🏛 Open Grant Proposal: Incentivised RPC Pool

[KagemniKarimu]

Open Grant Proposal: Incentivised RPC Pool

Project Name: Lava Network – Incentivized Public RPC

Proposal Category: Developer and data tooling, community engagement

Individual or Entity Name: Lava Protocol Inc.

Proposer: KagemniKarimu

(Optional) Filecoin ecosystem affiliations: We are part of the Protocol Labs Network/ Protocol Labs are investors in Lava.

(Optional) Technical Sponsor: N/A

Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?: Yes

Project Summary

Lava lets ecosystems seamlessly consolidate any RPC endpoint into one super endpoint, optimizing their Public RPC performance and also giving deep analytics into developer and end user usage. Providers from your community and beyond can contribute their endpoints, becoming more engaged contributors while helping onboard developers. All provider responses are quality-controlled by the protocol - meaning developers can focus less on troubleshooting infra and more on building on Filecoin.

Filecoin Foundation will receive a transparent Public RPC Analytics Dashboard which shows the latency, uptime and accuracy of each provider who participates in the initiative. Filecoin will also receive deep analytics on usage - geolocation of users, number of frontend or backend users, number of projects building using the endpoint etc.

Impact

We help chains by turning public RPC into a super reliable resource for developer onboarding, while engaging community members to further decentralize the ecosystem.

Foundation:

• Drastically improve user experience: Reliable RPC for dApp users which is more resilient to alternative endpoints
• Reduce wasted spend: A dashboard to monitor all node providers in the community, so that ecosystem can track quality of service and incentivize high quality RPC without wasted spend
• Easy, one click distribution of payments: Remove the need to manually manage all your invoicing - Lava provides a settlement layer to pay all providers using a smart contract at the end of the month, based on their actual QoS and volume served. The Foundation will be able to adjust the overall monthly reward and rewards for each provider.
• Onboard up to 200+ providers: 200+ technical contributors and providers, already running nodes and serving 1bn+ relays on Lava, coming to Filecoin. Leverage their expertise to build out your ecosystem with more tools like block explorers
• Engage & grow your community: Lava will bring to Filecoin our existing community of over 11k developers and providers, which spans across 20+ different networks. ipRPC will also engage your community and increase exposure for Filecoin
• Web3-aligned ideals: Increased decentralization at the node level on Filecoin
• Boost activity: Increased visibility and activity in Filecoin ecosystem, on-chain, on crypto-Twitter and on Github

Developers:

• Free RPC for developers to easily start building on Filecoin
• 99.99% SLA and regular maintenance of the latest Filecoin RPC specs

Small and medium-sized node providers from the community:

• Contribute towards decentralization
• Earn rewards from Filecoin for serving RPC to developers

Outcomes

Final outcomes and deliverables will include:

• ipRPC endpoint: The development and deployment of a decentralized RPC endpoint that is powered by a network of node runners on Filecoin. This endpoint will serve as a community-led and resilient public good for developers to utilize RPC.
• QoS Dashboard: Lava will provide Filecoin a dashboard which shows detailed breakdown of each provider’s latency, uptime and accuracy.
• One click-payment distribution: Lava will provide Filecoin with easy one-click ability to distribute funds to providers using an FVM smart contract based on their actual QoS.
• Developer engagement and growth: Increasing developer engagement on Filecoin by attracting more developers to the ecosystem through the availability of the ipRPC endpoint. This can be measured by tracking the number of new developers using it, increased activity on ie. Github, and positive feedback from the developer community.
• Node runner engagement: Increasing engagement and participation of node runners in the Filecoin ecosystem. This can be measured by tracking the number of node runners actively contributing to the incentivized RPC network, the amount of network resources provided by node runners, and their level of involvement in community discussions and events.

