Collective Rewards: How to Become a Builder

October 29, 2024

RootstockCollective is the only DAO on a Bitcoin L2 with a built-in mechanism designed to reward and champion innovation on Bitcoin. As part of this mechanism, today the Collective Rewards have been launched offering builders a unique opportunity to receive recurring incentives while gaining support from a decentralized community.

Explore the Collective Rewards and choose your role today!

What is the Collective Rewards program?

The Collective Rewards program aims to create a decentralized and community-driven mechanism to reward builders. It is launching in two versions – the first version was launched late October for developers to start earning rewards, and the second version is launching today, making Collective Rewards available for everyone in the ecosystem.

In this article, we explore how developers can benefit from becoming builders in the Collective Rewards.

What is a “Builder” and why should you become one?

Builders, in the context of Collective Rewards, are developers or projects who are members of the RootstockCollective, are constant contributors to the Rootstock ecosystem, and who have been approved by the community to be added to a whitelist and receive Collective Rewards on a regular basis.

As an activated builder in the RootstockCollective ecosystem, you will benefit from 2 key angles:

Building on the first and longest-running Bitcoin sidechain: The unparalleled security, ease of use due to the EVM compatibility, and the end-to-end dev stack of the Rootstock blockchain.
Sustainable decentralized reward system: The Collective Rewards enable activated builders to reward backers for their support, incentivizing backers and creating a sustainable growth cycle.

In a nutshell, the Collective Rewards allow you to build on the best Bitcoin sidechain while bringing the community to vote for your project, unlocking rewards in the form of Bitcoin and RIF for both builders and backers.

What it takes

There is a simple framework to participate in the Collective Rewards as a builder, which consists of:

Getting RIF
Staking RIF
Getting approval by the community to become “activated”
Submitting your project to the community
Setting a backer reward percentage that incentivizes community members to back you
Claiming your rewards

How to start? Easy! Follow this step-by-step guide:

Step-by-step guide to becoming a builder

Step 1: Submit your proposal to the community on Discourse

Check this step-by-step guide to submitting a builder proposal.

Sign up or Log in to Discourse so you can post your proposal.
Please add a new Proposal to the ‘Collective Rewards’ category. You can add it by clicking on ‘+ New Topic’ button
Please fill in the fields with the suggested references or use the template (see below) and click Create Topic to submit.

Here’s a handy community proposal template for Discourse

Suggested Title: [YYMM Collective Rewards] Protocol Name

Suggested description:

**Project Name**:

**Submission Date**:

**Team**: Feel free to include the founders’ backgrounds, LI profile
links, short bio, if you think this might help the community to vote for your Project.

**Sector**: Payments / Remittance …etc

**Project Stage**:

**Links to Deck / Video / Images**: Paste only self-hosted links accessible to the community
members.

**Links to socials**:

**Description**:

**Mission**:

**Product**: Describe your products. What are the main features? How your product adds value to the Rootstock ecosystem. And if there is synergy with other projects on Rootstock?

**Traction**: What are some of your key achievements (user count, community numbers, number of trx, TVL)?

**Roadmap**:

**Conclusion**:

Step 2: Submit your proposal on-chain

Go to the Builder Activation Proposal.

You can access it in 2 ways:

Go to the Proposal screen of the RootstockCollective dApp and click on ‘Create Proposal’: https://app.rootstockcollective.xyz/proposals

Select the ‘Join Builder Rewards’ Proposal card.

Go to MyCollective or Collective Rewards screens and click on ‘Become a Builder’

Clicking on the button will open the 3 steps to get Activated as a Builder – select ‘Submit proposal’.

You will be taken straight to the on-chan Builder Activation proposal form.

2. Once you are in the Builder Activation Proposal, please fill in the following sections

Builder Name

Follow this rule for Builder Name: MyProtocolOrdAppName

This is the Name of your Builder Project as you’d like it to appear in the dApp: in the Rewards leaderboard and in your builder card, see below:

Proposal Name

Follow this rule for Proposal Name: [YYMM Builder Activation] MyProtocolOrdAppName

Description of the proposal

Don’t forget to include a link to your Proposal in Discourse

3. Press Continue and fill in the Address fields in the Actions section

Include the address that will be used to identify you as the Activated Builder and the address where you will receive your rewards. Those could be the same address.

Make sure you have provided the correct address and data, then press Publish to finish the process.

Note: The proposal that has just been created will be displayed among the other proposals once the transaction is completed.

4. Help Execute the Proposal Once Approved

If your proposal receives a Yes vote from the community and passes successfully, it will move to ‘Succeeded’ status.

From there, it needs to be added to the Queue, which any stRIF holder can do. If you’d like to speed up the process, feel free to click ‘Put on Queue.’

After 3 days in the Queue, the proposal will be ready for execution. Again, any stRIF holder can execute it, so if you want to ensure a smooth process, feel free to click ‘Execute.’

Once the transaction is completed, the proposal will move to ‘Executed’ status.

Step 3: Submit your KYC

Please submit a KYC application form with the requested documents to the RootstockCollective Foundation for review and approval.

Please make sure you provide your:

Builder address – this is the address that identifies you as a Builder on chain.
Receiver Address – this is the address you can use to claim your rewards. It can be the same address as your Builder address.
Backer Rewards % – the portion of your rewards you wish to share with your backers.

Note that: Builders are expected to provide this value as part of their KYC application prior to getting activated so that it can be logged on chain and once Activated their Backers can already benefit from the rewards share.

Once Activated, Builders can update this Percentage value from the dApp at any time.

Note that: The changes will only take effect in 7 days. This time is required so that your Backers have sufficient time to make adjustments to their backing given the changes in your Backer Rewards %.

Step 4: Claim your rewards

The rewards you accumulate during a Cycle (appx. 2 weeks) will become available to you after the Cycle is over. You can go to the My Collective screen and claim your rewards at any time.

Note: Screenshots are taken from testnet.

Builder FAQs

Q: I am a Builder who got Activated in Version 1. Do I need to do anything to stay Activated in Version 2?

A: No. The migration process will take case of all this so that you can remain Activated in version 2.

Please note that it will be beneficial for you if you set a Backer Reward % as soon as possible to help you attract the RIF stakers’’ backing.

Q: In addition to being a builder, can I also back my projects?

A: Yes, you can. To become a backer, follow this step-by-step tutorial.

Q: Where are the rewards coming from?

A; The Foundation will initially bootstrap the rewards program using a mix of RIF and RBTC from its treasury and also set the total rewards for each cycle. In the long term, rewards will be sourced from sustainable sources driven by ecosystem growth such as a share of transaction fees and protocol fees from applications on Rootstock that use RootstockCollective for governance.

Q: How are the rewards distributed?

A: The percentage that each builder gets from the growth-reward treasury is based on the percentage of votes received from the community. So for example, if builder A receives 10% of the votes, and builder B receives 5% of the votes, builder A will receive 10% of the rewards allocated, whereas builder B will receive 5% with a backer-reward percentage allocated to RIF stakers backing the project.

See the full whitepaper for more details.