GitxChange: Build the Roots of Cooperative Plurality

“To hack a system requires getting to know its rules better than the people who created it or are running it, and exploiting all the vulnerable distance between how those people had intended the system to work and how it actually works, or could be made to work. In capitalizing on these unintentional uses, hackers aren’t breaking the rules as much as debunking them.”

Edward Snowden, 2019, “Permanent Record”

In its own, unconventional way, RadicalxChange is a hacker community. Convinced that the rules of omnipresent institutions like markets and democracy are outdated, we are on a mission to debunk the “rules” of human cooperation to unfold the true richness of our diversely shared lives.

In times of social distancing, is there a better place to come together as a hacker community than Gitcoin? In any case, Gitcoin is at the forefront of growing and sustaining open source projects. Among other things, Gitcoin Grants is the global cutting edge of Quadratic Finance.

RadicalxChange Foundation joined forces with Gitcoin to facilitate GitxChange, a two-week virtual hackathon that runs from May 27th to June 10th, 2020.

GitxChange combines hacktivist spirit with radical political economics. It’s an open forum for coders, artists, scholars, entrepreneurs and alike to get together exchanging ideas and technology for a better society.

Join us and gain first-hand experience with RadicalxChange concepts; make friends in the community; and earn some cryptocurrency. For six sponsor organizations put out exciting challenges and bounties. In total, there are 13 prizes summing up to bounties worth USD 20K.

Here are some examples.

• Solving the double-human problem on a programmable blockchain sounds exciting to you? Check out Idena’s Ethereum Relay challenge.
• Start the first Decentralized Autonomous Organization that utilitizes Quadratic Voting following the Democracy Earth track.
• Do you have an idea for a governance mechanism that allows Wildcards to optimally reward community-created artworks of animals? Go this way.
• Do you think the internet needs a bounty platform for data? Check out this challenge by Ocean Protocol.
• Do you have a RadicalxChange related idea that Gitcoin should integrate into their platform? You might be able to monetize your thoughts following this link.

Last but not least, you are invited to hack on the challenges by the RadicalxChange Foundation. One is about the creation of an open-source package for Quadratic Finance and Voting in ownership associations. An exemplary application would be its use in homeowner associations – governing housing rules and fundraising for shared living resources.

The other three challenges have a different, more creative format. Here, we want hackers to put together less-than-two-minute video explanations for Data Dignity, Quadratic Finance and Voting, and Self-Assessed Licenses Sold at Auction respectively. We hope that these videos will help us spread the word about RxC concepts to an even wider audience in an easy-to-understand and entertaining manner.

If you know any talented coders, project managers, or video producers, we would be delighted if you brought them in to these challenges!

Further, we are looking forward to RxCon – our virtual annual conference from June 19th to 21st – where sponsors will have an opportunity to present their results of GitxChange and to give credit to the related hackers.

Let’s all come together at GitxChange and build the roots for cooperative plurality!

Thanks very much to team Gitcoin and Connor O’Day particularly for making all of this possible.