Key Points
There was little correlation between the amount of development effort (measured in “developer months”) and the amount of funding (FIL) allocated through RetroPGF. Smaller projects tended to show a higher “ROI (Return on Investment)” in terms of FIL received relative to effort invested.
Background
For funding mechanisms like RetroPGF to serve as a meaningful source of income for developers, we would expect a proper correlation between inputs (effort), outputs (impact), and rewards. In this analysis, we used “developer months” as a proxy measure of development effort and examined its relationship with rewards.
Analysis Method
Dataset
- Data from 60 projects with GitHub links verified by Open Source Observer (OSO).
- The dataset included each project’s commit history and FIL allocation.
Intervation / Explanatory Variable
- “Developer months” as a proxy for development effort.
- A “developer month” was defined as a unique GitHub contributor who made three or more commits to the repository in a given month.
Dependent Variable
The amount of FIL allocated to each project
Identification Strategy
We visualized the relationship between “developer months” and allocated FIL for the 60 OSO-verified projects using scatter plots and analyzed correlations.
Results
- There was little correlation between allocated FIL and “developer months.”
- Even though the amount of input varied exponentially across projects, the differences in FIL rewards were relatively small. As a result, smaller projects tended to have higher FIL per developer month (higher ROI). For example, one project received 5,000 FIL for 72 developer months (about 70 FIL/month), while another received 4,000 FIL for 36 developer months (about 111 FIL/month; note: the original text stated 140 FIL/month, but the calculation does not match—although the trend remains the same).
- This issue has also been observed in Optimism’s RetroPGF, where smaller teams tend to receive more rewards per contributor compared to larger teams.