MeritForge Join as a Founding Org

Open-source Git hosting · Built on Forgejo · Hosted on Ourcld

The Git forge that turns your hosting bill into paychecks for the people who write the code.

MeritForge is open-source Git hosting that pays its contributors. A published 15–25% of gross profit goes into contributor reward pools. Payouts are scored only from work that someone else has checked, and every payout is recorded on a public ledger.

Join as a Founding Org Read how scoring works
  • No crypto token: payouts are in fiat
  • Rewards reviewed merges, not lines of code
  • The pool formula is public, and the floor is never cut silently
ledger / example-org/libwidget / epoch 2026-09
ContributorCredStatus
Bob core dev24.4%paid
Rae reviewer23.5%paid
Tom triager14.1%paid
Nina new account5.7%cool-down
pr-farmer1.4%held: review

The farming account had 27.5% of naive points but only 1.4% of Cred once unreviewed and trivial work was filtered out.

Fictional example output from the open-source reference scorer (credrank.py). Not real people or payouts.

How it works

Three steps from git push to payout

  1. Host your code on a real forge

    MeritForge is a full Git platform built on Forgejo, with repositories, pull requests, issues, CI, package registries and wikis. You can use the hosted service, or self-host it for free.

  2. Checked work earns Cred

    Contributions build a contribution graph. A merged PR with an independent review is the moment Cred is created. Reviews, validated issues, triage and releases add to it.

  3. Get paid every month

    Each month the pool is split by Cred. The results are published for a 7-day appeal window, and then paid out in fiat through Stripe Connect.

Where the money goes

Customers pay for hosting. A fixed share goes to contributors.

Platform Reward Pool

P = s × (revenue − hosting/CI COGS − payment fees)
s ∈ [15%, 25%]

The share s is published as a floor. Raising it takes effect right away. Lowering it needs at least a quarter's public notice, and it can never go below the published floor.

Project treasuries

The global pool is split across eligible projects. Each project's share is based on its validated work, with the square root taken so that the largest projects don't dominate, and each project has a cap.

Sponsorships, bounties and org stipends are added on top of the pool and routed to specific projects. Money that nobody can receive rolls over to next month. It never flows back to MeritForge.

Fiat payouts

Payouts are made monthly through Stripe Connect, with KYC and tax handled by partners. Amounts under the minimum payout threshold accrue until they reach it. 20% of each payout is held back for 60 days as a clawback window.

There is no token. Stablecoins may be an optional payout method later.

Fair scoring & anti-gaming

Rewards real impact, not activity

Scoring is inspired by SourceCred's CredRank. Cred is created where work has been checked by someone else and then flows along the contribution graph. It is a non-transferable score for each project, and anyone can inspect it. Because payouts are in real money from day one, the defences against gaming are built into how Cred is created, not left to someone noticing.

What earns Cred

  • Reviewed merges. A PR gets full weight only when an independent, trusted reviewer approves it.
  • Reviews. These are the checks that everything else depends on.
  • Validated issues and triage. Invalid, duplicate and spam issues earn nothing, and triagers earn for closing them.
  • Releases published by trusted contributors.
  • Initiatives approved by a maintainer, for work the forge can't see (for example, security disclosures or mentoring). These are capped.

What doesn't

  • Lines of code, commit counts and how often you push
  • Stars, forks and followers
  • Burning CI minutes
  • Comment floods, reaction spam and self-reviews

Anti-gaming rules

Trust levels
Only trusted accounts can approve merges. New accounts' actions carry no weight.
60-day cool-down
Payouts to new accounts are held in escrow, not forfeited. This is fair to real newcomers and costly for sock puppets.
35% per-person cap
No one can take more than 35% of a project's treasury in an epoch. The excess is redistributed to others.
Trivial-PR damping
Whitespace and typo PRs count at ×0.25, and only the first two per author per epoch count.
Flags & holds
Signals such as PR farming, too few reviews or reaction rings trigger a human review. Two serious flags hold the payout while it is reviewed.
Appeals & write-ups
Anyone can appeal a hold or exclusion. When farming is confirmed, we publish an incident write-up without identifying the person.

For maintainers and orgs

Maintainers stay in control. Orgs fund the open source they depend on.

For maintainers

  • You can tune what counts, scaling any weight between 0.5× and 2× of the platform default. Changes take effect from the next epoch.
  • You can exclude reverted, plagiarised or spam work. You must give a reason, and the exclusion is logged publicly.
  • You can credit off-platform work through initiatives, and promote known experts to trusted early.
  • Maintainers are eligible for payouts and usually earn the most. Anything that benefits the maintainer taking the action needs a co-sign from someone else.

For organisations

  • Private repos, teams and CI. SSO, audit logs and dedicated instances are available on paid plans.
  • Your subscription grows the contributor pool, so paying for hosting funds open source.
  • You can route extra money to your dependencies as stipends, helped by scanning your lockfiles.
  • Private repos are not scored by default. If you opt in, private work feeds only an internal pool that your org funds.

Transparency

Transparency is a feature. The ledger is public from the first dollar.

The ledger is append-only and hash-chained. Each entry carries the previous entry's hash, and the latest hash is published every epoch. Monthly snapshots are also exported as static files, and the read API is public (JSON and CSV).

Our north-star metricMoney paid to contributors each monthIt will be published every month, next to the pool formula.

  • Pool math: revenue, hosting/CI costs, payment fees, gross profit, share % and pool size
  • Treasury inflows for each project: global allocation, stipends, bounties, sponsorships and rollovers
  • Results for each epoch: each contributor's handle, Cred, share, allocation and status
  • Every override, initiative, attribution and trust grant, with who made it and why
  • Incident write-ups and appeal outcomes
  • Reproducibility bundles for public projects, so anyone can re-run the open-source scorer and check the result

The ledger never publishes code, diffs, comment or review text, legal names, emails, KYC data or payout details. Contributors can choose a stable pseudonym to show next to their public amounts.

FAQ

Questions, answered honestly

Is MeritForge open source?

Yes. MeritForge is built on Forgejo, which is community-governed and lightweight, and the core is open. Self-hosting is free. The hosted service adds convenience, reliability, managed rewards and compliance.

Is there a crypto token?

No. Cred is a number in a database and can't be bought, sold or transferred. Payouts are in fiat through Stripe Connect. Stablecoins may be added later as an optional way to get paid.

Who gets paid?

Active contributors on public projects, and on private projects whose orgs opt in. That includes authors, reviewers, triagers and maintainers. MeritForge founders and staff are excluded from pool payouts.

How much will I earn?

It depends on how much gross profit the platform makes and how much Cred you earn. The pool grows as the platform grows. At first the pool will be small, so we say that plainly, and the minimum payout lets small amounts accrue until they're worth sending.

Can't people just game it?

Some people will try. Cred is only created when trusted people review and merge work, and there are caps, cool-downs, holdbacks, human-reviewed flags and appeals. When farming is confirmed, we publish an incident write-up.

Is my private code safe?

Yes. Private repos aren't scored unless your org opts in. The ledger never publishes code, diffs or text. It shows only amounts and statuses.

Where is it hosted?

On Ourcld, a distributed hosting platform. Git and database data live in Postgres and S3-compatible storage.

What is a Founding Org?

One of a small group of early organisations that help shape the roadmap and fund the first reward pools. Pilot payouts start small and are run carefully before anything is fully automated.

Founding Orgs

Join as a Founding Org

Founding Orgs are early organisations that help shape the roadmap and fund the first reward pools.

Founding Org spots open soon.

We're getting ready to onboard a small number of Founding Orgs and pilot projects before a public launch. Check back here for details.