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The Scope of the Ergo Foundation#

The Ergo Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the adoption and development of the Ergo Platform. Its primary focus is to support the Ergo Platform in providing an efficient and secure way to implement financial contracts, the most widely used application of blockchain technology.

Mission and Principles#

The Ergo Foundation is committed to the following principles:

  1. Organic and Non-Breaking Development: The Foundation ensures that protocol changes are approved not only by miners - who express their will directly on the blockchain - but also by users and projects building on top of Ergo.

  2. Open-Source and Permissive Licensing: The Foundation is committed to maximizing the number of valuable ecosystem developments accomplished in open-source with the least permissive license possible.

  3. Privacy and Trustless Environments: The Foundation is dedicated to helping build trustless environments, smart contracts, and payment frameworks for the public with privacy in mind.

  4. Community-Driven: The Foundation believes that the Treasury should be distributed mainly to the community, including freelancers, hackers, experts, and enthusiasts.

The Ergo Foundations Future

Please see this page for more information on the long-term goals of The Foundation.

Key Areas of Focus#

Infrastructure#

  • Support for protocol research, development of the reference client, alternative clients (if needed), libraries, and developer tooling.
  • Improving market access by getting Ergo listed on centralized exchanges, hardware wallets, bridges, or other means.

Education#

  • Creating materials to educate developers and users directly or funding their creation through third parties from within the community.

Promotion and Outreach#

The Foundation aims to promote the adoption of Ergo. While its operations in this area are conservative, it does fund a select few roles for areas not currently met by the community, such as:

  • Angie Har, Editorial & Events Manager (salaried)
  • Andy Lowe, YouTube Manager (hourly)
  • Sean Rice, Editor (hourly)
  • Eva Qing, Chinese Outreach Manager (hourly)
  • Marcelo Roncatti, Branding Advisor (hourly)
  • Writers (via paid bounties)

Their efforts ensure ample information is available about ongoing developments on Ergo via blog posts and social media, as well as the promotion and operation of various events, such as Ergo Summit and ErgoHack.

Over the past 23 years, network effects have accounted for approximately 70% of the value creation in tech, and this figure is likely higher for a third-generation grassroots blockchain. While the EF strives to lay the foundations and help ignite community outreach and, subsequently, compounding growth, beyond this, the promotion and adoption of Ergo rest principally on the shoulders of the community. (Get Involved!)

The EF does not commonly pay for influencers or ad campaigns and does its best to restrict frivolous spending, which is deemed not cost-effective (i.e., airdrops, giveaways).

The outreach department highlights projects building in the ecosystem. However, these initiatives do not constitute an endorsement from the Ergo Foundation. The Foundation will always use best practices to vet projects and ensure that there is no risk for potential users. Still, in the early stages of development, it is often unknowable if anything of substance will ultimately be produced.

Development#

The Ergo Foundation's relationship with development is primarily focused on areas where there is a demand not met by the community. This role is expected to diminish over time as the community grows and takes on more development responsibilities.

Some Ergo Foundation members also hold developer positions, although their development activities are separate from their foundation involvement. For transparency, these roles are listed below:

Code Repositories Supported by the Ergo Foundation#

This section is a draft and still open for discussion from the community.

The Ergo Foundation DAO LLC provides funding for the development, evolution, and maintenance of various software repositories. There are two levels of funding:

  1. Development Funding: Involves funding for research, development, maintenance, and bug fixing.
  2. Maintenance Funding: Involves only bug fixing and minor issue resolution to support existing applications. Repositories in this category are considered deprecated. While being part of the core ecosystem, they will receive maintenance support for existing applications. Developers are encouraged to migrate and discouraged from relying on these software.
Development Funding#

The repositories in this section are the main focus of funding support by the Ergo Foundation. They are part of the development roadmap for the core ecosystem. Developers are encouraged to rely on these software and join development efforts.

Maintenance Funding#

The repositories in this section are still part of the core ecosystem; however, they are no longer part of the Ergo Foundation's development roadmap. This means the Ergo Foundation will only support maintenance and critical fixes in these repositories. Funding is provided on an issue-by-issue basis, and each attached bounty is subject to approval by the Ergo Foundation (morphic, anon-br).

Code Audits#

The Ergo Foundation does not review or endorse any code specifically. Code reviews are sometimes performed by Ergo Foundation members (due to their expertise in this area), but this does not constitute an endorsement, and users should be aware of their assumptions when interacting with experimental DeFi protocols. (See - Know Your Assumptions)

Exchange Listings#

The Ergo Foundation, as a legal entity, is primarily responsible for liaising with centralized exchanges. Ergo has been listed on several exchanges, including three Tier 1 exchanges (KuCoin, gate.io, Huobi). A tier 1 exchange is defined as an exchange that appears in the top 10 of exchange ranking sites such as defillama.com/cexs.

Exchange discussions and details are typically confidential due to Non-Disclosure Agreements ('NDA'). However, we can share some general insights:

  • Listings are usually expensive.
  • Exchanges generally do not buy liquidity or any of the native tokens or coins on the open market. Instead, a third-party Market Maker ('MM') is used, which has access to an API with a preallocated amount of ERG and USDT to create a liquid market. The MM can only buy/sell and lacks the credentials to withdraw assets.
  • The Ergo Foundation has approached all major exchanges, and none have been rejected due to high costs.

If you're wondering why certain coins are listed and Ergo is not, it could be due to several reasons:

  • They are a native asset on an already integrated chain (i.e., ERC20, Cosmos, etc.), which requires less effort to add and maintain.
  • They may have venture-capitalist funding and connections, which can be leveraged for early listings.
  • They may have a smaller public distribution than ERG and can negotiate with exchanges for a percentage of their total supply.
  • They may be less complex than Ergo, with no native asset support, no need to worry about UTXO dust, etc.
  • They may be older than Ergo and were listed during the last bear market.
  • Even though they are a unique Layer-1, they may only have a wrapped asset (i.e., on BSC) listed.

For updates on our exchange listing efforts, you can follow our Weekly AMAs.

The Ergo Foundation is committed to expanding Ergo's presence on exchanges. However, certain factors such as low volume or market cap can affect our eligibility for listing on some platforms. This is not due to a lack of effort or resources, but rather the nature of the crypto market and the specific requirements of different exchanges.

We are also exploring the possibility of listing as wrapped tokens on exchanges, which could reduce barriers for high-quality tier 2/3 exchanges and help build up our access and volume. We are actively pursuing discussions with a global on-ramp to increase access for US users.

While Ergo's fundamentals are strong, the decision to list a coin often comes down to factors such as profitability and ease of integration for the exchange. However, we believe that as Ergo's DeFi ecosystem matures and volume builds up, more exchanges will recognize its value and list it.

In the meantime, we continue to prioritize development and community engagement over artificially inflating volume or engaging in questionable practices. We believe this approach will lead to sustainable growth and long-term success for Ergo.

The Ergo Foundations Future

Please see this page for more information on the long-term goals of The Foundation.