Using "quadratic funding" to make a living building free software

Wesley (wslyvh) is a "quadratic freelancer" with 20+ projects under his belt, all of which are free and open source. He supports himself — and then some — via donations and quadratic funding.

Here's Wesley on what that means and how he does it. 👇

A decentralized future

I got interested in the internet at a young age. It was the late 90s and there were no social platforms or websites. No YouTube. No tutorials. Things were simpler back then, but you had to do things yourself. No user experiences or fancy interfaces. You learned along the way — how to read code, how to use a terminal. Then, at some point, you started copying stuff from others. You made some changes to how it worked. And suddenly, you were creating your own scripts, websites, and social profiles.

I've been exploring the internet and various technologies since. Always curious. Tinkering. Trying out new things.

I spent ten years working for big corporates. I learned so much and met amazing people. But the further I went up the ladder, the more I started to hate it. I decided to take the leap and started freelancing as an independent software engineer. On my first gig, someone introduced me to Bitcoin, which led me to explore further into the crypto rabbit hole. I never got out.

Ethereum was such a fascinating new technology, with a lot of similarities to the early days of the internet. Cryptographic architecture. A new (Ethereum) Virtual Machine. Smart contracts. Permissionless innovation. New tools for human coordination and infinite new ways to experiment, explore and help build this “world computer”.

I wanted to get involved and help build this new layer on the internet. It’s been such an interesting, and historical time. I feel extremely lucky I get to experience working in the early days of crypto, and help build and shape its direction. The future is decentralized!

Building prolifically

I started working as an independent freelancer in 2015, starting with hourly contracting work (and still do). In 2016, I started working more actively on personal projects.

Since then, I've worked on the following projects:

• Buidl explorer — good first issue explorer

• Contraktor — Swagger for smart contracts

• Ethereum gas price notifier

• Tokenlog — token-weighted backlog voting

• Proof of competence — onchain quests and onboarding journeys

• Auto-delete social media posts

• 30-days of Web3 challenge

• StreamEth — decentralized live-streaming

• A mempool explorer

• ZK Academy — academy credentials as NFTs

• Passport NFT — anti-Sybil score

• Archivooor — clipping shorts from live streams

• ZK Identity & data wallet

• Show Up — rewarding attendee participation

• Onchain Squad — community for open-source crypto contributors

• Ukulala — tools to learn to play ukulele

• Nexth — boilerplate/starter kit for Ethereum

• ETH gas price Tracker

• Music Journal — Strava for musicians

You can find all of them on my Github. My most active are:

• Nexth — 680+ Github stars

• ETH Gas Tracker — 10k unique visitors/month

• useWeb3 — almost 400 Github stars

• Music Journal — upcoming (my first SaaS)

All failed ideas lead to successful ones

As you can see, I often work on multiple projects simultaneously. While some people might prefer to focus and dedicate their time on a specific problem or idea, I like to jump between projects. Exploring new things and ideas.

It also helps reset my mind. If I feel like I’m procrastinating, it often means I currently don't have the inspiration or motivation to continue, but I can always make progress somewhere.

Most of my projects haven't seen much traction, but I don't consider them all failed or dead. Some were very experimental. Some were only useful during specific periods. Some evolved from other ideas. And, in general, they've all been great learning experiences that showed me what works and what doesn't.

After all, failed ideas lead to successful ones.

A quadratic freelancer

What's probably very different from most indie hackers here is that I don't have a traditional business model. No SaaS, subscriptions, or monthly recurring revenue. I don't charge for anything. All of my projects are free and open-source.

I'd call myself a quadratic freelancer.

I believe the term "quadratic freelancer" was first coined by Vitalik. It's someone who works directly for the public and is funded by donations boosted by quadratic matching subsidies.

It was popularized by Austin Griffith who is a great inspiration, friend, builder, and educator who has brought many developers into the space. Funding platforms like Gitcoin, Giveth, and Octant have allowed people like Austin and myself to provide unique value while not only sustaining ourselves, but making enough that we can use these funds to pay it forward to support and empower other builders.

One way of paying it forward is by organizing challenges to help new people learn, and onboarding them into the Ethereum ecosystem. I fund all these challenges myself using grants and the proceeds I receive. Most popular has been my 30 days of Web3 challenge, where we dive into open-source crypto projects, and organize workshops and office hours to connect them with project founders and maintainers.

The goal is to help them make their first open-source contribution in the space. It's amazing to see what we can collectively achieve. Over the years, about a hundred people have committed several hundred changes across dozens of projects this way. A lot of them stuck around and are still active, working for some of the biggest projects in the space.

