over budget

Development & Node Operation

$2,350,000.00 Requested
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Community Review Results (3 reviewers)
Addresses Challenge
Feasibility
Auditability
Problem:

What research, tools, libraries, SDKs or scripts can improve running a node to secure the Cardano network or the developer ecosystem?

Yes Votes:
₳ 85,205,997
No Votes:
₳ 22,944,066
Votes Cast:
497

チーム

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Why is it important?

Stake pool nodes need to be easy to run and developers need tools and libraries to more easily build applications and integrations

What does success look like?

Innovation of resources, tools, libraries, SDKs, scripts or research within the developer ecosystem or for the operation of stake pool nodes

Key Metrics to measure

Tracking success for this category will mean:

  • Increasing the number or quality of tools, libraries & SDKs that help improve areas around running nodes for SPOs, Plutus & IELE development or native asset development.
  • Increasing the scalability of Cardano through the introduction of improvements that can come from research, layer 2 solutions and support further integrations of existing solutions.
  • Increase the number or quality of the standards, resources and research that make it easier for node operators and developers to understand the ecosystem and to improve the overall ecosystem quality of the software being delivered.

For individual success metrics for the different types of proposal that can be included please refer to the suggested challenge brief success metrics ideas.

Challenge brief

—— FUNDING CATEGORIES BACKGROUND ——

Funding Categories is an approach to doing funding categorisation that will welcome all ideas, maximize the amount of ideas submitted and reduce the effort for all stakeholders in the Catalyst process.

Funding categories also help remove the existing issues with challenge settings. They help to prevent duplicate challenge settings, remove challenges created by self interest, reduce the need for deep knowledge of the ecosystem from challenge proposal teams and also removes an easy entry point for malicious actors.

The full documentation for Catalyst Funding Categories can be found here: <https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-funding-categories/>

7 funding categories have been documented to cover all forms of ideas and proposals. All proposals can be found here - https://linktr.ee/cardanopace

The budget weighting for the 7 categories has been determined using a community governance process. The voting results for this process can be found here - <https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-funding-categories/community-votes/fund-8-categories-budget-weighting/voting-results-fund-8>

————

Overview

Development & Node Operation is focused on the following areas:

  • Creation and improvement of tools, scripts, libraries and SDKs that help make it easier for projects to develop on Cardano and for the community to operate stake pool nodes in the network.
  • Research, analysis and creation of standards, resources or documentation that bring either novel innovation to the ecosystem or help with improving the education around what is available in the ecosystem for development or node operation.

Why this category is important

The Cardano developer ecosystem and operation of stake pool nodes need to be easy for newcomers and budding talent to start learning and using.

To make it easy to develop projects on Cardano as well as operate the network there is a need for high quality resources, standards, tools, scripts, libraries and SDKs for developers and operators to use.

The higher quality and more thorough the developer and stake pool node ecosystem is for Cardano the faster that people can be onboarded and build out applications to a high quality and security standard.

Types of proposals to include

  • SPO tools, scripts, libraries & SDKs - Development that helps the SPO community more easily start and run their Cardano nodes or other ecosystem node infrastructure.
  • Plutus and IELE tools, libraries & SDKs - Development that helps developers more easily write and deploy smart contracts onto the Cardano blockchain.
  • Native asset tools, libraries & SDKs - Development to improve how the community and developers can issue and manage native assets.
  • Scalability solutions - Rollups (e.g. zero knowledge rollups, optimistic rollups), sharding, state channels, zero knowledge proofs, side chains.
  • Resources & documentation - Technical documentation on how to use different tools, libraries or SDKs in the ecosystem.
  • Standards - Creation and improvement of standards used within the ecosystem that help to improve the overall quality of software deployed.
  • Research and development - Research and development on new novel approaches that could be used in the Cardano ecosystem. This could include areas such as security, scalability or interoperability.

Potential success metrics for proposal types

  • SPO tools, scripts, libraries & SDKs - Amount of adoption from other projects, metrics around any scalability, security or cost improvements.
  • Plutus and IELE tools, libraries & SDKs - Amount of adoption from other projects, metrics around any scalability, security or cost improvements.
  • Native asset tools, libraries & SDKs - Amount of adoption from other projects, metrics around any scalability, security or cost improvements.
  • Scalability solutions - Total transactions per second achievable, increases in transaction efficiency achieved, security guarantees achieved.
  • Resources & documentation - Amount of people viewing resources, reduction in number of common questions to contributors due to better resources.
  • Standards - Increase in any security thresholds for new applications, Increases in performance achievable by applications.
  • Research and development - Number of projects utilising new novel approaches to development or node operation, number of new standards created due to research efforts

Considerations for proposers

  • Open source plan - Any tools, libraries or SDKs are encouraged to be open source either from the start or as soon as possible. There is no requirement to be open source immediately however proposers should include the details of their plan towards open sourcing the project.
  • Commercial projects - Development projects most suited here will be open source with the aim of the work executed being available for the benefit of other projects to use and build their applications with. Commercial projects looking to build a network or DApp suited for the end user should use the Products & Integrations category for proposals. Projects are welcomed to make proposals in this category for any specific parts of their project that would be open source and should have benefit to the wider ecosystem around improving the development ecosystem or operation of Cardano.

