[IMPACT]
The smart contracts required for the DAO-NET and the Alternative to Tyranny (A2T) product lines are going to be large, complex and computationally intensive which on the Cardano mainnet is likely to make the transaction fees too expensive for several of the proposed usage cases. The proposed solution to this challenge is a dedicated sidechain shared by these two product lines.
Full implementation of a dedicated sidechain is beyond the capacity of the DAO Coders current small team of 5 individuals and frankly premature at this early stage of the product development cycle however a sidechain is expected to be required within 12 months therefore the design planning should start now.
This proposal is to produce a design document for a shared sidechain used by the DAO-NET and A2T product lines. The design document is to be freely available for community use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.
The challenge states that "Scaling solutions are inherently complex and require significant engineering effort", "Projects will likely take many months of engineering effort to implement viable solutions" and that there will be a requirement for Follow On Funding Rounds.
This proposed solution is for the first step in the complex and significant engineering effort in the challenge identified area of sidechain development. By making this engineering research publicly available, the entire community benefits thus helping increase scalability in multiple projects
The completed documentation will be shared on the DAO Coders website, Github and communicated in Town Halls.
The main risk involves finding a qualified sidechain design engineer willing to perform open source work at a rate that is likely to be funded under Project Catalyst, given the specialized skill set. To mitigate this risk, DAO Coders will reach out to IOG and the Cardano Foundation for possible recruiting assistance.
DAO Coders has several strategies to address the potential cost risks:
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By having multiple modular projects in each funding round there is a required overlap of funding to make each project functional on a stand-alone basis however as more projects are funded then the overlap can be used to cover potential shortfalls
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DAO Coders intends to launch a Mission Driven Stake Pool in May to help fund its operations
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Longer term solutions include a merchandising campaign (see the Merchandise Store project) and the DAO-NET: Development Funder project as additional revenue streams.
[FEASIBILITY]
May 2022
- Recruit Sidechain Design Engineer
June 2022
- Define sidechain requirements
July 2022
- Create sidechain design documentation
August 2022
- Present sidechain design document in After Town Hall and make documentation publicly available
Sidechain Design Engineer ($5,000/month): $20,000
Lead Developer ($1000/month): $4,000
Product Manager ($500/month): $2,000
Total: $26,000
<u>Skills Required</u>
Product Manager
- have a holistic understanding of the DAO-NET suite of proposals
- experienced in managing multidisciplinary teams in up to a dozen projects simultaneously
- ability to articulate and fluently translate between business and technical requirements
- able to manage large complex budgets
- experienced in hiring consultants and third party contract negotiations
Lead Developer
- Full stack developer experience
- Plutus development, especially algorithmic DAO smart contract primitive
- Define technical requirements
- Integrate multiple software components into a larger solution
Sidechain Design Engineer
- Experience designing a Cardano sidechain
<u>Team</u>
Product Manager: Dwayne Collard - 20 years+ IT Consultant, Solutions Analyst, IT Manager, Veteran Community Advisor <https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwayne-collard/>
Lead Developer: Jude Ben - 9 years+ Software Development , Plutus Smart Contract Development , Cloud and Infrastructure Engineer <https://www.linkedin.com/in/judeebene/>
Sidechain Design Engineer: Contractor to be determined.
[AUDITABILITY]
Development progress will be tracked using an agile methodology and weekly team meetings. Specific quantitative indicators to be tracked will be Total Number of Pull requests in Github, Total Numbers of Github commits and the Total Number of Errors Fixed.
Success Criteria
- A design document that includes:
- Requirements for the DAO-NET & A2T Sidechain
- Design for the DAO-NET & A2T Sidechain
- Implementation steps for the DAO-NET & A2T Sidechain
- An After Town Hall presentation of the design document
- Design document made publicly available through websites
This proposal is a member of the DAO-NET suite of proposals originally submitted in Fund 7 and continued in Fund 8. This proposal is a successor to the DAO-NET: SPO DAO proposal in Fund 7 however the Fund 7 proposal stripped out the original sidechain development as the scope was too large.
In Fund 7, the following DAO-NET suite of proposals were funded: DAO-NET: DAO Deployment Platform, DAO-NET: Legal Defense DAO, DAO-NET: Auditor DAO and DAO-NET: Multilingual Translation.
In Fund 7, there were a total of 8 other DAO-NET proposals that were approved but not funded.
All of the DAO-NET suite of proposals are interrelated but each proposal in Fund 7 could be standalone funded. The core DAO smart contract coding was funded with the DAO-NET: DAO Deployment Platform project which means that this work no longer needs to be contingency funded in Fund 8.
DAOs are a paradigm evolution in how societies organize themselves and the DAO-NET vision is to systematically progress towards that evolution by breaking the larger vision down into small incremental steps with each proposal. As part of that vision all DAO Coder Inc intellectual property is intended to be freely shared with the world so that any insights can be duplicated in other experiments to rapidly advance decentralized governance therefore:
- All software developed as part of this proposal will be Open Source under Apache License, version 2.0
- All documentation will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
In Fund 8, DAO Coders Inc has submitted 2 categories of proposals Alternative to Tyranny (A2T) proposals which are decentralized wargame simulator modules for testing decentralized idea implementations against probable authoritarian responses and DAO-NET proposals which are real world implementations that can be implemented immediately.
A2T and DAO-NET share a lot of base smart contract code and are meant to be interoperable to the largest degree and conceptually share similar designs. As new features are added in either suite then the transfer to the other suite of those improvements should be straight forward however since each suite is designed to be independently community run, after launch, this easy interoperability may diverge over time.
In Fund 8, DAO Coders has submitted the following proposals:
