Gems is an experiment to recognize and reward contributions of early adopters on Backdrop and the Open Work Graph.
We’re on a mission to create an internet-scale protocol to connect people and their work, one that is open source, sufficiently decentralized, permissionless, and community owned. Gems is an important part of that future.
Our end goal is for Gems to be an integral part of pushing the Open Work Graph towards community ownership. There are several steps between the internal tracking system we have today and that place, and we will continue working with our community to take those steps. Those helping us build it will reap the benefits and steer it towards the future.
It goes without saying that Gems will never be perfect - you cannot capture all of the ways people contribute to networks and to each other in them. But via continuous feedback and iteration we hope to get ever closer to that place.
To maintain high quality in the early days, we remind you that accounts on the Open Work Graph need to be created via Backdrop, which remains invite-only.
If you want to create an account, you need to be invited by an existing member who is ****vouching for you or apply via our waitlist. All accounts go through an approval step based on quality signals about their data and their work.
If you have questions, reach out on Discord.
When your account gets approved, it is time to celebrate! As a warm welcome from the core team and the whole network, you will receive your first 💎 1,000.
You will also start with 3 invites to vouch for people you think are a great fit to join you and the network. This is how you can contribute and earn more Gems.
For every person you invite that ends up as an approved member, you receive 💎 500.
People you invite to the network can go on to have a huge impact, and we want to acknowledge your role in that, too. This means:
Every time someone you invited earns Gems, you will earn 1/5 of what they earned. Those are your 1st degree Gems.
Every time someone invited by someone you invited earns Gems, you will earn 1/25 of what they earned. Those are your 2nd degree Gems.
For more on this calculation, see an example here.