# Learn about Proof of Contribution

Proof of Contribution is the novel consensus mechanism of the ***tea*** Protocol designed to quantify the impact of all projects across all open-source ecosystems. Proof of Contribution assigns a dynamic score, referred to as a project’s **teaRank**, based on each open-source project’s impact on the broader open-source ecosystem over time.

This approach supports core software, not just the visible application layer that usually gets the most attention. It allows every dependency involved in a project, from top to bottom, to receive recognition for its contribution.

## Chai System Overview

Chai is the *tea* Protocol's Proof of Contribution (PoC) system. It leverages a network/page-rank-style algorithm to evaluate the impact of dependencies within the larger open-source ecosystem. By employing this method, Chai attempts to achieve sybil resistance as a key principle, ensuring that the contributions are fairly attributed across projects, and spam within the network is not rewarded.

For further information and to contribute, you can access the Chai system repository on GitHub at [teaxyz/chai](https://github.com/teaxyz/chai). We welcome your participation to help enhance the robustness and effectiveness of the system. Our goal for Chai is for it become an indispensable tool for the evaluation of open-source, with far-reaching utility we haven't begun to imagine.

By leveraging the open-source Chai, and with tea Network's built-in GPG capabilities, we hope to continue to build upon the standard bases of open-source while creating infrastructure that is distributed, open, familiar, extensible, and useful to developers everywhere.


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