Lightning Bounties LLC \ stacker news ~lightning

Lightning Bounties LLC www.lightningbounties.com/

2862 sats \ 47 comments \ @south_korea_ln 28 Aug lightning

zaps forwarded to @bounty_hunter (100%)

Lightning Bounty is a groundbreaking project that revolutionizes code collaboration and incentivizes software developers using the power of Bitcoin. By integrating with GitHub Actions, Lightning Bounties automatically pays code contributors in Bitcoin for their valuable contributions to open-source projects.

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162 sats \ 17 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Aug

I see the concept is similar to this project, correct me if wrong (if not, might be worth adding to the list of this kind of tools!):

https://nostrocket.org/

20 sats \ 16 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

✅ Added to list of tools

Great find.

1041 sats \ 14 replies \ @cascdr 28 Aug

Curious to hear your perspective on the strengths/weaknesses of different bounties programs.

I love the concept of bounties. I've personally gotten hired through them. But it seems like I keep seeing projects like these and it's unclear how successful they are/what their objectives are.

Sometimes I worry that they are just a middle manager's wet dream of cheap ad-hoc labor. The truth is that it's a good way to find a new hire but it's rarely sustainable for long term projects because things like good architecture/low technical debt can be thrown to the wayside in favor of just getting those sweet sweet sats. There's also a fixed cost of bringing in a new person/getting them up to speed (which can vary wildly depending on project/skill level).

I'd like to hear your experience if you have any on either side of the bounty "trade".

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @bounty_hunter fwd 29 Aug

Lots of good bounty dialectic here: As @cascdr explains, full application development is too large and 1-point jira ticket work is inefficient due to codebase learning curve. And as @south_korea_ln points out, some fraction of the work usually does fit the sweet spot and doubles as hiring funnel. What we've found looking at a dozen or so of these boutique platforms is they tend to easily attract talent where the geo-arbitrage of wages overide the friction. I was reading the other day a young Vitalik got his first 2.5 btc on a bounty writing an article.

But often as @didiplaywell points out that at scale (e.g. UpWork) these platforms become a race to the bottom of commodification and low quality. What bounties aren't: W2 software engineering entirely liquidated into micropayments. So what might they look like?

One I'm pretty excited about is innovation / benchmark prizes, a cool one recently spread on twitter and the winning solution seemed to push SOTA in prompting techniques. Another one I'm intrigued about is frontend design for small business: we're starting to see a toolchain emerge that could do an 80/20 of code-generation-tools/bounties. Another niche in content creation and curation of docs, support wikis, etc. What ties these use-cases together is that you can build them all on top of a git pull request model, and it comes with existing workflow familiarity and reputation.

Trying to maximize flexibility, task diversity and iterations to answer Where do incentives make opensource better and open up new use cases? is IMO the best way to evolve product-market-fit.

116 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 29 Aug

Some notes on this:

Be mindful: Upwork dynamic initially made it a freelancing paradise. What started the race to the bottom was the replacement of a genuine job offer-base by solely fake job posts for data scrapping. That caused good talent to leave en masse, and only low talent to remain, bringing down everything with it (both quality and prices).
About "open-source" incentives, you might like this comment of mine in a recent post on the matter.

130 sats \ 11 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

Some interesting thoughts there.

It's like the problem of hiring devs through upwork. It's hit or miss in terms of quality. I've a friend who works for a professional it company, they often get hired to repair lousy upwork coding work.

I think what sn does is a good way of mitigating that. You keep the core development for your own in-house team and get outside help through bounties for smaller issues that do not require deep knowledge of the whole code base.

It's also a good way to assess the quality of a potential future hire. Probably better than coding interviews.

95 sats \ 10 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Aug

I think what sn does is a good way of mitigating that. You keep the core development for your own in-house team and get outside help through bounties for smaller issues that do not require deep knowledge of the whole code base.

But isn't that the way freelancing works (should) by default?

On the employee side, at least regarding engineering, the biggest problem the freelancing sector has been facing are pervasive fake job posts. It has come to the point of making Upwork unusable, you simply know that a job post is fake. My statistics are a pristine 100% in a 3 year period, it's insane. Despite very positive reviews and a great start, I have not been able to land a single job in 3 years there, in despite of permanent effort and being very cautious respect to where I send a proposal. Yet, nothing. Making fake job posts seems to be more profitable than requesting actual work.

I thank god don't depend on that, so I can take my time, read the post, investigate the source, write a thoughtful letter, etc. So it's not that I'm desperate, shoot blindly, lack strategy, etc. I had actually a great start at first. Now it has winded down to non-existence, all jobs are fakes. It's surreal.

That tendency of degenerative behaviour in the employer side is the leading reason good talent is nearly absent from those platforms nowadays, so naturally only workers of lower quality tend to remain.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 29 Aug

Any insights as to why fake job posts are profitable for said companies?

144 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 29 Aug

It has been a subject for theorization for 2 years now. Theories suggest:

HHRR have been practising fake-job-posting as a means of keeping a personal database.
Some companies, specially large ones, do it too because their reach is so large that they can get databases big enough to be valuable and/or used to make other analyses.
Ghost companies/employer do it because their business is about getting and selling those databases.

Now, actual jobs do exist, and demand for employment remains high. Yet it seems that freelancing platforms are so good at providing liquidity of data that they ended up being more profitable for data scrapping than actual job matching, relegating actual job offers back to traditional networking. And even there, within trusted networks, fake job posts are pervasive too.

