Blockstack announces USD $25,000 bounty for authentication integration in Rocket.Chat

Announcements
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Blockstack is collaborating with Rocket.Chat to build the highly secured, on-premise administered, next generation messaging platform for cryptocurrency communities.

We would like to call our community’s attention to the USD $25,000 bounty currently being offered for an integration of Blockstack’s identity system with Rocket.Chat.

This bounty deadline is February 16, 2018.

You can find information about the Blockstack authentication system here:

http://blockstack.github.io/blockstack.js/

You can register for this bounty here:

To help you with your development efforts, architects and core team members from Blockstack and Rocket.Chat will be available here in these forums, as well as on https://open.rocket.chat to answer any related question.

In early February, both Blockstack and Rocket.Chat will be hosting additional “office hours” to answer any questions and provide consultation to registered teams.

This is a fantastic opportunity to contribute to the open source community, hack some Rocket.Chat code, and win a handsome reward.

$1000.00 PREVIEW BONUS ADDED

Registered team submitting a preview of their work by Tuesday, January 30th 8PM EST, will be eligible immediately for a $1000.00 reward. The app need not be final submission quality. But should be functioning and decent quality as determined by Blockstack judges. If you’re already working on the project, you are encouraged to submit your work-in-progress to qualify for this bonus.

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Very exciting! Although…

Details

The Blockstack Signature Fund is excited to announce a $25,000 USD bounty to the individual or team that successfully builds an encrypted group messaging application on top of Blockstack that meets the following requirements at a minimum:

  • Must use Blockstack for identity and authentication
  • Must fork either Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, or Riot/Matrix
  • Must be available on both desktop and mobile
  • Must be able to handle communities of 10,000+ users
  • Must not reuse a submission for the Encrypted & Decentralized P2P Messaging Bounty

This does seem like a lot of work to get done within the time span of just one month. Especially with the encryption requirement rather casually thrown in there. Am I missing something here?

I’m very happy to see that they are trying to collaborate with existing platforms though, that’s very promising.

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Definitely making a big push for collaboration, and thank you for the question!

For the purpose of this bounty, the existing encryption capability of Rocket.Chat (dm’s only) is acceptable. Full end to end encryption is being solved by the Rocket.Chat team who has been working on release for the near future as part of Phase 1 of the Crypto project.

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Just saying hello to mention I’m working on this and making progress (somewhat slow).

Firstly, there was a dependency issue preventing Blockstack.js working in Meteor, which I’ve resolved and submitted a fix for.

The next major issue being that Blockstack is not OAuth, as I understand it’s a bespoke auth process, yet all the Meteor and Rocket.Chat specific handlers (and documentation) are for OAuth providers.

So, I’m at a crossroad. I need to either coerce the response to feed it into the OAuth handlers (which may not work), or handle the login manually with more direct methods, which might bypass critical steps in Rocket.Chat’s account handling (and may not work).

By “not work” I mean “have bugs or unforeseen issues in implementation that prevent it from being a viable solution in the period allowed, but would probably be worked out given another couple months”.

If there’s anyone watching in the Rocket.Chat team can point me to another example of integrating a bespoke auth (non-oauth) provider, that would be awesome. Meanwhile, does anyone at Blockstack know of an example of their process being adapted to function as OAuth?

This isn’t my really my area of expertise, so I’m happy to chat to anyone in working through this, at the risk of losing a competitive edge on the bounty, but in the interest of collaboration and just getting the job done.

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Hmm, correction. There are a few custom auth handlers in Rocket.Chat, like Atlassian Crowd, that have been helpful. I’m going with the custom auth package approach. Hopefully in the end this would be a generic package available to all Meteor applications, wrapped in another package specific to Rocket.Chat, e.g. to use the settings interface etc.

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$1000 Early Preview Submission Reward Announced

Registered team submitting a preview of their work by Tuesday, January 30th 8PM EST, will be eligible immediately for a $1000.00 reward. The app need not be final submission quality. But should be functioning and decent quality as determined by Blockstack judges. If you’re already working on the project, you are encouraged to submit your work-in-progress to qualify for this bonus.

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Latest official announcement from Blockstack:

All,

We are beyond excited and wanted to send you a reminder that submissions for the Community Chat bounty[https://www.eventbrite.com/e/signature-bounties-community-messaging-app-registration-41319189809] are due this Friday, February 16th by 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. To submit an application, please go to the following google form[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd1Ueu3qGbLBCGOuR_lEQDwQPGVOlx3iA91ayLfNHVAqrIQIw/viewform].

Only a few weeks ago we awarded teams who were able to submit a proof of concept of their app early. While we were impressed by the submissions, it’s clear that the field is still open.

If there are any resources or support, technical or otherwise, that we can provide in the last few days leading up to the deadline please do not hesitate to let us know.

We are beyond excited to see what you have created, and more so to continue to support as you build the secure, user centric internet of the future.

All the very best,

www.eventbrite.com
Signature Bounties: Community Messaging App
What is the Bounty? $25,000 USD to create a community messaging application on top of Blockstack. Why? It has become clear that Blockstack Slack cannot be the permanent home for community communication. Several features of an open sources, decentralized project make the platform vulnerable to security threats. This is especially true of phishing attacks, as any user can modify their profile to be identical to that of another user. As a result we’re challenging our community to come up with a team messaging application that uses Blockstack authentication for secure login and identity verification. This mutes many of the problems with current platforms such as not being able to confirm a users identity. In addition, Blockstack can enable features previously not possible, now only limited to your creativity as a developer. Timeline - 9:00am EST December 20th, 2017: Global Bounty is announced for $25k USD. - 11:59pm EST February 16th, 2018: Bounty is closed and all projects must be submitted via SUBMISSION FORM - February 21st, 2018: Winning project is announced. Details The Blockstack Signature Fund is excited to announce a $25,000 USD bounty to the individual or team that successfully builds an encrypted group messaging application on top of Blockstack that meets the following requirements at a minimum: Must use Blockstack for identity and authentication Must fork either Rocket.Chat, Mattermost, or Riot/Matrix Must be available on both desktop and mobile Must be able to handle communities of 10,000+ users Must not reuse a submission for the Encrypted & Decentralized P2P Messaging Bounty Members of the community have created a purpose built platform for developers to find other developers or teams to join for the purpose of the bounty. Head on over to devlink.co and sign in with your Blockstack ID. Don’t have Blockstack or a Blockstack ID? Download the browser here. If you have any questions about the bounty, please submit them to our question form and we will get back to you shortly. New to building on Blockstack? Complete the To Do Tutorial. Judging Criteria How thoroughly have the submission requirements been met, completed, or exceeded? Is the application creative, original, and functional? Is the application easy to use? CLICK ON THE GREEN REGISTRATION BUTTON TO BEGIN OFFICIAL PRIZE RULES

docs.google.com
Blockstack Decentralize Communication Bounty Submission
Enter your submitted materials for the group messaging bounty from Blockstack’s Signature Bounties program below:

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Rocket.Chat is also committed to pull out all stops to support any Rocket.Chat entrants for these final days of the Bounty.

Please reach out to us via DM or this forum and tell us what you or your team may need.