The success of the project can be measured using various metrics, including:

• SLA: The uptime and latency of the endpoint
• Adoption rate: The number of developers and applications utilizing the endpoint for their Filecoin-related projects.
• Activity metrics: Tracking the number of API requests made through the endpoint, the volume of data transferred, and the overall usage trends over time.
• Node runner growth: Monitoring the increase in the number of node runners joining the network and providing resources to support the RPC endpoint.
• Developer feedback: Collecting feedback from developers regarding their experience using the RPC, including ease of integration, reliability, and overall satisfaction.
• Community engagement: Assessing the level of engagement and participation of the developer and node runner community through their involvement in discussions, contributions to open-source projects, and active presence on Twitter and Discord.

By monitoring these metrics, the project team can evaluate the success and impact of the decentralized public RPC initiative and make adjustments or improvements as necessary.

Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

The target audience for the project includes developers, node runners, and technical community members who are interested in utilizing the Filecoin network and its RPC services. By providing a decentralized and incentivized RPC endpoint, our project aims to attract and engage this audience.

We aim to reach existing and new audiences with this initiative,consisting of node runners already onboarded to Lava and generally including developers and node runners who are actively involved in (any) blockchain development and ecosystem growth.

In terms of current engagement, the project has already gathered support from 200+ node runners who are ready to participate and contribute to the initiative. We mostly engage with these through Twitter, Discord, and direct outreach to potential participants.

Lava has strong support from validators who see the value of joining an initiative like this. We already have 200+ providers running nodes on Lava.

We intend to onboard new developers through co-marketing campaigns alongside the Filecoin ecosystem to educate on the importance of RPC nodes and how to run them. Lava will also promote the initiative by working closely with top validators and existing node runners to onboard and show their support on Twitter. Eligibility for participating in the ipRPC initiative can also be adjusted to require participants to tweet, create Github repos and set up Filecoin-native wallets. These activities will not only increase visibility of the program, but they will also boost awareness of Filecoin itself. This with the incentivised pool creates a flywheel effect, where more dApp developers will join, in turn attracting more node runners to meet RPC demand.

Development Roadmap

Milestone 1 - Integration & Set Up

• Define and launch onboarding flow for community node runners to join Lava
• Mutually define product features, monitoring skills, priorities for Filecoin etc. for lightweight involvement by foundation resources going forward

Milestone 2 - RPC live on Filecoin Calibration Testent/Testnet powered by Lava

• Host Filecoin Calibration node by Lava
• Create specs for Filecoin Calibration testnet JSON-RPC over Lava
• Adding Filecoin Calibration support on Lava Gateway
• Deploy Public RPC endpoint as “filecoin-calibration.public.lavanet.xyz” working with Lava protocol, no registration needed.
• Enable support for Filecoin Calibration on Lava SDK
• Deploy and announce RPCs with node runners
• Review and tune of performance

Milestone 3 – RPC live on Filecoin Mainnet powered by Lava

• Deploy Public RPC endpoint as “filecoin-mainnet.public.lavanet.xyz” working with Lava protocol, no registration needed.
• Deploy and announce RPCs with node runners
• Review and tune of performance, adoption and more with Filecoin
• Live dashboard of providers and relays on both mainnet and testnet
• Providers onboarding process
• Payment distribution smart contract based on FVM

Milestone 4 – Maintenance and growth

• Monthly review and tune of performance, adoption and more with Filecoin
• Provide access to existing Filecoin node runners to join Lava as providers
• Run co-marketing campaigns to attract node runners to join the ipRPC

Total Budget Requested $50k

Breakdown:

• $10k - Integration & Set Up – to be send to Lava upon approving the grant
• $40k - Incentivising Pools - To be sent to the distribution contract at the end of Month from the Deployment of Public RPC endpoint

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

We aim to maintain this project for half a year. The costs involved with maintaining the ipRPC endpoint will thus be covered by the grant for 6 months.

During that time, we will focus on:

• Add-ons & spec maintenance: Lava creates an incentive framework and architecture which means that if there is demand for any rich API, indexing or other type of node (archival nodes, transaction history APIs etc), providers can join the network to support it. Lava’s open-source community can also make pull requests to keep to set of method calls available to RPC consumers up to date - including leveraging the latest interfaces like gRPC
• Detailed analytics: Lava can offer provider QoS analytics but in the future we will also be able to give more detailed breakdowns into usage of your RPC - which requests are most popular (so we can optimize it for you), how many unique users you have etc.
• User experience: Continuously enhance the user experience, providing easy-to-use tools, documentation, and support for node runners and developers. Regularly gather feedback from the community and implement improvements based on user needs.
• Developer outreach: Continue running co-marketing campaigns and educational initiatives targeting developers within the Filecoin ecosystem and beyond. This could include hosting webinars, workshops, and hackathons to showcase the benefits of utilizing the decentralized public RPC endpoint and encouraging developers to integrate it into their projects.
• Partnership expansion: Collaborate with more top validators, node operators, and existing node runners to amplify the project’s reach and gain their support. Actively engage with these partners to foster a strong ecosystem and receive valuable feedback for improvement.
• Governance and decentralization: Foster community governance mechanisms to ensure the long-term sustainability and decentralization of this project. For example by introducing a governance token that allows token holders to participate in decision-making processes related to the project’s future development and incentive distribution.
• Ecosystem expansion: Collaborate with other projects and protocols within the Filecoin ecosystem to foster integration and interoperability. This could involve partnering with parachains, dApps, and wallets to provide seamless access to the decentralized RPC endpoint and encourage adoption across the ecosystem.

Team

Team Members

Yair Cleper - CEO
Gil Binder - CTO
Omer Mishael - Chief Architect

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cleper
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbinder/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/omer-mishael-b82b9590/

Team Website

https://www.lavanet.xyz/

Relevant Experience

Since incorporating in February 2022, Lava has been assembling a world-class team. Of the 38 professionals from across the world, 26 are engineers, 8 are ex-founders or CTOs. Together we are experts in cyber security, cryptography, blockchain protocols, developing open source software, and scaling start-ups.

Yair is an accomplished serial entrepreneur having started his first company at age 21. Prior to focusing on crypto and co-founding Lava, he spent 6 years as the solo founder and CEO of Supersmart—the world's first cashierless supermarket checkout technology. Supersmart processes $1.5B a year for top retailers in more than 9 countries. Other startups he’s co-founded include Ogmenti (Augmented Reality) and Octopai (Business Intelligence). Yair holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Gil is a distinguished expert in cybersecurity. After serving in the top cyber-warfare unit of the Israeli military, Gil founded Nautilus Intelligence (zero-day cybersecurity) acquired after just 3 years for which he raised capital, recruited and led top-tier engineering talent from Israel, Europe, and Asia. Gil came to understand the unique strengths and weaknesses of various blockchains by building high return MEV bots.

Omer is an accomplished professional who currently serves as our Chief Architect Officer, demonstrating his expertise in RPC, consensus building, Layer 1 protocols, software design, and development. With a strong background in security research and zero-day cybersecurity, he has successfully led R&D teams, managed resources, and implemented various systems in the communications and digital signal processing domains. Omer holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BE from the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Team code repositories

https://github.com/lavanet/lava

Additional Information

How did we learn about the Open Grants Program?
Twitter
The best email address for discussing the grant agreement and general next steps?
andrew@lavanet.xyz

[FF-FOIT]

Hi @KagemniKarimu, thank you for your proposal and for your interest in our grants program. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints in the current climate, we will not be proceeding with a grant at this time.

Wishing you the best with your future work in the ecosystem!

[FF-FOIT]

Hi @KagemniKarimu, would you have an interest in submitting a revised proposal? If so, we would be happy to review this work for a smaller amount in our next wave of applications. While we cannot move forward with the current amount requested, we may be able to consider $10k for set up and $10k for incentives ($20k total).

Let me know what you think!

[KagemniKarimu]

Greetings @ErinOCon !

Yes! We'd love to work with Filecoin and propose a 3 month time frame at $25k total (w/ $10k to Lava for maintenance and $15k for provider rewards). The $15k would be distributed across the aforementioned 3 months. Would this work?

