As 2024 begins, it’s an ideal time to reflect on what’s happened in the Radworks ecosystem. It was a year chock full of positive change & momentum in its journey to build a freer internet. Here are a few highlights of the progress made and what’s on the horizon for 2024.

The Birth and Definition of Radworks

Back in July, Radworks was announced as the community-governed network behind Radicle & Drips. The creation of Radworks reflected a reorganization of the (then) Radicle community and ecosystem in response to the evolution of the “Radicle” product into two separate products -- Radicle, a peer-to-peer network for code collaboration, and Drips, a decentralized toolkit for funding public goods.

This reorganization allowed us to:

1. Set up products for success. Through delineation and definition, both products orgs now have the space to execute on their own paths to adoption & product-market fit.

2. Clarify brand(s) internally & externally. Housing all ecosystem activities under one brand (“Radicle”) was causing confusion for stakeholders, including contributors, community members, and prospective users. By separating the brand into distinct parts (Radicle, Drips, and Radworks), each entity was given the opportunity to shape its own market voice and enabled stakeholders to participate and contribute with less friction.

3. Define the purpose, role, and function of the Radworks community. By naming the network, the roles and responsibilities of the Radworks treasury, community & governance system are more clearly defined.

Radworks facilitates the governance and operations necessary to achieve two primary aims:

1. Stewarding & deploying the treasury

2. Supporting the development of Radicle & Drips

Within the Radworks ecosystem, the Radicle Org maintains core development of the Radicle stack (find the team on Zulip!), while the Drips Org maintains core development of the Drips protocol & app (find the team on Discord!).

In addition, Radworks funds the work of the Better Internet Foundation, whose purpose is to support the development of resilient and humane software infrastructures. The Foundation and its contributors drive activities in 2024 that will serve three roles:

1. A Protector: The Foundation supports legal strategy, ensures operational and financial health, and promotes transparency within the Radworks ecosystem.

2. A Nurturer: The Foundation incubates proposals and research to mature Radworks’ decentralized governance system, while also maintaining documentation, improving governance processes, and establishing best practices for the ecosystem.

3. An Advocate: The Foundation advocates for resilient and humane software infrastructures, building networks of individuals, initiatives, and organizations that can educate and push (technical and cultural) adoption of these technologies.

Finally, Radworks funds the Radworks Grants Org, a program dedicated to funding third-party developers working in three key areas:

1. Integrations & tooling (IT) specific to Radworks technologies

2. Alternative interfaces for Radworks’ funded protocols

3. Community initiatives driving activities in line with the Radworks purpose

For more background and detail, learn more about Radworks and how we work.

Key Milestones Across the Radworks Orgs in 2023

Radicle

In 2023, the Radicle team moved all repositories and development from Gitub to the Radicle product. Since their migration, they’ve been exclusively using Radicle to collaborate and develop the Radicle product, and have shared and merged hundreds of patches through the Radicle network.

Key features developments include:

1. Issue and patch management

2. Public and private repository support

3. Node lifecycle management

4. Many other features across both the CLI and web interfaces!

For more information on what’s been launched, see this update from the team.

Learn more:

• New Radicle website and web client

• How Radicle is dogfooding

• Chat with Radicle on Zulip

• Follow Radicle on X

Drips

The biggest achievement in 2023 was the launch of Drips v2, which came with a shiny new website and app. Drips v2 included two huge new features — “continuous [software] dependency funding” and “awesome lists” — plus many important updates to the core experience of streaming, splitting, and claiming funds for open source software projects.

In addition, the Drips team onboarded three large-scale organizations to Drips: Octant, Funding The Commons, and Radworks. With these organizations using Drips, there is now over $1.5m streaming through the Drips protocol annually, with much more to come in 2024.

Learn more:

• Check out the new Drips website and app

• Read more about Dependency Funding with Drips

• Chat with Drips on Discord

• Follow Drips on X

Radworks

Within Radworks, 2023 was marked by completing its “transition to the DAO” and evolving the “RadicleDAO” into what is now call Radworks.

All core work within the Radworks ecosystem is now coordinated and funded by the Radworks treasury via the new organizational framework, and the community now operates under a collectively-defined purpose to “fund new, resilient, permissionless technologies to cultivate internet freedom”. Since then, Radworks has:

• Committed $1M in continuous funding to its critical dependencies.

• Funded eight ecosystem grants including package managers and IDE plugins and extensions for Radicle, as well as a community research report.

• Assessed & reduced risk by improving Radworks’ social & technical governance systems, analyzing current attack vectors, and pinpointing areas of centralization that impact the ecosystem’s resilience.

• Scoped and defined Radworks’ relationship with each of its Orgs, resulting in the MOUs with Radicle and Drips.

Learn more:

• Check out the new Radworks website, docs hub, and community forum

• Read more about how Radworks' purposes was defined

• Chat with Radworks on Discord

• Follow Radworks on X

2024: A Look Ahead

Looking ahead into 2024, the Better Internet Foundation’s newly formed Strategy Committee will shepherd key initiatives and community proposals that enable Radworks to fund new, resilient, permissionless technologies, achieve self-sustainability, and steward mission-aligned governance.

The Strategy Committee plans to research and propose an in-depth sustainability model, new treasury management strategies, and outline community-led initiatives to improve ecosystem resilience.

Finally, there are two key milestones in the product orgs:

1. Radicle 1.0 is set to release in Q1 2024 🥳Stay up to date by following Radicle on X.

2. Drips continues to onboard leading orgs that want to fund their software dependencies. Here’s how to get in touch with the team.

As 2023 comes to a close and 2024 begins, the Radworks community is grateful for your continued support of its technologies and a shared mission of a free and open internet for all. 🌱