Zug, Switzerland, Oct 3, 2023 - The tea Protocol—as part of its continuing development to enhance the sustainability and integrity of the software supply chain by allowing open-source developers to capture the value they create—published its whitepaper on October 2, 2023.
The release of the whitepaper coincided with a major rebranding event for the independent package manager “tea/cli”, which is now pkgx. The tea Protocol also launched a fresh new website—still at tea.xyz—to make the transition complete.
The tea Protocol works by integrating with all the major package managers—Homebrew, npm, APT, Crate, PyPI, RubyGems, and pkgx—to quantify the impact of every project in the OSS ecosystem and reward their developers fairly and proportionally.
Proof of Contribution, the tea Protocol’s novel algorithm, assigns a dynamic score based on each open-source project’s orientation within, and utilization from, the broader open-source ecosystem over time. This unique approach extends the reward mechanism to foundational software far removed from the application layer, to ensure that all components of a project—from the top of the tree, all the way to its base, are rewarded for their contributions.
This web3 protocol will launch an incentivized testnet in early 2024 as part of the process to create a thriving mainnet, which will operate using a token called TEA on the Base blockchain. Homebrew founder Max Howell created tea because he wants to solve a problem for the open-source community—the problem of not being fairly rewarded for developing and maintaining important software.
Max Howell said:
“tea isn't merely a protocol—it's a pledge to invigorate the open-source narrative, ensuring every line of open code that props up the very essence of all modern digital infrastructure is accompanied by much-needed intrinsic support. As we step into this novel chapter with the tea Protocol, the essence of open-source finds its true valor, fostering a community where innovation is not just celebrated but rewarded.”
About tea
tea is a web3 protocol designed to enhance the sustainability and integrity of the software supply chain by enabling open-source developers to capture the value that they create. tea is built on Base, the layer-2 blockchain from Coinbase.
The tea Protocol uses an algorithm called Proof of Contribution to quantify the impact of a software project across all open-source systems. The algorithm assigns each project a dynamic score—referred to as the project’s teaRank—based on the project’s orientation within, and utilization from, the entire open-source ecosystem over time.
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