[FF-FOIT]

Hi @KagemniKarimu, we would be happy to review a revised proposal for this amount. Please feel welcome to submit edits to the original proposal above.

Let us know of any questions!

[Jacoblava]

Open Grant Proposal: Incentivised RPC Pool

Project Name: Lava Network – Incentivized Public RPC

Proposal Category: Developer and data tooling, community engagement

Individual or Entity Name: Lava Protocol Inc.

Proposer: KagemniKarimu

(Optional) Filecoin ecosystem affiliations: We are part of the Protocol Labs Network/ Protocol Labs are investors in Lava.

(Optional) Technical Sponsor: N/A

Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?: Yes

Project Summary

Lava lets ecosystems seamlessly consolidate any RPC endpoint into one super endpoint, optimizing their Public RPC performance and also giving deep analytics into developer and end user usage. Providers from your community and beyond can contribute their endpoints, becoming more engaged contributors while helping onboard developers. All provider responses are quality-controlled by the protocol - meaning developers can focus less on troubleshooting infra and more on building on Filecoin.

Filecoin Foundation will receive a transparent Public RPC Analytics Dashboard which shows the latency, uptime and accuracy of each provider who participates in the initiative. Filecoin will also receive deep analytics on usage - geolocation of users, number of frontend or backend users, number of projects building using the endpoint etc.

Impact

We help chains by turning public RPC into a super reliable resource for developer onboarding, while engaging community members to further decentralize the ecosystem.

Foundation:

• Drastically improve user experience: Reliable RPC for dApp users which is more resilient to alternative endpoints
• Reduce wasted spend: A dashboard to monitor all node providers in the community, so that ecosystem can track quality of service and incentivize high quality RPC without wasted spend
• Easy, one click distribution of payments: Remove the need to manually manage all your invoicing - Lava provides a settlement layer to pay all providers using a smart contract at the end of the month, based on their actual QoS and volume served. The Foundation will be able to adjust the overall monthly reward and rewards for each provider.
• Onboard up to 200+ providers: 200+ technical contributors and providers, already running nodes and serving 1bn+ relays on Lava, coming to Filecoin. Leverage their expertise to build out your ecosystem with more tools like block explorers
• Engage & grow your community: Lava will bring to Filecoin our existing community of over 11k developers and providers, which spans across 20+ different networks. ipRPC will also engage your community and increase exposure for Filecoin
• Web3-aligned ideals: Increased decentralization at the node level on Filecoin
• Boost activity: Increased visibility and activity in Filecoin ecosystem, on-chain, on crypto-Twitter and on Github

Developers:

• Free RPC for developers to easily start building on Filecoin
• 99.99% SLA and regular maintenance of the latest Filecoin RPC specs

Small and medium-sized node providers from the community:

• Contribute towards decentralization
• Earn rewards from Filecoin for serving RPC to developers

Outcomes

Final outcomes and deliverables will include:

• ipRPC endpoint: The development and deployment of a decentralized RPC endpoint that is powered by a network of node runners on Filecoin. This endpoint will serve as a community-led and resilient public good for developers to utilize RPC.
• QoS Dashboard: Lava will provide Filecoin a dashboard which shows detailed breakdown of each provider’s latency, uptime and accuracy.
• One click-payment distribution: Lava will provide Filecoin with easy one-click ability to distribute funds to providers using an FVM smart contract based on their actual QoS.
• Developer engagement and growth: Increasing developer engagement on Filecoin by attracting more developers to the ecosystem through the availability of the ipRPC endpoint. This can be measured by tracking the number of new developers using it, increased activity on ie. Github, and positive feedback from the developer community.
• Node runner engagement: Increasing engagement and participation of node runners in the Filecoin ecosystem. This can be measured by tracking the number of node runners actively contributing to the incentivized RPC network, the amount of network resources provided by node runners, and their level of involvement in community discussions and events.

