Q4 was a strong way to close out 2025 for Drips! We spent time with builders across multiple regions, launched and supported real funding rounds, and introduced new primitives that will shape how ecosystems use Drips going into 2026.

It was a whirlwind and we’re excited to share the highlights with you. Here’s a look at what we worked on this quarter.

🌏 Taking Drips to Asia

In Q4 we took Drips on the road across Asia, visiting Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong alongside Radworks. The focus was on connecting with local developer communities, hosting meetups, demoing workflows, and understanding how teams are funding and maintaining their work today.

Across the four cities we met builders working on open source infrastructure, public goods funding, and long-term ecosystem projects. Some were already familiar with Drips but many were encountering it for the first time.

It was inspiring to see how vibrant and engaged these ecosystems are and where Drips can be useful to these communities. We’ll definitely be back in 2026 with more workshops, talks, and sessions tailored to the region — stay tuned!

🚀 RetroPGF Launch with Filecoin

One of the standout moments of Q4 was the launch of the first end-to-end RetroPGF round on Drips with Filecoin. The round was run entirely through Drips, from applications and evaluation through to on-chain distribution.

This was an important milestone for us. Removing barriers to and simplifying the ways in which funding can reach builders is at the heart of what we do. With the first use of our end-to-end tooling, it showed that RetroPGF rounds can be run in a single, composable system without the need for bespoke tooling or manual payout processes. Great for funders, great for developers.

The round saw strong participation from the Filecoin community, with a wide range of projects taking part. We’re grateful to the Filecoin team for trusting Drips tooling with one of their largest funding rounds to date.

There will be more to come in 2026 — keep your eyes peeled for announcements about FIL RetroPGF Round 4 later this year!

🇦🇷 Devconnect in Buenos Aires IRL

There was more continent hopping for the team as we headed to Buenos Aires for Devconnect and the Ethereum World’s Fair. As always, it was a valuable opportunity to reconnect with teams we’ve worked with before and to meet new builders encountering Drips for the first time.

We participated in a number of events including Funding the Commons, Filecoin Dev Summit, Web3 Privacy Now Congress, and hosted a booth at the main venue. We’re always blown away by how affirming and inspiring these IRL talks, conversations, and connections are.

It was also great to see the Ethereum Foundation Devcon/nect team smash it out of the park once again! Earlier this year the team announced they would be using Drips to support the dependencies they rely on to continue producing world class events. Seeing Drips used in real operational contexts like this continues to be one of the most valuable sources of feedback for us.

Meeting IRL to talk about the challenges of sustainable open source funding is a great reminder of why this work matters! We’ll continue to travel and meet as many of you as possible in 2026 to move these conversations forward. See you in Mumbai!

⚙️ New Superpowers for the Drips Protocol

With a recently passed proposal on the Radworks DAO, the Drips Protocol now has a number of exciting new features.

Our RepoDriver, the smart contract that enables permissionless funding of any public GitHub repository, now also supports funding ORCIDs. ORCIDs are widespread in the scientific community as unique identifiers for people conducting or otherwise participating in research. Additionally, any website can now be funded through RepoDriver. These new fundable identities unlock a number of exciting funding experiments for the future, so stay tuned!

🌊 Drips Wave - Recurring Contribution Cycles

Just before the year closed, we announced Drips Wave — recurring bounty cycles designed to help ecosystems attract developers, keep maintenance moving, and grow their communities. Waves turn contribution opportunities into repeatable, time-bound funding cycles where maintainers nominate issues, contributors compete to fix and merge, and the system tracks impact through automated on-chain distributions.

There’s plenty more info about Drips Wave here and you’ll be hearing about it a lot more as we run regular Waves in the coming months. The first full Wave will begin on January 21st 2026 with the Stellar Development Foundation.

We’re stoked to add another set of tools to enable funding open source devs — we’re confident 2026 is our year to truly be the superapp for funding developers in your ecosystem!

📌 What’s Next?

There’s plenty coming in Q1 and throughout 2026. We’ll continue refining the protocol, supporting more teams running funding rounds on Drips, and spending time with builders across the globe.

If you’d like to stay up to date on what we’re building, you can find us on Discord, X, and Bluesky.

Thanks for following along and here’s to an inspiring Q1!