Help us create a logo for Vac – the R&D initiative for secure, private messaging protocols
Over $500 up for grabs and the opportunity to create the official logo for Vac! The design competition will take place via Bounties Network from today September 10th until Friday September 23rd.
Building new protocols for private, secure, peer-to-peer messaging is tough. Extremely tough! Researching the existing landscape of secure protocols to figure out strengths and weaknesses. Architecting a modular stack that suits the needs of client developers around the world. Testing the work. Breaking down the work. And starting from scratch…..like we said, this is hard.
Researchers Oskar Thorén and Dean Eigenmann, who kicked off this initiative in January, are super talented, smart researchers and protocol implementers. But guess what they are not. You guessed it ...brand designers with a special talent for creating beautiful, relevant, clever logos for the complex work they are doing (no offense Oskar and Dean).
That’s why we need your help to come up with a logo that gives Vac a memorable look and feel that speaks to the work itself.
Vac is a research initiative created to build a modular peer-to-peer messaging stack, with a focus on secure messaging. Vac is being designed for client developers (not only Status and not only blockchain devs) to provide the highest level of privacy and security for their users.
- Full Messaging Stack - Concerned with all layers in the stack including underlying transports, p2p overlays and routing, initial trust establishment, and semantics for things like group chat.
- Modular System - Provide options at each layer in the stack, instead of having a tightly coupled set of protocols. Allowing developers to choose what they use and ensure they know each choice comes with different trade-offs.
- Peer-to-peer - The protocols we work on are pure p2p, and aim to minimize centralization. This too is in opposition to many initiatives in the secure messaging space.
- All Forms of Messaging - This includes both human to human communication, as well as machine to machine communication. Texting, data transfer, financial transactions, state channels and more.
- Security, Privacy, Censorship Resistance - Assumes the basics such as end-to-end encryption, forward secrecy, avoiding MITM-attacks. Vac also places a premium on privacy and censorship resistance from port blocking, traffic analysis, and similar.
Vāc. Is a Vedic goddess of speech. It also hints at being a vaccine.
Vac is designed to enable private, secure, censorship resistant messaging. In today’s world, we rely on third party intermediaries and client server models for our communication. This leaves us vulnerable to meta data leakage, censorship, and general manipulation. Vac is being built to remove this reliance.
We build based on:
- Privacy
- Security
- Censorship Resistance
We are looking for a logo that embodies all that Vac is. Something that captures the technical nature of the work. Something that speaks to the goals of the project. And certainly something that truly embodies the core values and principles - Privacy, Security, Censorship Resistance.
WHO - if you’re a person, then you qualify to participate in the competition
WHAT - A Logo Design Competition split up into 2 Phases:
- Phase 1 - Create a logo design that represents Vac, and the principles. Share and submit your designs via Bounties Network.
- Phase 2 - We will determine a shortlist of the top 5 designs using the Status Voting DApp. Finally, based on the top 5 community voted designs, Vac project leads Oskar and Dean will select their favorite as the winner.
The winning design will be the official logo, serve as the basis of the overall brand, and be prominently featured on our new website and social channels!
- All submissions will receive $5 SNT
- The top 5 finalists (determined by the SNT Voting DApp) will receive $20 SNT
- The winning design will receive $400 DAI
WHERE - Submit all your designs on Bounties Network here
WHEN - The entire competition will last through these dates – September 10th to September 23rd. Phase 1 kicks off right now :)
- Phase 1 - Today, September 10th, until a hard stop at 5pm CEST on Friday September 20th. We will then get all of the submissions from Bounties Network into the SNT Voting DApp.
- Phase 2 The Vote - Monday, September 30th voting begins and the top 5 winners are announced. After the vote, Oskar and Dean will select their favorite design and the winner will be selected.
WHY - Because Vac is an important initiative and it needs a look. The team is comprised of highly talented researchers ...not designers and we need your help :)
Project and submission requirements can be found on Bounties Network here.
We are looking forward to seeing what the community can come up with. Other than the goals of the project, our principles, and the name, Vac does not have any branding. Feel free to use colors, styles, and elements of your choice. Just be mindful that this will be used on all official channels.