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Sourcecred

Sourcecred

TL;DR:

SourceCred builds a contribution graph of people, projects, and interactions. It assigns “cred” based on activity (like GitHub commits, forum posts, votes), then uses that graph to distribute rewards over time. Contributors are paid based on what they actually did, not what they said they’d do.


The key insight: community value is co-created in many ways—technical, social, narrative—and SourceCred seeks to track and reward all of it. Each week or round, a portion of a treasury is distributed based on cred scores.


Key features:

  • Continuous contribution tracking
  • Retroactive reward flows
  • Customizable weights (e.g. give more cred to code or community engagement)
  • Plugins for GitHub, Discourse, Discord, etc.


It was one of the first systems to pioneer contribution-based budgeting and passive reputation accumulation, and its influence can be seen in modern coordination mechanisms like Coordinape, Karma, and reputation-based Allo pools.


Though SourceCred itself is no longer actively maintained, its design principles live on in Web3 treasury tools and retroactive public goods funding systems.

Best For

  • Communities with diverse types of contributions
  • Public goods projects that want ongoing retro funding
  • DAOs that want to automate part of their treasury allocation
  • Ecosystems experimenting with contribution graphs and cred scores

Good At

  1. Rewarding actual, measurable contributions
  2. Creating transparency in who does what
  3. Lowering the governance burden of grants
  4. Supporting long-tail contributors and invisible labor

Dependencies / Requirements

  • Integration with contributor platforms (e.g. GitHub, forums, chat)
  • A cred graph configuration (weights, plugins, decay rates)
  • Treasury funding source
  • Optional: override or governance review process

Not Good At

  • Creative or qualitative work without clear signals
  • Small or inactive communities
  • Projects with fast-changing goals or priorities
  • Environments requiring strict verification or accountability

Who Should Use It?

  • Open-source communities
  • DAOs with high contributor volume
  • Public goods projects seeking automated funding based on impact
  • Builders designing ongoing, reputation-based treasury flows

Example Use Cases

  • A protocol DAO uses SourceCred to stream weekly rewards to contributors based on GitHub and forum activity
  • A community creates a custom cred graph that gives weight to Discord moderation, onboarding calls, and documentation work
  • A decentralized research group tracks cred over time and allocates stablecoin bonuses accordingly