Glossary

These are terms frequently used throughout this documentation

Contributors

Individuals who have made meaningful contributions to projects. A contributor should not have already received funding — through Glow or another program — for the specific contribution being put forward.

Glow

A retroactive funding program. Only past contributions are rewarded, ensuring the work has already been done and the community has received value.

Judges

Seasoned program administrators who review all data about a submission and attribute a shirt size. Initially, judges are members of the XRPL Commons team, but over time they will be sourced from existing Scouts, with limits on consecutive Wave participation to ensure fairness and diversity. Typically, 3 Judges evaluate each project, and the combination of evaluations creates the final rewards list.

Kudos

Kudos is a service developed by Lorem Labs. Kudos is a new way of rewarding creation while keeping the best parts of the "free Internet". Kudos creates an attribution economy where end users record those who help them, and then later optionally fund their accounts with a monthly fee which is proportionally distributed to all kudos attributions they generate for that month. Kudos is used under the hood by the Glow platform to reward XRPL ecosystem contributors.

Nominations

A submission made on a contributor's behalf by a Scout. Scouts can nominate contributors for their work in a given Wave, which enables community voting for that specific contribution and project. Several Scouts can nominate the same project, increasing the chance of a higher shirt size. The more support a contribution gathers, the higher it ranks on the Judges' list. (Contributors can also put their work forward themselves — see Submissions.)

Projects

Any product, tool, documentation, or other initiative that delivers meaningful, accessible value to the XRPL ecosystem. These include fully open-source projects such as xrpld, explorers, wallets, and standards proposals, as well as freemium projects offering a substantive, genuinely useful tier to the community at no cost.

Retroactive

Glow is a retroactive funding program. Only past contributions are rewarded, ensuring the work has already been done and the community has received value.

Scouts

Remarkable individuals in the community who are typically visible and known, and who see many projects in the course of their day-to-day. Scouts are entrusted with nominating meaningful contributions in a given Wave. Every Scout can occasionally elect other Scouts. You can view Scouts for a given Wave on the public Scouts page of the corresponding Wave.

Shirt Size

The level of a reward — Small, Medium, or Large — assigned by Judges based on the impact, complexity, and effort of a contribution. See Reward Size for detail.

Submissions

The umbrella term for a contribution put forward for funding, whether nominated by a Scout or submitted directly by the contributor. Both paths follow the same process and are evaluated against the same criteria. Submissions are what Voters vote on and Judges assess.

Votes

XRPL wallet holders cast votes on submissions through the Glow platform. To vote, users must connect their wallet using supported providers like Xaman (formerly XUMM), GemWallet, or Crossmark, then register by signing a minimal 1 drop transaction to verify wallet ownership. This registration enables voting on all submissions in current and future Waves.

A single wallet can cast one vote per submission, which can be changed at any time. Three voting actions are available: upvote (+1), downvote (-1), or remove vote (0). The platform tracks and displays the total community score for each submission, which helps inform judges' evaluations. Submissions with higher vote counts are typically prioritized during the review process.

Wave

A recurring funding round. Submissions are compiled and allocated per Wave, with each Wave typically starting where the previous one ended. The timing of each Wave is announced for that round. (Some technical and internal pages still use "cohort" to refer to the same grouping in the platform's data model.)