The Keep team is thrilled to have Spencer Noon of DTC Capital on board as the judge for month two of Playing for Keeps. As the month rolls on, Spencer is sharing some insights on what he’s looking for from participants. Those who are Playing for Keeps should take note, since at the end of the month he will award up to 2 million KEEP for the work he deems most impressive.

“I’m particularly interested in contributions focused on understanding the health of the Keep Network — specifically, on analytics tools,” says Spencer. He offers the following suggestions for the sorts of projects that he has an eye out for:

• Using Graph Network to create a uniswap.info for KEEP
• A Dune Analytics dashboard for tracking the overall health of the Keep Network
• Analytics tools such as block explorers
• A Twitter bot for new TBTC mintings or redemptions
• Tools for keeping track of where TBTC stands in a broader DeFi context

June has already seen a number of strong contributions to Playing for Keeps, particularly around ECDSA client staking. Projects submitted so far include independent tooling that makes the stakedrop easier to use for less technical participants as well as a jаvascript library for tBTC signers to manage liquidations. Others have stepped up to teach people to stake, volunteer as moderators, and translate tBTC into languages including Korean and Mandarin. One person has even started to work on a “tBTC turbo minter” that will allow people to “insta-mint”. Join chat.keep.network to if you’re interested in helping with any of these projects and the opportunity to win KEEP.

“I’ve been very impressed by the submissions we’ve seen already this month,” Spencer continues. “As an enthusiastic supporter of Keep and tBTC, I encourage people to continue working along these lines in addition to building analytics tools.”

Finally, Spencer is calling on community members to become contributors to “Our Network,” a free crypto analytics newsletter that reaches almost 2,500 crypto investors per week, on behalf of Keep.

Spencer will announce his prizes, and the awarding of up to 2 million KEEP, on July 7th.

Building on May’s momentum

June’s activity builds on the strong contributions we saw in May. Month one of Playing for Keeps saw 1,000,000 KEEP awarded to contributors by our first judge, Cosmos’s Zaki Manian. The top winner is Danil Ushakov for contributions around hardware experimentation, github PRs, and bug reports. Five other winners each won 100,000 KEEP for contributions focused on issues including technical requests and hardware experimentation. In total, 54 contributors were awarded 1,000 KEEP or more last month.

How do you “Play for Keeps”?

Join our Discord: In order to qualify your submission for Playing for Keeps prizes, you must join our Discord server and give us a quick overview of who you are in the introduction message. We want to get to know everyone and make sure we don’t miss any submissions, so make sure you join the Discord.

Submit a Play for Keeps entry message in #introduce-yourself which includes:

• A name by which to address you in the channel
• Why you’re interested in Keep or tBTC
• What you are submitting for Playing for Keeps prizes — This can be an idea if you aren’t ready with a fully formed idea!
• If you’ve already produced something you want to submit as an entry

More details about entry requirements are available here.

tBTC stakedrop has begun

On June 8, tBTC’s stakedrop officially kicked off with a public Crowdcast event. The livestream included a keynote from project lead Matt Luongo, a walkthrough, and an overview of next steps. If you were unable to attend — or simply want to see it again — the Crowdcast is available to re-watch here.

Over the coming weeks there will be additional updates as the stakedrop progresses, including the release of the tBTC dashboard. Ultimately, the stakedrop will let ETH holders earn KEEP by proving their ability to secure the Keep network. tBTC, which lets people safely earn with their Bitcoin, is the first app built atop the Keep Network. Anyone can deposit their BTC to take full advantage of Ethereum, and anyone with the capital and know-how will be able to earn fees staking and supporting the bridge.

Follow the Keep #tbtc channel on Discord for more updates on Playing for Keeps and the tBTC stakedrop.