Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Funds Fund 8 F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem Proposals Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

completed

Current Project Status

complete

Total
amount
Received

$30,000

Total
amount
Requested

$30,000

Total
Percentage
Received

100.00%

$30,000 Received out of $30,000

Solution

Build and support Cardano tools like cardano-wallet, cardano-node/cli, and more to work on ARM and Adroid computers, servers, and devices.

Problem

Currently, there exist few tools & software built for ARM-based computers making it hard for developers to build and use existing software.

Addresses Challenge

Feasibility

Auditability

This proposal was approved and funded by the Cardano Community via Project F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem Catalyst funding round.

[IMPACT]

Our mission is to make Cardano as distributed as possible. This is a core tenant of Cardano succeeding as a ubiquitous distributed network. For this, the Armada alliance not only works on documentation but also puts the Cardano software onto as many different platforms as possible such as ARM, Apple Silicon, and Android devices. To achieve this goal, members of the alliance occasionally need to purchase hardware to test (and develop).

Most of the software developers and stake pool operators need such as the cardano-node, cardano-cli, and other critical software are freely provided and hosted by a few developers at the Armada Alliance. We are aiming to increase our ability to provide native ARM processor support for Cardano software/tools by adding more powerful hardware to our developer team for building and hosting services. This will help us ensure we can keep providing the tools we already host and more while remaining open-source well into the future.

These funds will be allocated towards three categories:

Hardware/hosting services
Research and Development costs
Documentation

Let’s take a look at the three main points for this Open-source challenge:

increase the number and the quality of Cardano Open Source projects
increase the number of contributors
increase of open source tools and frameworks from the community for the community (dog-fooding)

Our proposal aims to hit all three of these KPIs:

By providing developers/builders with more options for hardware to run the various Cardano tools/software needed we will help increase the quality and amount of Cardano Open Source projects. We have already had an impact by helping NFT projects by providing the software and documentation needed for ARM computers like the raspberry pi which have been used for various NFT projects.
We have many active contributors already to our ARM, Apple, and Android development community but our goal is to increase this number even more with this project.
We would like to provide even more Cardano tooling provided through IOHK and other community-built ones to work on the various processors/computers we already will into the future.

The cost of hardware/hosting services increases over time due to macro events like supply chain issues for example or inflation. The other potential risk is the overall need for more powerful build machines to build the Cardano tooling we provided, currently this is not an issue but it may be in the future.

The need for more developers/contributors to help us keep providing the open-source tooling and documentation may increase over time as well.

[FEASIBILITY]

Q2 2022 - Purchase two additional build machines to help increase resiliency/reliability and reduce build times for various tooling.

Q3 - Q4 2022 - Add more open-source tooling to run on ARM, Android, and Apple computers. Such as Ogmios, Oura, and Cardano wallet/light wallet tooling. We can add more based on demand and types of software needs for developers

Q4 2022 - Move documentation from paid hosting service to our own fully open-source and self-hosted documentation site.

Q4 2022 - Add new tutorials and guides for using the various developer tools and software on Cardano.

The project is already delivered in large part so we will mainly be maintaining, updating, and hosting all the various services for the foreseeable future and ensure Cardano developers can use them freely.

Here is what we already provide for free and open-source:

Github Repo for Binaries: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries

Documentation: https://docs.armada-alliance.com/learn/

Website: https://armada-alliance.com/

Hardware for R&D (slef-hosted): 5,000 USD
Continuous integration and hosting hardware/services cost: 10,000 USD
Documentation (development, maintenance, hosting): 5,000 USD
Software and tooling Developers: 10,000 USD

Wael - Project Lead

GitHub: https://github.com/AstroWa3l

Tony - Developer, IT, Networking

GitHub: https://github.com/eastpiada

Wayne - Developer, IT, Networking

GitHub: https://github.com/wcatz

Daniel - Developer

GitHub: https://github.com/rekuenkdr

[AUDITABILITY]
The number of stake-pool operators who join the Alliance and run on ARM computers.
Github metrics such as Stars, Forks, Pull requests, and Contributions from our various repositories.
SEO and traffic metrics to our documentation site, website, youtube, and GitHub.
Social media metrics and SEO for our Discord, Twitter, and Telegram communities.

Increase the number of open-source tools and software that run natively on ARM and other devices while providing hosting, support, and documentation for developers/stake pool operators utilizing ARM computers and Cardano.

