Introducing RESOLVR: A Bounty Adjudicator

This is a guest post by the Resolvr team, who is building a bounty dispute resolution system modeled on the designs first published here, for the Bolt Fun Lightning of Legends Hackathon running from October 5 to December 17.

Hackathon Dispatch: Week 1

Thesis

Communities should be empowered to peacefully and voluntarily resolve their own disputes independently from state-run courts, which have failed to furnish the rule of law to the majority of humanity.

An alternative is required.

But existing alternative dispute resolution (ADR) and online dispute resolution (ODR) systems do not produce decisions that can be enforced without a court order.

Decentralized, open-source, and permissionless protocols like Bitcoin (₿), Nostr🦩, and Fedimint🔅 enable any community (be it a physical location, an online group, an industry, or even a peer-to-peer marketplace) to resolve its disputes with programmatic control over the flow of funds according to self-executing decisions produced by the community’s chosen decision-makers.

In short, these protocols can advance dispute resolution beyond the state, expanding access to justice for all.

Resolvr: The Bounty Adjudicator

Resolvr is a first attempt at such a dispute resolution system. It is a bounty adjudicator for the Free Open-Source Software community, without which open-source protocols cannot grow and flourish.

Resolvr provides assurances to developers that they will be paid if their work satisfies the bounty criteria. It does this by

• removing discretion from grantors,
• crowdsourcing review with an independent developer panel, and
• automating enforcement of the panel’s decision.

And by delegating review to a crowdsourced panel, Resolvr removes barriers to entry for grantors and donors, thereby democratizing and further decentralizing FOSS funding.

Resolvr has three pillars, built on three protocols:

1. Fedimint🔅 review panel coordinator,
2. Noncustodial, bitcoin-native (₿) escrow, and
3. Public nostr🦩 bounty board.

We’re excited to share Resolvr’s journey with you. Let’s make FOSS funding more fair, efficient, and decentralized!

Project Roadmap:

• Build nostr🦩 bounty board using nostrbounties.com as starting point.
• Fork CelebrityEscrow for escrow (₿) features
• Develop fedimint🔅 module to coordinate reviewing developers into panels
• Devise signing scheme for fedimint🔅 to release escrow funds (₿) consistent with review panel decision
• Build front-end for reviewers to interface with fedimint🔅 coordinator, allowing access to bounty materials and ability to sign votes.

Progress

Nostr🦩 Bounty Board:

• website stack chosen;
• initial nostr bounty board webpage mockups started;
• nostr event kind chosen (30050)

FediMint🔅 Coordinator:

• Initial research conducted into adding FROST 🥶 to FediMint🔅 to allow federation/coordinator to sign events/bitcoin transactions (potentially using frostr)
• Research conducted into adding secp256k1 to FediMint🔅 crypto library to produce external signing for collaborative bitcoin custody (escrow)

Problems

Nostr🦩 Bounty Board:

• nostrbounties.com uses kind 30023 (long form notes). Not ideal for short bounties due to need to filter through blog post congestion. Decide on different event kind.

FediMint🔅

• Currently no way to have federation sign external events (bitcoin transaction/nostr events). (FROST?)
• Need to bridge decision of review panel (majority of votes) to federation signature for escrow transaction without having reviewers serve as guardians and run node.

Links 🔗

• GitHub repo: https://github.com/Resolvr-io
• “Advancing Dispute Resolution Beyond the State through Bitcoin”, Research paper explaining theory underpinning Resolvr
• Hackathon Project Page: https://bolt.fun/project/resolvr