Marlowe Runtime SDKs

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

federico@txpipe.io

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.” .

Although the required technical documentation is available and our team has the expertise to execute the proposal, minimal support from relevant parties: IOHK will be appreciated.

By support, we refer to common technical inquiries through existing channels such as community forums.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

Project will be fully open source.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Context

• Marlowe is a brand new language and runtime for developing financial smart contracts.
• Marlowe contracts are built by combining a small number of building blocks that describe making a payment, waiting for a certain condition and other similar types of concepts.
• The Marlowe Runtime is the backend component of the Marlowe framework that handles interaction with the blockchain. It exposes a REST API that provides operations such as: get-contracts, create-contracts, etc.
• To interact with the backend, developers need to manually craft the REST API Requests, which involves a lot of boilerplate code with little specific value to their particular use-case.

Technical Plan

We’ll build a set of idiomatic SDKs (software development kits) in common programming languages with the goal of reducing the boilerplate required to interact with the Marlowe Runtime API.

The selected languages are:

• Rust
• Go
• Python
• Javascript (Typescript)
• .NET (written in C#)

The rationale for selecting the above languages is the following: they are the subset of popular languages in the Cardano ecosystem that overlap with the technical expertise of our team. Meaning, these are the languages we know how to implement and that we believe will provide value in the ecosystem.

Each SDK will present the following features:

• All data structures defined by they core Marlowe spec will have their types represented as part of the SDK. We'll explore how to abstract this types into it's module for potential reutilization in other contexts.
• For the Marlowe Runtime operations, each API methods will be represented as callable functions, making use of whatever asynchronous IO mechanic is provided by the language. This is will also be abstracted into its own module to decouple it from the core types (previous bullet)
• Naming of structures and functions will respect the naming conventions of the corresponding language (eg: use camelCase for Javascript and snake_case for Python).
• Client-side validations will be executed by the SDK to avoid errors due to invalid requests.
• Appropriate logging will be added in relevant functions to facilitate debugging.
• Code-generation from the OpenAPI spec will be leveraged whenever possible to streamline SDK updates on future changes of the API.
• DocStrings will be available whenever possible to improve integration with IDEs and documentation sites.
• Public packages will be published to the corresponding package manager of the language, if any (eg: NPM package, Crates.io package, PyPi package).

There's an existing effort for a Typescript SDK being done by IOHK. Our plan is to reach to the specific devs behind the project and seek a plan for integrating both projects into a unified effort that covers all of the languages mentioned.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Our proposal accelerates the development of dApps that integrate with the Marlowe framework by removing much of the boilerplate required to interact with the backend API.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We’ll measure the success of the project by level of engagement and usage of our new integration mechanism:

• Common activity metrics in the open-source Github repository, such as: number of issues, contributors, traffic, etc;
• Package manager activity metrics, such as downloads per unit of time.
• Level of engagement from developers through TxPipe existing communication channels, such as: our Discord server, our Twitter announcements and tech support ticketing system.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

Being an open-source project, the outputs will be available to any developer in the ecosystem at every step of the development process:

• Latest version of the source-code will be available in the Github repository.
• Source code changes will be applied through a pull-request process.
• Alpha and Beta versions will be released at every milestone.

Upon reaching the end of the development process, we’ll provide:

• Links to the latest published versions of the SDKs in their corresponding package managers.
• A documentation website with instructions for usage and deployment
• A collection of examples showcasing the usage of the SDKs
• A tutorial video showing a walkthrough of how to use some of the SDKs

After a reasonable (1-3 months) period after the end of development, we’ll provide:

• A report describing package manager activity
• A report describing dev community engagement with the project

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

TxPipe is very proud of their past and current contributions to the ecosystem. Just to mention a few:

• We have developed “Pallas”, a Rust library for Cardano which is used by several high-profile project in the community (such as: cncli and Aiken)
• Through Catalyst, we have developed and delivered “Oura”, an off-chain data integration tool for Cardano used by many projects in the community (such as: Pool.io and dcSpark’s Carp, etc).
• Through Catalyst, we have developed “Dolos”, a minimalistic version of the Cardano node which is being slowly rolled out to the community as a beta version.
• We have developed “Demeter”, a cloud hosting platform for Cardano infrastructure with several high-profile clients (such as: JPG.store, SummonPlatform and others).

The above are examples of our accountability because:

• It shows our commitment to evolving the open source community and the Cardano ecosystem.
• It shows the technical expertise required to develop and maintain Cardano infrastructure.
• It shows our commitment to the Catalyst program and its required procedures.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

By providing SDKs in popular programming languages, we intend to improve the developer experience in the following areas:

• Faster prototyping during early-development phase
• Faster time-to-market when building dApps
• Less code means lower probability of bugs and issues
• Less code to maintain an update over time

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

Milestone #1: Code generation (1 month)

• Create project scaffold for all SDKs
• Configure code generation tooling from OpenAPI specs
• Setup CI pipeline for automated code generation

Milestone #2: Idiomatic wrappers (2 month)

• Create idiomatic wrappers on top of auto-generated code
• Add required docstrings
• Add integration tests

Milestone #3: Packaging and release (1 month)

• Setup required accounts in package managers
• Publish initial versions of each package

Milestone #4: Final report (3 months)

• Gather package manager metrics
• Gather Github repository metrics
• Prepare and share final report

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

Milestone #1: Code generation (1 month)

• Output: a publicly available source-code repository
• Outcome: a CI pipeline capable of generating required code from OpenAPI specs

Milestone #2: Idiomatic wrappers (2 month)

• Output: a publicly available source-code repository
• Outcome: idiomatic client libraries for each of the involved languages

Milestone #3: Packaging and release (1 month)

• Output: publicly available packages in the corresponding package managers
• Outcome: SDKs for each involved language with all required features

Milestone #4: Final report (3 months)

• Output: a publicly available report
• Outcome: larger community is aware of project results

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

FTE = full-time equivalent

Values expressed in ADA (₳)

Breakdown by resource type:

• Backend developer: 1 FTE x 4 months = ₳ 128,571
• Technical writer: 1 FTE x 1 months = ₳ 15,000
• Project manager: 1/4 FTE x 6 months = ₳ 10,714

Breakdown by milestone

• Milestone #1: ₳ 34,286
• Milestone #2: ₳ 68,571
• Milestone #3: ₳ 34,286
• Milestone #4: ₳ 17,143

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

The resources associated with the development process will result in open-source code that can be leveraged by any team or member of the Cardano ecosystem.

Simplifying the development and integration of Marlowe contracts will promote adoption by developers and, in consequence, promote chain activity.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.