A snapshot of the 20+ open source software projects in Octant's Epoch 2
Open Source Observer is a platform for measuring the impact of open source software (OSS) contributions. We are one of the 24 projects in Octant's Epoch 2 funding allocation.
We used our dataset to take a quick snapshot of the collective impact of Octant's funding on the OSS developer community. In Epoch 2, Octant is helping support:
- 23 projects with at least some OSS component to their work
- 322 GitHub repos with regular activity
- 542 developers making regular code commits or reviews
In the last 6 months, these 23 projects:
- Attracted 556 first-time contributors
- Closed over 5,608 issues (and created 5,962 new ones)
- Merged over 10,817 pull requests (and opened 12,443)
Note: The 24th project, Funding the Commons, is also a pillar of the OSS community -- its events bring together diverse sectors such as web3, web2, AI, government, institutional philanthropy, and academia -- but it does not have an OSS component of its own.
Project specific metrics
We can go a level deeper and look at some of the metrics across projects. These are NOT rankings, just context on the maturity, size, and developer activity associated with projects.
Project maturity
Let's start with some of the oldest projects in the cohort.
The Tor Project is a volunteer-run network, older than any of the projects on this list (and even older than GitHub). Protocol Guild and Ethereum Cat Herders are two of the most critical initiatives in the Ethereum ecosystem, providing direct support to protocol research, development, and process improvement. Giveth is a long-standing fixture of the web3 giving economy, helping nearly 3,000 projects receive zero-fee donations and pioneering a variety of novel funding mechanisms.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have younger projects that have only been around for about a year (or less).
Pairwise is building tools for better group decision-making and decentralized governance. Hypercerts is a leading web3 standard for making and rewarding positive impact claims. Glo Dollar is a fiat-backed stablecoin created to lift people out of extreme poverty. And Open Source Observer (that's us!) is an open data platform that helps communities and funders measure impact.
Here's a complete table, showing when projects received their first pull request as well as some indicators related to contributors, forks, and stars for all repos in a project's namespace.
Project | First PR Opened (Years Ago) | Total Contributors (All Time) | Fork Count (Top Repo) | Star Count (Top Repo) |
---|---|---|---|---|
The Tor Project | 10.9 | 485 | 962 | 4220 |
Protocol Guild | 10.1 | 4913 | 19781 | 44606 |
Ethereum Cat Herders | 8.2 | 778 | 5348 | 12264 |
Giveth | 7.3 | 185 | 305 | 652 |
Gitcoin | 6.3 | 555 | 881 | 1751 |
rotki | 5.8 | 137 | 479 | 2479 |
BrightID | 5.7 | 60 | 63 | 217 |
Public HAUS | 4.4 | 69 | 81 | 136 |
MetaGame | 4.0 | 120 | 79 | 124 |
Revoke | 3.9 | 26 | 213 | 592 |
clr.fund | 3.9 | 31 | 97 | 177 |
L2BEAT | 3.7 | 129 | 292 | 417 |
Kernel | 3.5 | 98 | 50 | 74 |
Shielded Voting | 3.4 | 17 | 14 | 51 |
EthStaker | 3.4 | 115 | 160 | 382 |
Token Engineering Commons | 3.2 | 53 | 11 | 10 |
Drips | 2.5 | 22 | 15 | 55 |
Praise | 2.1 | 29 | 16 | 31 |
DAO Drops | 2.1 | 3 | 0 | 14 |
Pairwise | 1.2 | 7 | 0 | 6 |
Hypercerts | 1.1 | 10 | 22 | 70 |
Glo Dollar | 0.7 | 8 | 1 | 3 |
Open Source Observer | 0.5 | 14 | 14 | 25 |