I’m excited about making open-source software more sustainable. Within the Ethereum community, there is a cultural norm of funding public goods. Besides some of the earlier mentioned platforms, other organizations like Optimism, Protocol Guild, Protocol Labs (Funding the Commons), etc. have made a lot of great progress in experimenting with new funding models.

Models such as quadratic funding and Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF) are ushering in a new era of support for open-source and public goods. I think this is one of the main reasons that donation-based work (sort of) works in crypto. That general norm of reciprocity, where positive actions and rewards have exponential effects, leads to more cooperative environments.

But there’s still a long way to go to make this more accessible and make sure this trickles down to that maintainer in Nebraska.

What crypto is really about

For my Nexth starter kit, any proceeds I receive via these funding platforms are forwarded and shared with the critical dependencies using Drips. Drips is a toolkit for rewarding open-source projects with onchain dependency trees and programmable value flows. I believe this is an important part of amplifying the impact of open-source funding. A few of my dependencies also share their dependencies again, creating beautiful cascading effects that trickle down to multiple layers of project owners, maintainers, and contributors. Any received funding and donations that benefit me, benefit them, as I rely on them for their software.

More recently, I also started to share funds with project contributors. With a simple scoring mechanism, I calculate a contributor score based on a combination of commits, issues, pull requests, and other contributions. This determines the amount of funding they receive over a certain period for their work.

For a lot of people, crypto is all about speculation and trading, but to me, this is what crypto is about. New technologies and tools with programmable, cryptoeconomic primitives to build a fairer, more inclusive public infrastructure. All available for free as open-source software that anyone, anywhere can use to build the next big thing.

It allows us to build new networks, and economic communities (DAOs) around shared values or missions where anyone can participate. You can jump in, or out whenever you feel like it or when it's needed. Contribute, and get rewarded!

For those interested in this side of crypto, I'd recommend this resource.

Find your tech stack

Most of my projects are built with TypeScript, express, postgres, Nextjs, tailwind, and DaisyUI. For crypto projects, I'd add Solidity (hardhat), Wagmi, Viem, and WalletConnect on the front end.

This is my boilerplate for crypto projects.

I know these discussions often lead to heated debates, but I would recommend using whatever you're most comfortable with. It doesn't matter whether that's JavaScript, Rails, or PHP.

Don't copy others because they have success with a certain tool or language. Don't follow the latest hype, tools, and SDKs. You probably don't need that.

Heck, I'd even say that boilerplates are often unnecessary. The reason I created one was because it helped me. Scratching my own itch. I’ve started a lot of new projects and participated in several hackathons. Having something that I'm familiar with helped me hit the ground running and allowed me to spin up and experiment with new ideas and projects much faster. The benefit of building in public, with open-source code, just meant that it also helped a lot of other people. But that was not the main goal.

So focus on your own skills and expertise. Build a solid foundation for yourself. Focus on fundamentals that you can rely on. Be open to new ideas. Find and experiment with new ways to become more efficient, but don’t blindly follow others.

Always be trying new things

The knack for trying new things doesn't only apply to business or my professional life, but also personally. I regularly try out new things and explore new hobbies — sometimes to the dismay of my partner as I dive into yet another new hobby or bring home some new instrument. Kidding, she likes my quirks.

If you never try something new, how do you know if you'll like it or not? Some friends and I challenge each other on a regular basis to try something new. We alternate turns and surprise each other with an activity that none of us have done before.

It can be anything! Something on our bucket list. Or something that pulls us a little bit out of our comfort zones. Some examples include joining an amateur jeu de boules-competition (we ended last), an ice bath challenge, shooting clay pigeons, barefoot waterskiing, archery, a day in a trampoline park, and singing in a pop-up choir (yes, there are videos).

Focus on your interests

The ultimate motivation for me is freedom.

The freedom to work whenever, and wherever I want. When I feel most inspired or motivated. The freedom to follow my passions. To choose the projects I work on. Those that I truly believe in and feel aligned with.

This is such a cliche, but find something you're genuinely interested in. Something you care about. Something you would do whether or not someone is watching or paying you. Everything else will follow. I believe this becomes more important in a world of abundance and AI. Human curiosity makes the difference!

What's next?

Another goal for 2025 is to work on Music Journal, a new app that helps you record, reflect, and improve your music practice. It's like Strava for your music practice.

There are a lot of firsts here for me. My first mobile app (React-native/Expo) and my first attempt at creating a SaaS. It's a different approach, and I feel a bit more pressured to do more marketing. Which means more research in a field I'm somewhat less familiar with. But that's what makes it a fun, new experiment!

If nothing else, I’m building this for myself as I recently started learning to play the ukulele and was looking for ways to track my own progress.

You can follow along on X.

Note: The revenue indication is a average of total funds received for all open-source work, grants, and retroactive funding. It doesn't include regular contracting work.