コミュニティ・アドバイザー・レビュー (3)

Addresses Challenge

5 / 5
3 レビュー

Does the proposal effectively addresses the challenge?

Commenter gravatar

This is one of the seven proposals PACE has filed in the challenge settings. It focuses on the accessibility of SPO and the development of Dapps. By creating tools for better development of Dapps of easier node runnings for SPOs the proposal answers to the strategic goals on 2 fronts. First, it expands the group of people to make contributions to the ecosystem by making it easier for them. Second, it accelerates the growth of the ecosystem. And the proposer makes sure they also answer to the third strategic goal of Fund 9, they encourage contributors to open-source the tools that are being developed in this category as soon as possible. The budget allocation for this proposal is carefully researched and well documented in the provided GitBook.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_471
Total QA Ratings
5
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

This proposal is part of a set of seven proposals that are intended to change the way challenges are set in the community. I have noticed in past funds challenges that overlap or perhaps are too specific to the detriment of healthy competition and possibly address partialized needs. The goal of the category is to close the existing gap within the ecosystem in terms of the Quality and Security of the resources available to developers and SPOs. Cardano's mission and this challenge category are closely aligned in terms of criticality. In fact, it is the core of our third strategic goal, and indirectly addresses our first and second goals as well. As far as the first one is concerned, it is fulfilled indirectly, since if the ecosystem tools for developers and SPOs are multiplied and improved, it will improve users' experiences and therefore make it easier for those to contribute to the ecosystem. The second is fulfilled a little more directly, since in the section titled "Considerations for proposers," proponents are encouraged to support open source and this should be considered by community advisors during QA phase and ADA holders in the voting.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_130
Total QA Ratings
13
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

The theme chosen in this challenge is essential to Cardano's mission and would be for the development of any public blockchain that aspires to decentralization and a promising development and research ecosystem. I see this challenge as an alternative to the Developer Ecosystem challenge, which has been present since Fund 2 and was left out only in Fund 7, being one of the most important and most demanded challenges in Catalyst, as Cardano is in a continuous process of decentralization, where development is gradually being taken over by the community in an open source manner. But it is not just an alternative, as it has a broader scope and allows the creation of proposals dedicated to improvements for SPOs (stake pool operators), which is also extremely important to ensure more resources, tools and access to SPOs, which moves towards a more decentralized and secure blockchain. It also allows research and projects dedicated to the development of scalability solutions, which fits well with Cardano's current moment due to the implementation of Hydra.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_43
Total QA Ratings
6
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Feasibility

4.7 / 5
3 レビュー

Given experience and plan presented is likely that this proposal will be implemented successfully?

Commenter gravatar

The development of tools for better maintaining Stake pool nodes and Dapps is a crucial step in the growth of Catalyst and Cardano. Given the fact that we've already seen a few challenges in the previous funds that are linked to this topic - Open Standards & Interoperability, Global Sustainable Indep. SPOs, Open Source Developer Ecosystem - we can see that the community is engaged in providing better support for development. Since PACE is engaged in 7 proposals this brings up the question about the challenge team. Who will be the challenge team for this challenge? PACE made no indications that they are going to be the team behind the challenge nor that they are searching for a team. When you know that all 7 of the proposals are covering 70% of the allocated budget for Fund 9 it brings up the question about decentralization.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_471
Total QA Ratings
5
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

The Cardano community has the capacity to create promising proposals in this challenge, as it has been doing so for many months, since the beginning of Catalyst. The requested budget is large, but if we consider the gradual increase in funds destined for projects dedicated to the developer ecosystem since Fund 2, the great demand for proposals in these challenges during the last funds, taking into account that in Fund 7 there were two dedicated challenges to developer development, whose combined budget was $2.2 million and the fact that this challenge (Development & NodeOperation) has a broader scope I believe the stated value is appropriate. In addition, this challenge has already already, community and scrutiny with the theme, budget, discussed and voted on various community members before this challenge was posted on Catalyst, indicating that there is a reasonable consensus. It is important to note that in Fund 8 there are 3 major Challenge Setting that have themes focused on the development ecosystem. The "Development & Node Operation" challenge has a broader theme, as it also allows for proposals aimed at better scalability and proposals aimed at improving the SPO ecosystem. It has a budget of $2.3 million dollars.

The "OSDE: Open Source Dev Ecosystem" challenge is focused on the open source development ecosystem and has a budget of $1.5 million.

The "Developer Ecosystem" challenge is focused on the devolopment ecosystem as a whole and has a budget of $1 million USD.

There is a large area of ​​overlap in these 3 challenges. I believe that all are well-structured challenges and would be important, but the budget for Fund 9 is not yet defined and if these 3 challenges were approved they would have a combined budget of $4.8 million, which would be 30% of the total budget , if the amount of the Fund9 remains worth $16M. I think 30% of the total budget would be an excessive amount of budget earmarked for similar challenges, but it is up to voters to decide which of these challenges is most appropriate, as despite having overlapping themes, there are slight differences in the breadth of scope for each of them.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_43
Total QA Ratings
6
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

In prior funds, we have seen how the community has responded to what is being sought in this challenge. Therefore, from that perspective I am confident that the community will respond. As new tools, standards, and research are developed by the community, the community naturally gains experience and identifies gaps that need to be addressed, which perpetuates a virtuous cycle. As this is a new approach, I think a challenge team has not yet been formed, however, this is not a concern to me because the PACE team supports these categories and they manage to keep the community involved from the definition of topics to be addressed, the content of the setting to the selection of the percentage of budget to be allocated, so I am confident that a proper challenge team will be formed if selected.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_130
Total QA Ratings
13
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Auditability

4.3 / 5
3 レビュー

Does the proposal provides sufficient information to assess and audit progress and completion?

Commenter gravatar

The defined success criteria in the proposals are in correlation with the challenge question and why this is important to the ecosystem. It is clear in the proposal that this challenge is about making sure it is easier for developers and SPOs to operate on Cardano. By providing extensive details and examples of types of proposals and success metrics PACE ensures that if the challenge is accepted for the next fund high-quality proposals can be submitted.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_471
Total QA Ratings
5
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

Considering that the scope of this proposed challenge is an expansion of the challenges aimed at the developer ecosystem, establishing success metrics becomes more difficult, as the range of proposal increases, the criteria need to be thought in order to support the new concepts of the challenge.

The PACE team established between two and three metrics for verification of success for each theme, metrics that I consider acceptable, but somewhat subjective and insufficient for an appropriate and objective verification of success.

e.g."Increasing the number or quality of tools, libraries & SDKs that help improve areas around running nodes for SPOs, Plutus & IELE development or native asset development." Increasing the number or quality is subjective, any proposal that aims to create tools will naturally increase the number of tools by at least 1, so I believe the metrics presented lack specificity and precision.

I like the concept brought by PACE, where there is a pre-discussion and filtering of challenges, because as was well observed by the creators of this concept, Catalyst began to have many challenges with overlapping themes and budgets with poorly reflected rationales, which increases the confusion and complexity in the decision-making of the community, but when considering broader themes, greater clarity and number of metrics are needed to verify success, otherwise the proposals created in the new challenge may be disoriented in relation to deliverables and harm another current pain point of Catalyst, which is auditability.

For the reasons mentioned above, I would recommend that the team include more metrics dedicated to each theme defined under the scope of this challenge. I would like to know how many projects and people are using the tools/SDKs and other solutions created in this challenge in a tangible way and what is the level of satisfaction of these projects/people with the proposals that would result from this challenge. The PACE team established between two and three metrics for verification of success for each theme, metrics that I consider reasonable, but somewhat subjective and insufficient for an appropriate and objective verification of success.

e.g."Increasing the number or quality of tools, libraries & SDKs that help improve areas around running nodes for SPOs, Plutus & IELE development or native asset development." This metric only allows measuring the number of tools, but there is a lack of quality indicators of these tools, how they are contributing and how many people/projects are benefiting from these implementations. If the challenge setting doesn't put quality check metrics, we can't expect the proposals derived from it to create appropriate metrics either.

I like the concept brought by PACE, where there is a pre-discussion and filtering of challenges, because as was well observed by the creators of this concept, Catalyst began to have many challenges with overlapping themes and budgets with poorly reflected rationales, which increases the confusion and complexity in the decision-making of the community, but when considering broader themes, greater clarity and number of metrics are needed to verify success, otherwise the proposals created in the new challenge may be disoriented in relation to deliverables and harm another current pain point of Catalyst, which is auditability.

For the reasons mentioned above, I would recommend that the team include more metrics dedicated to each theme defined under the scope of this challenge.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_43
Total QA Ratings
6
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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Commenter gravatar

To prepare this proposal, the team had to present metrics for a number of different projects that could not be measured uniformly. In order to address this, the challenge team decided to dedicate a section to presenting examples of metrics corresponding to the type of project to be undertaken. My only comment to improve the challenge setting would be that, although the metrics seem accurate, they aim to measure the final result (what we call lagging KPIs) once the project has been implemented and regularly in terms of auditability it is necessary to have progress or impact indicators on a phased basis. Consequently, I believe the challenge setting could be improved if this comment is included as a consideration for proponents to include within their proposals.

Assessment Quality Assurance

Assessment Quality Assurance is an offered role to veteran in the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. The purpose is to review PA assessments of proposals, providing a second layer of Quality Assurance.

Assessor ID
z_assessor_130
Total QA Ratings
13
QA Rating Outcome
人間性の確認

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