Meet the Dapp Market: A Twist On Open Source Is Winning Developers

This push comes at a time when many open-source developers are lamenting the struggles of their passion, as a Medium article called "A Bitter Guide To Open Source" makes its rounds.

None of these are perfect options, so Gitcoin, launched in September 2017, aims to create a marketplace whereby open-source developers - particularly those that focus on ethereum and the decentralized applications or "Dapps" that run on top of it - can get compensated for whatever work they want to do.

Gitcoin, a closely allied platform to Bounties Network, and others aim to build that "Rational market" by establishing marketplaces where developers get paid in crypto.

Looking ahead, Gitcoin and other dapp developer marketplaces could change that discussion even further by giving developers some incentive for improving today's dapps or building new ones that users want.

In all, developers total have completed 350 bounties on the platform, worth close to $47,000.

Bounties Network has seen 263 users complete bounties worth $97,000, the project's founder Mark Beylin told CoinDesk.

Gitcoin, for the time being, is concentrating on open-source software, whereas Bounties Network - while most of its bounties are still for code fixes - also aims to attract work such as website design and translation.

The traditional platforms that do offer marketplaces of work from different institutions and projects, like Bountysource and Upwork, are generally filled with "Noise," Market Protocol CTO Phil Elsasser, who posts bounties to Gitcoin, told CoinDesk.

"We had tried things like Upwork early on, but it was very hard to find solid developers and also to screen through the massive amount of noise on the platform," he said, noting that developers on Gitcoin are easy to come by and tend to be of a higher caliber.

Still, Elsasser's comment hints at one of the hurdles faced by developers on decentralized marketplaces today - that these sites continue to be heavy on developers but light on teams posting bounties.