Hello,

I am the developer of GitSponsors, and you are receiving this email because you participated in our project https://gitsponsors.com and provided your email address.

Over the last few days, we’ve noticed some negative discussions about GitSponsors within the GitHub community. One example can be seen here: https://github.com/dotnet/Nerdbank.GitVersioning/commit/21a83d3e89392c028801f27224105d7569704520.

I’d like to use this opportunity to clarify some things. If, after reading this email, you still believe that GitSponsors is untrustworthy, you can simply remove the badge code. We will automatically sync and remove your records, and this will also be the last email you ever receive from GitSponsors.

First of All, We Are Not a Scam

We have not impersonated GitHub or anyone else. It’s possible that cryptocurrency isn’t something you favor, but that alone isn’t sufficient to categorize us as a scam. Currently, we’ve provided liquidity for GITS — the token we’ve created. As of now, it is priced at 0.00498 USDT on Uniswap, and once you receive your first on-chain airdrop, you can freely exchange it for USDT stablecoins.

However, I understand that some people have expressed concerns about receiving unsolicited emails from us as part of our project’s initial marketing. This was indeed something I initiated — I sent marketing emails to a group of individual developers with open-source projects without prior consent. If this offended you, I sincerely apologize. Upon receiving negative feedback, I immediately ceased sending such emails and will not repeat this approach in the future.

Our GitHub account has also been restricted, which may be GitHub’s response to these marketing emails. As a result, I’ve had to move the whitepaper for GitSponsors to the official website.

When I built GitSponsors, I believed it was an idea that many individual developers would find exciting and worth supporting. However, I underestimated how strongly some developers feel about unsolicited emails. Once again, I apologize to this particular group of developers.

Why Did I Start GitSponsors?

GitHub is home to countless individual open-source creators, and the issue of sponsorship has always been a pressing yet difficult problem to solve. You may recall the news about the creator of Faker.js deleting his open-source project https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rz5rul/marak_creator_of_fakerjs_who_recently_deleted_the/

While GitHub itself offers a Sponsors program, I believe its impact is limited. This is a capitalist world, and support based solely on love and goodwill is rarely sustainable. Unfortunately, individuals willing to give selflessly are always in the minority.

About two weeks ago, I suddenly thought of a potential solution: combining badge ads with sponsorships to create a more balanced exchange. This seemed like a more sustainable and scalable idea (though validation will clearly take time). With this concept in mind, I began researching GitHub-related information.

I discovered that GitHub receives around 1 billion visits daily, many of which involve open-source projects. This traffic is massive. Even just 1% of this traffic could theoretically attract consistent and meaningful advertising sponsorships.

Since badges are dynamic, they can display rotating ad content from sponsors right on the README files of participating open-source projects. The revenue would then be divided — 80% going to creators and 20% to maintain the GitSponsors project itself.

This sounded like a cool idea to me — solving the sponsorship problem for open-source projects would bring a sense of accomplishment far greater than the modest effort I’ve contributed here.

In 1–2 weeks, I built most of the functionality and turned my ideas into reality. However, reaching individual developers to make them aware of this opportunity was a major challenge. As a developer myself, I’m not skilled at marketing, so I turned to ChatGPT for advice. Based on some of this guidance, I collected email addresses of open-source developers and sent marketing emails.

I chose to send these emails because I genuinely believed this was something beneficial to recipients. From my personal perspective, I’d welcome more marketing emails like this, as they aim to tackle real problems for the community rather than merely being spam.

In Summary

Ultimately, this is an experiment. I am committed to maintaining the project’s stability and ensuring payouts for at least the next six months (even if it comes out of my own pocket). If the experiment succeeds, everyone should feel happy about the result. If it fails, the one who loses the most will likely be me.

This world needs change, even if it requires taking an approach that may seem unpolished or brash.

Thank you for your understanding.

2025.01.21