This is an entirely new proposal but the work is already continuously ongoing and mostly complete.

Community Reviews (1)

Comments

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Not at this time

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Still in progress

Completion Target

11/10/2022

Comments 0

We have finished upgrading/migrating our documentation website from gitbook.io to our own custom built website: https://rekuenkdr.github.io/armada-alliance-docusaurus/docs/

We have been updating the cardano software for arm as well..

Main build server: https://ci.zw3rk.com/

Backup of node versions and dynamic binaries can be found on our GitHub repo:

https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

11/1/2022

Attachment(s)

Evidence 1

Comments 0

Some good things to report are the increase in ada staked to our alliance pools has increased based on a few factors including primarily Cardano Foundation delegation and addition of new pools and delegators. This is good and I hope we can add a few more pools to get to 50 (which would be our record) by the end of the year, if prices stay low for ada over the next six months I can see more people starting to experiment with running pools and using ARM servers.

We have added some more hardware with the money we have received to help host various tools for the Cardano developers/community. This is includes but not limited to cardano-submit-api, Freeloaderz load balancer relays, Tosi Drop, Koios DB, and more.

We purchased 1 additional Oracle Cloud VPS costing around ~80-110 usd per month to host a few of the main heavy applications and services. Next step is going to add another low cost server to host our hydra CI/CD pipeline for building the static binaries for cardano-node/cli, cardano-submit-api, cardano-wallet (still waiting from IOG to get help to get and issue addressed), tx-pipe tools, and much more.

We have finished the main migration of the Armada Alliance gitbook documentation from gitbook to our own custom website but still have work to do on guide on how to contribute to the new documentation site, translations integration, and basic functionality/styling of the website. You can see the website currently launched here:

Website for Docs:

https://armada-alliance.com/docs

GitHub for Docs:

https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs

However, we need to fix DNS issue which will change the url again, so for now I have not shared the url I have provided you with the community at this time because I do not want to cause confusion. We will have DNS fixed this coming week.

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

3. In the next 6 months

Attachment(s)

Evidence 1

Comments 0

Not at this time

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

2. In the next 3 months

Comments 0

Since the last report we have added the search bar functionality to our Armada Alliance website for documentation and tutorials, been working on setting up a new VPS to host our gitlab but this is not fully implemented at the moment but should be done before next report. Lastly, we have added a few more tools to our static/dynamic binaries including cardano-wallet and cardano bech 32 convertor tool as per request of members/developers.

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

2. In the next 3 months

Comments 0

We added a new epoch nonce calculation for leader logs for SPOs to use freely and we now host the nonce at https://nonce.armada-alliance.com/next.json via one of the servers we purchased for the Armada Alliance. We have also collaborated with two other members on the code for leader logs https://github.com/QuixoteSystems/cardano-leader-slot . The code will be moved into the Armada Alliance Github organization shortly.

We have also now setup the gitlab servers for hosting our code repos on our own hardware which is good for reliability and security of our code. We need to finish SMTP email setup and then migrate the code base but this should be done this week coming up.

We have been working on new version for Koios API python wrapper with the lead developer of the project and member of our alliance. We believe it to be a useful tool for many of us developers and community members who want to interact with Koios API but in a much easier and readable way using python.

Lastly, we have just been updating guides slowly while adding content that community members have asked us for in our telegram, discord, and twitter. We have been receiving a lot of requests for new hardware guides and hardware recommendations since the release of the new RockPi5 SBC this month. Hopefully we will get to add more guides for the new boards soon after further testing is done.

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

2. In the next 3 months

Comments 0

We have finished the final critical tasks for our gitlab and hosting services and are fully operational. Added two servers for "runners" in our gitlab pages features. This will allow us to run our own type of GitHub pages feature for our own projects and potentially others in the future.

Added to our documentation website enabling small features and adding additional guides for developers who seek to use various testnets on Cardano.

Disbursed to Date

$30,000

Proposal

Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

Status

Launched

Completion Target

1. In the next month

Comments 0

This proposal was approved and funded by the Cardano Community via Project F8: Open Source Development Ecosystem Catalyst funding round.

[IMPACT]

[FEASIBILITY]

[AUDITABILITY]

Community Reviews (1)

Comments

Monthly Reports