31 sats \ 5 replies \ @cascdr 29 Aug

@CHADBot /trumpMode for

171 sats \ 3 replies \ @CHADBot 29 Aug bot

Sad, but true, @didiplaywell's words hit the mark! Skilled workers are LEAVING freelancing platforms. Why? FAKE JOB POSTS! Abandoned by Upwork, talent is forced to fend for themselves. Quality of work... deteriorating. We NEED change, folks! Return power to the PROS, not frauds! Sad! #MakeFreelancingGreatAgain

Made with 🧡 by CASCDR

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 29 Aug

LOL Awesome

reply on another page

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @bounty_hunter fwd 29 Aug

Does this bot copyright its work?

#MakeFreelancingGreatAgain

If not, may have to steal this hashtag

view replies

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @CHADBot 29 Aug bot

You have summoned CHADBot. Please zap this post 21 sats to receive service.

Made with 🧡 by CASCDR

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 29 Aug

Just curious didi, what jobs are you applying to? are they technical? are you a software dev?

142 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 29 Aug

Damn you data scrappers!! Leave me alone, get back to Upwork!! DX

Just kidding :P

I'm an aeronautical engineer and programmer, so I work by doing both things. One of my latest works involved developing a fluidic mechanical device and its control firmware in C, though Python is my "native language" and the one I have used the most for CAD scripting.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Aug

Cool! Glad to add it up :)

251 sats \ 7 replies \ @eduardopro 28 Aug

Why does the website say "crypto" and not "bitcoin"?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @1GLENCoop 28 Aug

Omg. Wtf?! MAJOR RED FLAG.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 29 Aug

Yep. Major.

10 sats \ 4 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

⚡Only sats go in, only sats go out.⚡

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 29 Aug

Any specific reason though you want to keep the crypto references if anyhow you are bitcoin-only?

https://m.stacker.news/48740

Context: many bitcoin maxis try to distance Bitcoin from the scammy world of Crypto. Hence, Bitcoin, not Crypto, even though, technically, Bitcoin is the first (successful) cryptocurrency ever made. At risk of alienating potential customers, it'd probably be wise to change the crypto references to bitcoin references ;)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 30 Aug

Appreciate the heads up @south_korea_ln and personally I couldn't be more orange pilled. That's why we built on Lightning.

We're very interested in tapping into the mindset of international devs who might not speak English too well. That means iterating on the term bounty vs reward or the word sat, satoshi or even the sat symbol. It's great to be on SN where what is a satoshi? isn't the first thing we have to explain.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 29 Aug

It's a "no" for me, dog. Good luck, though.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @1GLENCoop 29 Aug

https://m.stacker.news/48741

84 sats \ 7 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

Howdy stackers!

We're excited to help you build 🛠️ and stack 💰.

We're launching Sept 19 at PlebLab Startup Day in Mexico City. #647397

Love the enthusiasm; give me a minute to kick these docker containers and give the all clear before lighting us up.

51 sats \ 3 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

Sorry, hope i didn't steal your thunder. I can delete the message if you prefer to make a proper announcement. Lmk

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Aug

steal your thunder

Love the expression, so perfect in this context lol

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

Pun wasn't intended, good observation.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 28 Aug

LOL my mission on SN is complete

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

All systems go 🚀

But let's keep the fun under 1k sats for now folks.

The Beta comes off in three weeks in Mexico City.

That's when we're balling for real.

41 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

Cool! You can make the proper announcement in 3 weeks then.

Good luck until then, this project looks really cool. Other than SN, not many LN projects have incorporated bounties for open-source contributions, this could help them take the plunge.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

Thank you for the kind words and that's our hope as well: making bounties simple to post and easy to find across projects.

31 sats \ 3 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

@bounty_hunter: just tried adding a random stacker.news github issue in your website in beta version while specifying a sat amount... but when I do so, I get a Error creating reward message. Am I missing something about how to use it?

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

You've got to deposit sats first to be able to create a reward.

You can do that in https://beta.lightningbounties.com/profile.

If you check now I've credited you some free sats for the nice find. You should be able to post a reward for up to 1,000 sats.

51 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 28 Aug

Worked :)

Thanks!

Would be nice if some kind of bot account comments inside said issue to inform people a bounty is open for it. This will also give additional visibility to your tool.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

Let me check the logs and get back to you!

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 28 Aug

Superb! The idea is great!

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @The_Narrator 29 Aug

Love the discourse on here. As a jr dev, I find existing bug bounty platforms to be a bit intimating and hard to contribute to. Reading the convo on here, it seems like Lightning Bounties caters to a more diverse crowd of contributors like myself :)

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 30 Aug

Hey @The_Narrator, glad you're getting those vibes from us.

Would love to chat about your experience as a jr dev / existing platforms. Shoot us a DM on X or put in your email on our landingpage and we'll get back to you. Cheers,

40 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate 28 Aug

Nice way to promote open-source contributions! We need more of this!

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 28 Aug

I have used their platform; it really is useful! ⚡

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 28 Aug

Very cool.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 28 Aug

You are working on great project Keep going man

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @luigi1256 28 Aug

or the extension that said it wanted to do open justice https://github.com/Open-Source-Justice-Foundation Well, I share another project https://github.com/Pleb5/satshoot

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bounty_hunter fwd 28 Aug

satshoot looks very cool; thanks for sharing.

The future is looking very P2P.