February 2024 was a magical time.

A time of hopes. A time of dreams.

It was a time where we believed we would get a $30,000 airdrop for jumping on github with commits like “add scroll to solana” or “fixed typo”.

The Era of the Contributor, as the scholars call it, ended all too soon. With empty hands and broken hearts.

But does it have to be over?

Nay, we say. It’s time to resurrect the past.

After 7 months of grueling work, of which 6 months and 24 days may have been spent battling the verification process on block explorers, we bring you: Contributors on Scroll.

Tell Me More

Thank you for asking, header text.

Contributors is an infinite onchain story where everyone is an author.

Send up to 256 characters to the smart contract to etch them forever on the Scroll blockchain.

You’ll even get 2 onchain NFTs for your trouble. A permanent reminder of your writing genius.

On The Infinite Scroll, each Contribution ends up next to the previous one. Think of it like word association games. You say “banana”, I reply “apache helicopter”, you come back with “army”, I answer “the Battle of Thermopylae”. And so on.

Try to shoot for a couple sentences rather than single words. Rollup blockspace is precious and must be cherished. I mean, it’s a suggestion. You’re your own boss.

16 Contributions together make a Page. Once a Page is filled, we move on to a new one.

And so the story goes on, either until the end of the universe or until Vitalik turns off his masternode.

Align Thyself

Now comes a question: what about problematic content?

We could see trolls writing some disgusting, abhorrent, offensive contributions. Like chanting praise for XRP.

Have no fear, we have implemented the strictest safety measures to ensure alignment.

For starters, Contributors is deployed on Scroll. As the Ethereum community is the best community and the Scroll community is the best subset of this best community, there is no possible way any participant would act nasty.

Problem solved.

If, by some freak accident, bad content managed to happen regardless, there is a second line of defense.

When a Page is filled with the required 16 Contributions, it enters Edit stage.

Anyone can post a draft of their best edit, the community votes on it, and the best draft is sent to the smart contract as a final, permanent script for this Page.

(The original script for each Contribution remains intact. You will always be able to see it in the NFT tied to that particular Contribution, or calling the smart contract directly.)

Cents Incentives

Sending a Contribution comes with an ether sacrifice, initially set at 0.0002 ETH (about $0.50 at the time of this writing, $20 if you read this in 2028).This cost has a couple purposes:

- another deterrent for low quality Contributions

- gets you to think hard about before you pen your thoughts on the Infinite Scroll

- rewards editors and administrators

After the Edit stage, when a Page is published for good, the ether spent to write that Page is spent equally between the accepted editor of that Page and the administrator.

Thus incentives:

- for editors to post drafts

- for admins to publish selected drafts and keep frontends for the smart contract

- for the story to be maintained forever

Looking For Group

Contributor, you’re invited to this party. Let’s share a small bit of the world computer and write a story that stands the test of time.

What says you? What will you say, today, to the future degenerations?

Go forth, and contribute: