Grants Round 9 Hackathon lead sponsor Ideamarket aims to replace corporate media as the arbiter of public credibility. To help achieve this, Ideamarket offers creators a new income stream without dependence on ads or paywalls.

Think of Ideamarket as “Chainlink for public narratives” — a DeFi lego that can plug into any public square, past or future, to reward users for simply deserving attention — as judged by an audience with skin-in-the-game. The protocol even directs a portion of its trading fees to social media platforms themselves, reducing their dependence on what founder Mike Elias calls “the Fuss Fuel industry.”

How Ideamarket works:

1. Users can list anyone’s social media account on ideamarket.io, as long as it’s not already listed. The first person to list an account gets the first chance to buy it.
2. Users buy account tokens to vote on the attention-worthiness of that account, and sell to revoke their vote.
3. Money spent on tokens is held in compound.finance. Interest generated by token deposits is paid to the owner of the social media account. Listed accounts profit without even owning their own tokens, let alone dumping on their fans.
4. Creators and influencers profit by genuinely earning the trust of their audience, and the community profits by discovering trustworthy accounts early. This means journalism no longer needs paywalls, and the best information can be shared for free.

While the team’s official focus is on the “credibility without corporations” use case, the protocol remains highly extensible, with potential application to DAOs, NFTs, scientific papers, and more. Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White even described how to use Ideamarket to fund activism.

Ideamarket is a Gitcoin success story!

Ideamarket built an “ancient prototype” of their platform through bounties listed on Gitcoin. Here’s CEO Mike Elias’s first bounty from 2 years ago, which bears little resemblance to Ideamarket today:

Check out Ideamarket’s list of bounties below.

Now a lead sponsor for the GR9 Hackathon, Ideamarket is looking for builders to create new capabilities for the platform, including using Ideamarket to fund Gitcoin Grants. Ideamarket is a protocol for “market-curated endowments” — an Ideamarket for Gitcoin grants could enable grantees to attract funding not only from donors, but from speculators as well.

Looking to participate in the GR9 Hackathon?

If you’re interested in earning on Gitcoin, there’s no better time! Take a look at the Ideamarket bounties page for excellent opportunities to participate in the GR9 Hackathon.