build their portfolio, and then potentially build a career that is very good for them. ([Time 0:17:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0785cf62-f173-4514-a84f-4c7d10b56d09)) - **Ethers.js As A Maintainer Success Story** - Lucas spotlights Ethers.js and its maintainer Richard 'ricmoo' Moore as an exemplar. - He highlights ricmoo's path to becoming a full-time open source maintainer. Transcript: Lucas Fada Personally really like Ethos.js and the maintainer behind Rikmu. I'm a big fan of Rikmu. He also created Firefly, a wallet that I think costs $1. He's been giving them away, a hardware wallet. So everyone uses EtherJS, but I really appreciate Rik's way of doing things and that he managed to become a full-time open source maintainer, builder. ([Time 0:20:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/80875d34-5bbc-4e01-8ffc-eff8d106d836))