The success of the project can be measured using various metrics, including:

• SLA: The uptime and latency of the endpoint
• Adoption rate: The number of developers and applications utilizing the endpoint for their Filecoin-related projects.
• Activity metrics: Tracking the number of API requests made through the endpoint, the volume of data transferred, and the overall usage trends over time.
• Node runner growth: Monitoring the increase in the number of node runners joining the network and providing resources to support the RPC endpoint.
• Developer feedback: Collecting feedback from developers regarding their experience using the RPC, including ease of integration, reliability, and overall satisfaction.
• Community engagement: Assessing the level of engagement and participation of the developer and node runner community through their involvement in discussions, contributions to open-source projects, and active presence on Twitter and Discord.

By monitoring these metrics, the project team can evaluate the success and impact of the decentralized public RPC initiative and make adjustments or improvements as necessary.

Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

The target audience for the project includes developers, node runners, and technical community members who are interested in utilizing the Filecoin network and its RPC services. By providing a decentralized and incentivized RPC endpoint, our project aims to attract and engage this audience.

We aim to reach existing and new audiences with this initiative,consisting of node runners already onboarded to Lava and generally including developers and node runners who are actively involved in (any) blockchain development and ecosystem growth.

In terms of current engagement, the project has already gathered support from 200+ node runners who are ready to participate and contribute to the initiative. We mostly engage with these through Twitter, Discord, and direct outreach to potential participants.

Lava has strong support from validators who see the value of joining an initiative like this. We already have 200+ providers running nodes on Lava.

We intend to onboard new developers through co-marketing campaigns alongside the Filecoin ecosystem to educate on the importance of RPC nodes and how to run them. Lava will also promote the initiative by working closely with top validators and existing node runners to onboard and show their support on Twitter. Eligibility for participating in the ipRPC initiative can also be adjusted to require participants to tweet, create Github repos and set up Filecoin-native wallets. These activities will not only increase visibility of the program, but they will also boost awareness of Filecoin itself. This with the incentivised pool creates a flywheel effect, where more dApp developers will join, in turn attracting more node runners to meet RPC demand.

Development Roadmap

Milestone 1 - Integration & Set Up

• Define and launch onboarding flow for community node runners to join Lava
• Mutually define product features, monitoring skills, priorities for Filecoin etc. for lightweight involvement by foundation resources going forward

Milestone 2 - RPC live on Filecoin Calibration Testent/Testnet powered by Lava

• Host Filecoin Calibration node by Lava
• Create specs for Filecoin Calibration testnet JSON-RPC over Lava
• Adding Filecoin Calibration support on Lava Gateway
• Deploy Public RPC endpoint as “filecoin-calibration.public.lavanet.xyz” working with Lava protocol, no registration needed.
• Enable support for Filecoin Calibration on Lava SDK
• Deploy and announce RPCs with node runners
• Review and tune of performance

Milestone 3 – RPC live on Filecoin Mainnet powered by Lava

• Deploy Public RPC endpoint as “filecoin-mainnet.public.lavanet.xyz” working with Lava protocol, no registration needed.
• Deploy and announce RPCs with node runners
• Review and tune of performance, adoption and more with Filecoin
• Live dashboard of providers and relays on both mainnet and testnet
• Providers onboarding process
• Payment distribution smart contract based on FVM

Milestone 4 – Maintenance and growth

• Monthly review and tune of performance, adoption and more with Filecoin
• Provide access to existing Filecoin node runners to join Lava as providers
• Run co-marketing campaigns to attract node runners to join the ipRPC

Total Budget Requested $25k

Breakdown:

• $10k - Integration & Set Up – to be send to Lava upon approving the grant
• $15k - Incentivising Pools - To be sent to the distribution contract at the end of Month from the Deployment of Public RPC endpoint

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

We aim to maintain this project for half a year. The costs involved with maintaining the ipRPC endpoint will thus be covered by the grant for 3 months.

