Catalyst Turbo - Community Catalyst Infrastructure Experiments

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Darlington Kofa

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

darlington@lidonation.com

Additional applicants

Will use the lido's Ngong Road Blockchain lab for some of the frontend coding.

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

6

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

No

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

Yes

[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.” .

Maybe a small dependency and that is the Catalyst Core open source repository and infrastructure is ready for community testing. The Catalyst team is on track to deliver the continuous Testnet in fund 10 so we're confident we will be able to start work by the end of the funding cycle.

Also, the work is being done in the open, in an accessible open source repository, if we need to hit the ground rolling before the blessing of the Catalyst team, we will be able to!

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

Yes

[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

SPOs

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The Context:

The ability to run parallel experiments is something the Cardano and Catalyst community have been asking for over a year now. This proposal takes a shot at moving the needle on this ask. We're not proposing a single solution with one output but rather a series of experiments. 

The catalyst team is busy building an infrastructure stack to bring better UI/UX, more transparency and flexibility to how we run Catalyst. This means over the next 12 to 24 months the only thing they will be thinking about is how to make the system work for the way we’ve been running Catalyst using Ada voting power. 

**The Opportunity**

It would be a missed opportunity if the community does not come alongside the catalyst core team and run experiments that could lead to more battle tested, more versatile, and more bang for the buck catalyst system, while the cement is still wet. We don't want to wait two years to find out that the system can't be flexible in this way, or that assumptions about flexibility were "off tip (SPO speak for 'behind the rest of the network')".

**The Experiments**

Experiment 1: The disco solaris Neo Miami community have been dreaming about running an innovation round much like Catalyst using their Discoin for incentivisation. We have a memorandum of understanding to host and run their DisCatalyst using the Catalyst Explorer as the frontend and the Catalyst Core as the backend.

Experiment 2: What modules of the system can we run independently for solving problems not related to catalyst voting cycles. On this, our eyes are centered on the snapshot module. Every Fungible or Non-fungible community often needs snapshot:

Can we re-purpose the snapshot module just for generating snapshots for whatever purpose?

We will be looking at the current open source code for catalyst infrastructure and seeing if we can extract and run the snapshot module as an independent system. 

An additional questions we will be trying to answer:

• Is the independent snapshot module flexible to apply rules, account for NFT rarities, and accommodate multipliers?

We don't yet know the answer to these questions but would like the opportunity to find out.

**Outputs for SPOs and Friends**

The catalyst team has communicated that we will be able to run the Catalyst System using docker-compose or Earthly.dev. Neither of these are meant for or recommended for running long running systems in production. 

• docker-compose is great for rapid prototyping. 
• Earthly is excellent for packaging and taking the pain out CI/CD orchestration.

Therefore, We will be creating Kubernetes artifacts with a helm chart (or Kustomize) to boot for a more resilient option for SPOs who want to start experimenting with running all or parts of the Catalyst infrastructure. Because we're Cardano, I imagine the eventual direction of the catalyst infrastructure is a federated if not decentralized setup. 

The more opportunities SPOs have to start running the system now the more prepared we will be when the call comes to help run catalyst infrastructure.

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

The challenges wants to "kickoff SPO Tools & Platforms, to offer Services, Events, and Research." If catalyst modules can be run independent of the entire stack for other purposes, this opens the door for services SPOs can offer the community!

Opportunity 1:

This proposal will not only demonstrate how SPOs can be leveraged to host catalyst style innovation rounds for community, output the data and spin down the infrastructure, it will also provide git repo for a starting point!

Opportunity 2:

This proposal will provide a git repo that can serve as a basis for SPOs to offer a snapshot as a service to the community.

As a stake pool operator that runs Cardano infrastructure on both the preview and Mainnet (lido is the ticker on both), we're quite excited about this opportunity for maximizing our Cardano node usefulness and potential for additional revenue streams.

