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August 29, 2022

The Future of Gitcoin Kudos

TL;DR Ensure Gitcoiners that Kudos is here to stay Eliminate confusion about xDai and Mainnet Show how Gitcoiners can view their Kudos in their software wallet What Kudos are technically ERC-721 tokens, more commonly referred to as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) which were first published as an EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) in September of 20171. Non-Fungible tokens allow developers to tokenize ownership of any arbitrary data (like a Kudos), drastically increasing the design space of what…

TL;DR

  • Ensure Gitcoiners that Kudos is here to stay
  • Eliminate confusion about xDai and Mainnet
  • Show how Gitcoiners can view their Kudos in their software wallet

What

Kudos are technically ERC-721 tokens, more commonly referred to as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) which were first published as an EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) in September of 20171. Non-Fungible tokens allow developers to tokenize ownership of any arbitrary data (like a Kudos), drastically increasing the design space of what can be represented as a token on the Ethereum blockchain or sidechain like xDai.

History

About a year after ERC-721 was published, we introduced Kudos “the easiest way to show appreciation and build relationships in open source” which is still true to this day. Since launching Kudos, 134 artists have created ~930 custom Kudos that they sell in the Marketplace. Since October of 2018, artists have earned ~934 ETH (about $566k at the time of this writing) by minting over 31.3k Kudos!

We found Kudos to be great for marketing on Twitter with airdrops called “Free Kudos Friday.” They were a hit, so much so that we decided to completely rebrand our “Weekly Roundup” newsletter to “The Weekly Mint” which does what we did on Twitter but in the newsletter. This increased our open rates by 80%! Gitcoiners were minting over 100 Kudos per issue! Success!

More Kudos, More Problems

Ever since launching ‘The Weekly Mint’ we have noticed a number of GitHub issues about Kudos. While we are doing our best to address these issues, with that said, we still have work to do. Here is what we have been working on:

Migrated to xDai

Kudos were originally deployed to the Ethereum mainnet, and over 19k Kudos have been minted on the Ethereum mainnet since then.

In the autumn of 2020, gas prices on the Ethereum mainnet rose so high that it became financially unviable to continue minting the Kudos on the Ethereum mainnet ($4 per Kudos sent), so we migrated the Kudos contract + the existing Kudos to the xDai network. The xDai network is a PoA (Proof of Authority) chain that is much cheaper to use than the Ethereum mainnet.

When the ETH gas fees went up to 400 Gwei, we were spending about $600 per day minting kudos.

Conclusion

One of the biggest concerns we have been seeing is not being able to view their Kudos in a compatible wallet.

There are multiple wallets that support NFTs, please consult your wallet documentation to see if your wallet supports NFT galleries + how to access Kudos in your wallet.

Assuming your Web3 wallet doesn’t support NFTs we prefer 3Box to view mainnet Kudos or you can click the “Kudos” tab in your Gitcoin profile to see your kudos.

Viewing my Kudos via 3Box

That concludes this blog post. Rest assured, we are far from “done”. Will continue to work on Kudos and make sure that everything continues to sync to your wallet as it is supposed to. If you are still having trouble or have any Kudos related questions, please open a GitHub issue and we will get back to you ASAP. =)

Kudos FAQ

How do I connect my web3 wallet to xdai?

Follow the instructions here: https://www.xdaichain.com/for-users/wallets/metamask/metamask-setup

What is the Kudos contract address on xdai?

0x74e596525C63393f42C76987b6A66F4e52733efa

What is the Kudos contract address on mainnet?

0x2aEa4Add166EBf38b63d09a75dE1a7b94Aa24163

How do I view NFTs on xdai?

Here is a video about how to connect your kudos to xdai.

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