During that time, we will focus on:

• Add-ons & spec maintenance: Lava creates an incentive framework and architecture which means that if there is demand for any rich API, indexing or other type of node (archival nodes, transaction history APIs etc), providers can join the network to support it. Lava’s open-source community can also make pull requests to keep to set of method calls available to RPC consumers up to date - including leveraging the latest interfaces like gRPC
• Detailed analytics: Lava can offer provider QoS analytics but in the future we will also be able to give more detailed breakdowns into usage of your RPC - which requests are most popular (so we can optimize it for you), how many unique users you have etc.
• User experience: Continuously enhance the user experience, providing easy-to-use tools, documentation, and support for node runners and developers. Regularly gather feedback from the community and implement improvements based on user needs.
• Developer outreach: Continue running co-marketing campaigns and educational initiatives targeting developers within the Filecoin ecosystem and beyond. This could include hosting webinars, workshops, and hackathons to showcase the benefits of utilizing the decentralized public RPC endpoint and encouraging developers to integrate it into their projects.
• Partnership expansion: Collaborate with more top validators, node operators, and existing node runners to amplify the project’s reach and gain their support. Actively engage with these partners to foster a strong ecosystem and receive valuable feedback for improvement.
• Governance and decentralization: Foster community governance mechanisms to ensure the long-term sustainability and decentralization of this project. For example by introducing a governance token that allows token holders to participate in decision-making processes related to the project’s future development and incentive distribution.
• Ecosystem expansion: Collaborate with other projects and protocols within the Filecoin ecosystem to foster integration and interoperability. This could involve partnering with parachains, dApps, and wallets to provide seamless access to the decentralized RPC endpoint and encourage adoption across the ecosystem.

Team

Team Members

Yair Cleper - CEO Gil Binder - CTO Omer Mishael - Chief Architect

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cleper https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilbinder/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/omer-mishael-b82b9590/

Team Website

https://www.lavanet.xyz/

Relevant Experience

Since incorporating in February 2022, Lava has been assembling a world-class team. Of the 38 professionals from across the world, 26 are engineers, 8 are ex-founders or CTOs. Together we are experts in cyber security, cryptography, blockchain protocols, developing open source software, and scaling start-ups.

Yair is an accomplished serial entrepreneur having started his first company at age 21. Prior to focusing on crypto and co-founding Lava, he spent 6 years as the solo founder and CEO of Supersmart—the world's first cashierless supermarket checkout technology. Supersmart processes $1.5B a year for top retailers in more than 9 countries. Other startups he’s co-founded include Ogmenti (Augmented Reality) and Octopai (Business Intelligence). Yair holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Gil is a distinguished expert in cybersecurity. After serving in the top cyber-warfare unit of the Israeli military, Gil founded Nautilus Intelligence (zero-day cybersecurity) acquired after just 3 years for which he raised capital, recruited and led top-tier engineering talent from Israel, Europe, and Asia. Gil came to understand the unique strengths and weaknesses of various blockchains by building high return MEV bots.

Omer is an accomplished professional who currently serves as our Chief Architect Officer, demonstrating his expertise in RPC, consensus building, Layer 1 protocols, software design, and development. With a strong background in security research and zero-day cybersecurity, he has successfully led R&D teams, managed resources, and implemented various systems in the communications and digital signal processing domains. Omer holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BE from the Technion in Haifa, Israel.

Team code repositories

https://github.com/lavanet/lava

Additional Information

How did we learn about the Open Grants Program? Twitter The best email address for discussing the grant agreement and general next steps? andrew@lavanet.xyz

[Jacoblava]

@ErinOCon I added a new comment with the revised proposal of Lava (including the updated amounts), since @KagemniKarimu is out of office this week. Can you please review and approve the new proposal?

[FF-FOIT]

Thank you! We will review and will be in touch with any questions.

[FF-FOIT]

Hi @KagemniKarimu and @Jacoblava, circling back to confirm your project is still under review with our team. We will be in touch with a final decision early next year.

Wishing you a happy holiday!