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

• Can the Disco community run their DisCatalyst on the infrastructure?
• Can one or more modules be run independently to solve one or more challenges not related to catalyst voting cycles?
• Can we run catalyst infrastructure on Kubernetes?

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

All code assets will be open sourced. We will also be engaging with the community on twitter spaces and main town hall check ins as well as after Townhalls.

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

The Lido Nation team has delivered 8 Project Catalyst projects, and is fully invested and involved in the community, at both virtual and in-person events.

We are stake pool operators running a whole host of Cardano infrastructure including:

• DBSync
• publicly accessible submit api
• a roundtable multi-sig wallet instance.

We run all of these on preview and Mainnet. We're running in the middle of spinning up TxPipe's Ourav2 as well as a Carp's price indexer.

Our technology lead, Darlington, is a Cardano Ambassador, worked as DevOps/Cloud Systems Engineer for over 8 years.

He has also been writing software to solve business challenges for over 15 years with experience running his own company.

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

Some goals of this project are:

• create Kubernetes assets for running catalyst on top of Kubernetes
• See if the infrastructure is flexible to run the DisCatalyst funding round
• Prove out running a module independently from the system

All of these goals are meant to surface either of these:

• Learnings that can be reported to the Catalyst team to influence future development
• Result in code that can be contributed back to Catalyst Core Open Source library.
• Open source code SPO can use as basis for additional services and revenue stream

[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 - Run on Kubernetes: 1 month.

The big idea is to package up the catalyst infrastructure to run in the kubernetes environment. This will result in a git repo with kubernetes artifacts and documentation for packaging and installing the entire Catalyst stack as a single installation.

Milestone 2 - DisCatalyst (3 months)

The Dico Solaris community loves the spirit of Catalyst. They are in the middle of planning to run a catalyst of their own using their discoin token for incentivisation. The hypothesis here is: Can we use the catalyst core stack to run DisCatalyst? 

We don't know if they will answer but finding an answer or discovering what, if added to the foundation being built with catalyst core, communities will be able to use catalyst core to run their own innovation management systems.

Milestone 3 - Snapshot as a service (2 month)

The new catalyst core is designed to be module and interdependent. This milestone is all about proving this out: Can modules that make up core be run independently and repurpose to solve other challenges? Can we use the explorer's snapshot module to power a snapshot as a service? 

The big idea is that stake pool operators (or anyone else) can launch just the snapshot module and provide a snapshot as a service. Some unanswered questions that this milestone will try to sort out:

- How configurable are the snapshots?

- Can it be adopted to any native token?

- Can it support NFT as a multiplier?

- Can it support delegation as a multiplier?

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

The deliverable are as follows:

• A way to deploy the entire core as Kubernetes deployment using helm or Kustomize in a git repo
• Running DisCatalyst on catalyst core
• Documentation and demonstration of running the snapshot module as a service. If additional server infrastructure is needed, provide Docker files in a git repo.
• Report of any learnings or bugs for the catalyst core team

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

Milestone 1 - Run on Kubernetes: $4,000.

- dev time, test, temporary cloud resources validating

Milestone 2 - DisCatalyst (3 months) - $36,000

- setting up or augmenting catalyst stack to run disk catalyst

- basic web ui for casting votes and viewing results

- Extracting outputs to preserve data when system is shut down

- Augmenting the Catalyst Explorer to allow proposal submission and reviews

Milestone 3 - Snapshot as a service (2 month) - $8,000

- validate running snapshot as a service

- documentation

- git repo any spo can deploy

Total: $48,000

Ada: 192,000

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

Empowering SPO to run catalyst style innovation rounds for communities and projects speaks directly to Cardano's roadmap of pond, lake, and ocean -- it adds another axis for SPO to serve and protect the ecosystem while opening more revenue opportunities for SPO.

Pushing the boundaries of the catalyst stack and increasing the test area will lead to a more robust, more resilient catalyst stack, a big win for the entire ecosystem.

[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.

I Accept