gm,
welcome to the 2nd edition of The Protocol Press.
Fortunately for you, i ducked, dived, and dodged all those BD-related tweets to find some gems on the internet.
(BD people, please don't come after me plz)
News that You Can Use
Tools, Products and Frameworks for building a better internet:
Drip Lists
What it is:
You are never building alone on the internet. As builders we are always "standing on the shoulders of giants" and those giants are open source and the people who maintain those projects and tools. Drip Lists are a way to contribute to these projects by being a collection of Github Repos, ETH addresses and, ENS addresses. By funding a list, a percentage of the funds go to each designated contributor:
Why it matters:
Anyone who spent a considerable amount of time working in open source knows that the work can at best thankless and at worst criminal. Major corporations build for-paid products on the back of open source without even much of a strong handshake to the teams building the tools. Closing this gap and making maintainer's and contributor's lives more sustainable is a problem worthy of fixing for a better internet.
My Personal Take:
After hearing about Drips, it reminded me of Tea Protocol. They have recently come under fire as being discovered by Phylum, a software security company, has contributed to an insane amount of spam npm packages.
The high water mark of this increase occurred on 8 April 2024, with over 48,000 packages published to npm. This explosion of packages led us to our first discovery of the perverse incentives of the Tea protocol.
Source: https://blog.phylum.io/the-great-npm-garbage-patch/
Unlike popular Web Dev Youtubers who are ready to cry SCAM the second crypto gets mentioned, I don't blame the protocol itself. Much like I don't blame SMTP for spam emails. But it shows what is at stake when building incentive networks and when things go wrong. As Drips continues to grow it will be interesting to see if it turns into a puddle of despair or an ocean of opportunity for open source.
News that You Can Learn From
Tutorials, Articles and Videos for learning how to build a better Internet
ZK Jargon Decoder New Home
What it is:
A one-stop shop for not feeling lost in the world of Zero Knowledge terms.
Why it matters:
No one likes to feel dumb and many people feel like to feel smarter by throwing out jargon like all those canvas tote bags left over at crypto conferences. The ZK Jargon Decoder is a great project that will help make the terms and the technology behind it more accessible to more builders.
Shill Zone
Last newsletter I shilled you pierogi for ETHWarsaw. Listen, I understand that might not be everyone's thing. So this time, I am shilling you pizza, pasta and privacy at ETHRome (October 4th-6th).
Big shout out to @PG_CDG as well for creating this list of Privacy Issues to inspire hackers to build on. More hackathons should do this if they are interested in having impactful projects:
News that You Can Earn From
Hackathons, Open Jobs and Grants for Building a Better Internet
Movement Labs is hiring for Developer Relations. There has been a lot of movement over there in growing the dev community. If I were you, I would move myself over to the job application and get a chance to work with Brown Vitalik.
Thanks for reading and don't forget to subscribe and collect if you enjoyed this:
With love,
DappaDan