If you've been living under a rock, you may not know that we recently raised over half a million dollars to build a new protocol layer on top of bitcoin. The new layer is NOT an alt-chain currency - it's built right on top of bitcoin, and is called "MasterCoin" (not to be confused with the alt-chain currency of the same name). You can read all about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.0

A few days ago, I pre-announced that we would be doing a major coding contest, with total prizes adding up to $25000 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg3065262#msg3065262). The goals of the contest are to spur development on the MasterCoin protocol layer, and to hopefully find at least one person to be our first full-time hire.

This thread is devoted to that contest. Following are the official rules, subject to change if deemed necessary:

• ALL serious entries will win a prize (although some prizes may be very small)
• Prize money will be divvied up by myself, with input from the community and the board of the MasterCoin Foundation, based primarily on how useful and valuable your code is to the success of our protocol layer
• In addition to the overall impact and value of your code, other important things will be taken under consideration:
  
  • How often you post updates in this thread or the main project thread. Ideally, you should post what you plan to do, and then post extremely frequent updates as you make progress.
  • Ease of use and testability. If you just dump some source code on me at the end of the contest with a bunch of grandiose claims, you may not get much. Ideally, you should be posting demos, screenshots, and/or set up a website demonstrating your code.
  • Collaboration. If you are helping other people working on MasterCoin projects, that will weigh favorably on how much you win. If you release your source code early and other people build on it, that will weigh even more favorably.
  • Breaking new ground, or being redundant. Doing something new is awesome, but you will NOT be penalized for implementing the same thing as someone else. We need redundancy for cross-checking. We have the following feature needs:
    
    • Better ways to store (and then retrieve) MasterCoin data. Gavin has told us there are multiple better ways, and there has been some discussion of how to do it on this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=284178.0
    • Reusable libraries for parsing MasterCoin transactions in the block chain, and for generating them
    • PC wallets for MasterCoin
    • Web wallets for MasterCoin
    • Implementing advanced features, as defined in the spec. (But please don't implement new features using the existing "data address" method of storing data in the block chain - we need to look for a better way to store our data first)
• Only open-source projects will be considered for a prize. You must release your source code before the end of the contest to be eligible.
• Getting the biggest prize in this contest does NOT guarantee you a job, but having some kind of entry in this contest will help your chances a lot.
• Contest ends October 15th, 2013, with prizes paid out once the dust settles.
• Prizes will total $25000 USD, payable in bitcoins according to the exchange rate at that time.
• Contestants may elect to take some or all of their prize money in MasterCoins if desired. (We'll purchase them on the open market for you, using the bitcoins we would have paid you)

You should be aware that multiple projects eligible for entry into this contest are already started, and have made amazing progress. When I first contemplated a $25000 payout, it seemed like a huge sum, but given how many people are enthusiastically working on MasterCoin projects, you may be disappointed with the prize you get for your efforts. There is a lot of amazing work going forward extremely rapidly, as you can see on the project thread. By the end of the contest, I doubt that anybody's prize will be "fair" for the effort they put in. We'll have to just hope that it is a nice bonus for working on a fun project.

I'll update this post soon with a link to a job description of the full-time job we will be hoping to fill, hopefully we'll fill the position with someone who enters this contest.