The Open Web Foundry by Arweave

Add the Open Web Foundry events to your calendar here

Join live Masterclasses and watch recordings on Crowdcast here

The Open Web Foundry is a six-week programme guiding founders through the process of launching an amazing new startup on the Arweave’s decentralised web. From initial idea, to product, to acquiring users and pitching to top-tier investors alongside other incredible founders, we are with you every step of the way. We welcome submissions from founders creating a new profit sharing community on Arweave, or further developing an existing one.  

Arweave enables the development of fully decentralized, permanently hosted web applications. Not only that, but founders can use Arweave to form profit sharing communities (PSCs) around their applications as well, which represents a fundamentally new and fairer business model for their apps. You can find out more about profit sharing communities and their associated tokens here. 

The Open Web Foundry is the third incubator programme run by Arweave. Already, more than $1,250,000 in seed investments have been made across nearly a dozen participating projects. 

We’re very excited to inspire and support the latest batch of developers to quit their jobs and pursue something they love with Arweave!

As well as potentially fundraising for your project, the Open Web Foundry by Arweave offers:

• Weekly sessions with Arweave ecosystem leaders, core developers, and Arweave founder Sam Williams. 
• Masterclasses by industry experts on topics including: the path from idea to market, token economics, community building, fundraising fundamentals, one-to-one pitching workshops, and more.
• Frequent drop-in office hours with Arweave core team members for dedicated support and guidance at all stages of development.
• Live coding sessions with core developers and fellow community members, with additional helpers on hand to answer questions and help troubleshoot.
• Weekly demo events, where current and previous programme participants can learn from each other and get an insight into the current work happening within the ecosystem

This programme delivers tailored resources and support to both brand new and existing profit sharing communities on Arweave who wish to push their projects to the next level.

Get Started!

All you need to do to get started is to register here on Gitcoin, and join us on our ecosystem Discord server! Registrations are open to all, throughout the entire programme -- join up any time. We will notify you of upcoming events and deadlines as the programme progresses. 

We also offer participants a small amount of AR tokens so you can get started building and deploying. Grab your wallet here, and check the web extension user guide here.

Key Resources

• Deploy your first Arweave app with these docs.
• Read from and write to Arweave using this Javascript library.
• Create your profit sharing community on communityXYZ.
• Helpful blog posts:
• Profit Sharing Tokens: A new incentivization mechanism for an open web
• Introducing SmartWeave: Building smart contracts with Arweave
• Profit Sharing Communities: Your work, on your terms, with better financial upside.
• Need technical support? Join our developer Discord here where core Arweave team members and community members can offer you guidance.

Rules and Criteria

Successful submissions will meet the following criteria:

• Apps must be open source, with the full source code available on Github or another open code hosting repository. Feel free to use whatever OSS licence you prefer.
• Your project must be a profit sharing community on Arweave. The owners of the associated profit sharing token receive royalties from usage of the app.
• Your project must include a link to a live, functioning, and running instance of the app itself, as well as a link to the repository it is stored within. It must also be published to ArweaveApps (see the submission process below).
• All applicants must join our Discord Dev server and share your submission in the #on-the-arweave channel upon completion.

Investment details

The Arweave core team will invest $100,000 in total across the projects submitted during the Open Web Foundry programme. Third-party investors will also consider investing alongside Arweave. In previous programmes, external investors have injected more than $1,000,000 into participating startups. The Arweave investment will be made in exchange for the project’s profit sharing tokens. 

The winning projects will be selected by the core Arweave team following the Gitcoin submission deadline on April 9, then negotiations for token purchase will be made individually with each project and its founder(s).

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The programme will offer a wide range of events, including these expert masterclasses:

• 2nd March - Masterclass #1: How to build your Profit Sharing Community. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/masterclass-1-how-to 
• 3rd March - Masterclass #2: The Path to Market https://www.crowdcast.io/e/mrlfjcng
• 10th March - Masterclass #3: Mechanism Design 101 https://www.crowdcast.io/e/m485p17y
• 17th March - Masterclass #4: Fundraising Fundamentals for Founders. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/4a5z8dos
• 24th March - Masterclass #5: Token Economics & Distribution. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/9uo5mncq
• 31st March - Masterclass #6: Community Building for PSCs https://www.crowdcast.io/e/uekuwki1
• 7th April - Masterclass #7: Pitching to Pros. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/gyz5sojp

The programme begins on the 1st of March 2021, and the submission deadline is the 9th of April 2021. 

See you on the permaweb!