4 million KEEP has been awarded in July and August so far as part of Playing for Keeps, which lets people learn to stake and win KEEP tokens by contributing to the community. The latest awards bring the total awarded to 7 million KEEP since the competition began in May.

July’s judge was Viktor Bunin of Bison Trails, who awarded prizes ranging from 5,000 to 150,000 KEEP.

Viktor’s Top Picks for the month were SunTzu#1022 for his work on subgraphs and the Keep explorer; Tibike#7780 for very similar subgraph work and his own excellent explorer (see on github); and ajc#3729, whose use of Kubernetes, Helm Charts, Prometheus and Grafana was music to Viktor’s ears. We encourage Keep enthusiasts to use his guide to deploy and manage their own infrastructure.

Responsive KEEP Explorer Website, by Tibike#7780

Each of Viktor’s Top Picks was awarded a prize of 150,000 KEEP.

Additionally, 10 runners-up were each awarded 100,000 KEEP: dice#4405, daniellmesquita.eth#2026, Gregory#6997, StateLayer#5254, evandro.saturnino#9833, 8ouncy#1675, Crypto Investor#3523, tuba#4128, daramir#1305, and Denis#6284. Some of their projects included:

• a tBTC Cheat Sheet
• a learning Watson/Discord community frankenbot
• an onboarding guide with UI
• a tBTC/TornadoCash relayer
• various Telegram monitor and alert bots
• guides for monitoring unbonded ETH
• design contributions
• pull requests
• a very cool quest that we will be using as a community puzzle for the end of August!

Mobile Prototype for KEEP Staking, by 8ouncy#1675

Keepor, a Keep Network chatbot, by evandro.saturnino#9833

Many submissions were also awarded bonuses — a new feature of this round of judging — including Piotr’s Gold Star Operator List and Liz’s Design Bonus, which ranged from 5,000 to 25,000 KEEP. Overall, July and August have seen over 350 new entries, with over 150 prizes awarded totaling 4 million KEEP. We are also thrilled to have 11 new mainnet KEEP Stakers (staking 90,000+ KEEP).

“This month’s submissions to Playing for Keep were truly exceptional and I was especially delighted to see the fantastic infrastructure, tooling, monitoring, alerting, and other technical contributions,” says Viktor. “Bison Trails is proud to support the Keep community and KEEP token holders in building a thriving ecosystem and secure protocol.”

The latest awards come on the heels of the combined 3 million KEEP already awarded by Cosmos’s Zaki Manian and DTC’s Spencer Noon. In June, the Noon Prize and 200,000 KEEP went to Keep Discord user itzler#2708 for their key contributions to the Keep and tBTC Dune dashboard. May’s top award, the Zaki Prize, and 110,000 KEEP went to Danil Ushakov for contributions around hardware experimentation, github PRs, and bug reports. May and June saw hundreds of other entries awarded prizes from 5,000 to 100,000 KEEP.

A summary of all PFK winners can be found at this excellent page, which was created by community member Gregory#6997!

Matt’s Two-Week August Sprint

Keep CEO Matt Luongo will be judging a two-week sprint for the rest of August, before September brings us another eminent guest judge. Examples of the types of projects Matt will be looking for include:

• DeFi integration projects
• Pooled KEEP operators that let small KEEP holders pool and run a node
• A random beacon app for folks to request new entries
• A site to take place in tBTC liquidation auctions using tbtc.js (here is a good example using a bot)
• A new privacy feature that uses Keep or tBTC
• Thought experiments on what could be built using some of the components — share your original thoughts about Keep in a blog or something similar
• A community bridge! Build an onboarding guide that compares and contrasts similarities between projects. One example might be comparing running a Cosmos validator and Keep ECDSA node.

We also will be running a short term quest for KEEP prizes in collaboration with dice#4405, one of our Playing for Keeps winners this month. Stay tuned in our Discord server for info as it leaks out, and watch for some upcoming Gitcoin Grants for KEEP, which will outline some of the bigger projects we’d like to see come together.

Playing for Keeps Accelerates into September

Playing for Keeps is only accelerating as we move into September — and anyone can join in. Millions more KEEP will be awarded to talented developers in the coming months! Join the Discord to enter and win KEEP.

As the results so far show, our talented supporters are contributing in ways that make a real difference to the Keep Network and our expanding community. And we want anyone who makes a positive difference to the growth of Keep to flourish with the entire project.

We’re offering rewards that reflect the value of these contributions. Plus, Playing for Keeps is a way to get involved in one of the most exciting blockchain projects currently underway at the ground floor. When you Play for Keeps, you can gain visibility and recognition in the space as key contributors to this exciting project.

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.

The Keep Stakedrop is Coming Soon

Alongside Playing for Keeps, the stakedrop period will offer the community another way to earn KEEP. 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.

Get involved: join the Keep #tbtc channel on Discord to Play for Keeps!