[Top Builder 2024]: farscapian & Justin Rocket (LNPlay_R2)

[farscapian]

🏗️ Top Builder 2024 Application Form to track progress through Round 1 - 3 ~ Currently in Round 1

📝 Instructions

1. Only complete this form if you have been chosen for Top Builder, by PlebLab.
2. Provide detailed information to assist the judges in evaluating your project.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Team

• Team Name: LNPlay
• Number of Founders: Two
• Team Background: farscapian qualifications and Justin Rocket.
• Bitcoin & Lightning Involvement: Both team members are bitcoin-only meetup organizers or co-organizers. farscapian is a backend software developer interested in devops/VMs and the packaging and deployment of docker stack applications. Justin Rocket is an aspiring full-stack developer interested in bitcoin/lightning applications.
• Origin Story: LNPlay Origin Story

💡 The Idea

• Project Overview: This project has several sub-objectives, all of which advance the development of LNPlay and associated projects.
• 1. Advance LNPlay for use in developer conferences by enabling REST interface and providing support for reckless and provide guidance for using the system.
• 2. Work on lnplay.guide to provide additional documentation and other resources for those who wish to self-host LNPlay.
• 3. Improve reliability of the Prism v2 plugin for use in the lnplay.live CLN plugin for automating payment splits in the provisioning pipeline.
• 4. Enable lnplay.live (developed at tabconf 2023) for production mainnet operation by completing the lnplay.live CLN plugin and associated Sovereign Stack functionality.
• Website: lnplay.guide
• GitHub: https://github.com/farscapian/lnplay
• Project Stage: The project can reliably deploy private lightning networks having 200 or more CLN nodes with 5 second effective block times. The project has been used in several settings from websites to meetups and conferences. LNPlay has provided an important source of user feedback for related open source projects.
• Supplementary Materials:

📚 Additional Information

• Additional Links/Info:

📌 Submission Type

• Initial Project Creation

🚀 Current Project Progress

• Progress Made: All status updates can be found on the LNPlay blog. Read this post and this post to view progress from week 1.
• Challenges Faced: One team member uses Windows 11.
• Future Roadmap of what's next: We keep the roadmap updated here.

⏳ Round 1 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 10th, 2024.
• **First-round milestone the team has set for themselves:

Sorted by highest priority to lowest priority. Lower priority items are more likely to be developed in later Rounds.

• Develop functional test plan and simulation checklists for LNPlay events.
• Update LNPlay to expose REST interface enable the CLN reckless plugin in support of using LNPlay for bitcoin developer conferences/hackathons.
• perform V&V by executing functional test plan in preparation for Bitcoin Atlantis and Bitcoin++.
• improve the Prism v2 plugin and install/use on mainnet node; validate prism operation.
• advance the lnplay.live plugin by implementing capacity logic and incorporating prism functionality for payouts.

⏳ Round 2 Milestones

See below in the comments.

⏳ Round 3 Milestones

TBD

📝 Submission Complete

• All required information has been provided above.

📅 Top Builder Program Structure

Registration Opens: Monday, December 18, 2023

• Application: Interested teams apply for Top Builder.
• Selection: Teams will be chosen based on their application. See FAQ for details.

Round 1: January 13 - February 10, 2024

• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops start, available live and online.
• Chat Access: Selected teams join the PlebLab internal chat.
• Mentorship: Begins for teams.
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their first-round milestones.

Round 2: February 10 - 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab cuts half of the Top Builder teams. (Only half continued in Round 2.)
• Project Milestones: Teams are set and judged on their second-round milestones.
• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops continue.
• Mentorship: Continues.

Round 3: Starting February 24, 2024

• Team Reduction: PlebLab narrows down to 6 Top Builder teams. (All will be pitching in Austin.)
• Final Milestones: Teams set final project milestones for the last round.
• Preparation: Teams prepare their pitch in front of judges. Final teams are contacted to come to Austin for Startup Day.

Final Round at Startup Day: March 14, 2024

• Preparation: Teams work on their final pitches at PlebLab.
• Presentations: Final teams present before judges on Startup Day.
• Deliberation: Judges decide during a happy hour.
• Announcement: The winner of Top Builder is announced at Austin BitDevs.
• Celebration: After-party for Top Builder.

[farscapian]

FYI! You can be notified of LNPlay Team updates by subscribing to our RSS feed!

[farscapian]

We posted a new blog post about our work on BOLT12 prisms for LNPlay. Check it out!

[farscapian]

To adhere to reporting expectations, our Round 2 Milestone are documented here:

• Perform V&V by executing LNPlay.guide functional test plan in preparation for Bitcoin Atlantis and Bitcoin++ (COMPLETED Feb 15th).
• Perform V&V by executing lnwidget.guide Feb 20th.
• Rocket City Bitcoiners LNPlay Event on Feb 21st.
• Complete lnwidget.guide by Feb 22nd.
• Bitcoin++ Lightning Live Architecture Presentation and LNPlay Simulation Feb 22nd.
• Bitcoin++ Hackathon Platform support - Feb 23/24.
• Complete the lnplay.live CLN plugin by implementing capacity logic and incorporating prism functionality for payouts.

[farscapian]

You can read our Round 2 Week 1 Status update on our blog.

[farscapian]

You can read our Round 2 Week 2 Status update on our blog.

[farscapian]

Round 3 Milestones:
[ ] Bitcoin++ Hackathon Platform support - Feb 23/24.
[ ] Test and Release Prism V2 CLN Plugin.
[ ] Bitcoin Brunch LNPlay Event (Feb 25th).
[ ] Bitcoin Atlantis Lightning LARP (date TBD).
[ ] Complete the lnplay.live CLN plugin by implementing capacity logic and incorporating prism functionality for payouts.
[ ] Turn on the Buy button on LNPlay.live.
[ ] Presentation to Top Builder.