The Arweave Open Web Foundry

July 21st - September 9th, 2021

*Make sure to join the Arweave Discord Dev server*

The Open Web Foundry is a six-week programme guiding founders through the process of launching an amazing new startup on 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 and here. 

The Open Web Foundry is the fourth instalment of the incubation and acceleration programme . Already, more than $15,000,000 in seed investments have been made across the alumni of the first three batches. We’re very excited to inspire and support the latest batch of developers to quit their jobs and pursue something they love!

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

• Masterclasses every Wednesday by industry experts on foundational topics like pitching to professionals and designing effective investor and community pitch decks, as well as on topical subjects relevant to projects building right now.  
• Live support from profit sharing community experts on Discord, to answer questions, help troubleshoot throughout your development process, and brainstorm your ideas. 
• Weekly ‘Community Spotlight’ events on Fridays, where current and previous programme participants can showcase their work, learning from each other and getting an insight into the current ecosystem developments.
• Expert, tailored, and individual support sessions for you, your co-founders and teammates, helping you to refine your presentation skills before you pitch for investment.
• The programme culminates in Demo Day, an event allowing leading projects to showcase their work, and pitch for investment from the Arweave core team as well as supportive investors from throughout the Arweave ecosystem.

This programme delivers tailored resources and support to both brand new and existing profit sharing community teams 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 the Arweave developers’ Discord server! Registrations are open to all, throughout the entire of the programme. 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 to learn how to use your wallet.

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.
• Profit Sharing Communities: A Deep Dive by Arweave | CoinMarketCap
• Need technical support? Join Arweave’s 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 will ideally be a profit sharing community on Arweave. The owners of the associated profit sharing token receive royalties from usage of the app.
• By the end of the six-week programme, 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).
• Your UI will ideally be hosted on Arweave.
• 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 USD in total across successful projects submitted during the Open Web Foundry programme. Third-party investors will also consider investing alongside Arweave. The Arweave investment will primarily be made in exchange for the project’s profit sharing tokens.

Selected projects will be presenting their submission during Demo Day, which will take place on September 1, with investment meetings following soon after.

Note: The bounty has a value of $100,000 USDC on Gitcoin, this is only a representation of the total investment pool of $100,000 USDC that is available - the specific currency will depend on the agreement with the investee(s).

Submission Deadline:

11:59pm EST on September 9 2021

Announcement Date:

Investments will be announced after the end of the programme.

See you on the permaweb!

-The Open Web Foundry Team

Join us in the Gitcoin Discord to discuss and shill your projects and get support!

👉 Discussions at #🖖hacker-talk

👉 Learn at #📆workshops

👉 Networking at #😺find-teammates

👉 Present at #🌈demo-slam

👉 Party at #🔟gr10-hackathon

👉 Jam at 🔊🦜hacker-lounge