Pool.pm Visual Explorer - Open Source Improved Reboot towards a sustainable community innovation platform

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

Additional applicants

N/A

[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.” .

For reasons of performance, cost and ease of maintenance, Pool.pm relies on NFTCDN (https://nftcdn.io) to display NFTs.

This project could therefore be impacted by the outcome of NFTCDN "Free To Use" proposal:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/106648

[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.

Note, however, that the project will use the third-party NFTCDN service, which is not entirely open source.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

To resolve the issue of the lack of an advanced and original Open Source explorer for Cardano, as well as the long-term availability and usefulness of pool.pm, including on test networks, the chosen solution is to prepare the transition of pool.pm to a community project by rewriting it as an improved Open Source project based on past experience.

The aim is to:

• solve performance, scalability & robustness shortcomings
• support full redundancy to allow updates without any downtime
• make it possible for anyone to relaunch the project even if current funding or development comes to an end
• make it easier to identify problems and add new features, which should help keep the service accurate, reliable and up to date with new standards
• provide an open source & reusable way to delegate from any CIP30 wallet to any stake pool
• allow other internal parts to be reused in other projects
• make it easier to port the software to other related networks like Hydra channels (or maybe even eUTXO Ergo blockchain for example with more work)

In addition, the following new features are expected to be made possible with the new version:

• stake addresses transaction timelines, allowing to visually browse assets transfers between addresses and pools
• tokens display in stake pool pages, to show what a specific stake pool users are interested in
• asset policies pages with tokens, to display all the tokens of a specific policy
• rewards display in stake pool and stake address timelines

Lastly but importantly, the plan is to deploy sponsored features to work towards future sustainability and self-funding:

• Maintainers sponsorship
• Custom DEX & Marketplace detailed transactions and/or timelines
• Customized tokens whales and/or timelines
• Pools & stake address customization

Pool.pm is initially an SPO tool, and they will be the first to benefit from this new version thanks to the improved performance and functionality of stake pool pages.

One of the important aims of the reworked architecture and code is to facilitate the hosting of Preprod & Preview networks versions. Support for test networks has been requested several times since the first release of pool.pm and should meet some of the needs of SPOs, Cardano developers and creators who test on these networks.

But pool.pm is also unique is that it engages most Cardano users:

• New users from its visual and intuitive blockchain representation
• NFT users from its display of stake addresses contents & shareable URLs
• Cardano Foundation for the community delegation pages
• etc.

And all users will benefit from this new open source version:

• Stake Pool Operators will benefit from improved accuracy & performance, particularly the return of soft real-time updates and the removal of epoch boundaries lag.
• Users will benefit from an improved user experience thanks to performance, UI & UX improvements as well as new features
• SPOs, developers & testers will benefit from Preview & Preprod network versions.

The new version will also make a lot of other new features possible, even if they are not part of this proposal.

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

The proposed solution addresses the challenge in several ways:

1. It supports a tool built initially by an SPO, for SPOs, whose purpose was later expanded.
2. It supports the SPO Ecosystem by improving SPOs experience on mainnet and test networks.
3. It supports the update of an existing SPO tool.
4. It supports a tool that was one of the first to implement several CIPs and would continue to do so, contributing to the spread of new Cardano standards.

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

The success of the project will be measured in terms of performance, implemented new features, user satisfaction, source code popularity and contributions as well as sustainability

Performance:

• Real-time minimum, maximum and average lag measurement
• Loading time

New features implemented:

• stake addresses timelines
• rewards added to stake pools & addresses timelines
• tokens added to stake pool timelines
• asset policies galleries

User satisfaction:

• Number of users
• Users feedback (including polls results and testimonials)

Source code popularity & activity:

• Number of GitHub repo stars
• Number of GitHub repo visits
• Number of GitHub repo forks
• Number of GitHub repo contributions (issues, feature requests & pull requests)
• Number of GitHub contributors (issues, feature requests & pull requests)

Sustainability:

• GitHub sponsorship deployed
• Sponsored features availability
• Overall sponsorship growth results

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

The source code for the completed version will be published on GitHub, and the service will be publicly available at https://pool.pm. 

Alpha and beta versions will be available from sub-domains. Feedback from SPOs and involved users will be used to improve the service up to the final version.

Progress throughout development will also be shared on social networks, mainly Twitter and a new Discord server created around the pool.pm community.

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

As the pool.pm developer and maintainer for the past 3 years, I'm probably well placed to assess the problems, needs and challenges inherent in the project.

The reliability of the existing service, despite its shortcomings, and the quantity & quality of features released by the past should help ensure a high level of trust and accountability to deliver the project.

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

The main goals for the projects are:

• Transition pool.pm service to an Open Source project
• Pave the way to a community project
• Fix known performance issues
• Prepare the future by making pool.pm more scalable from a reworked architecture & design
• Make pool.pm available on Preview & Preprod networks
• Improve pool.pm UI & UX
• Deploy sponsored features to work towards self-funding and sustainability

The chosen approach feasibility will be validated by the first milestone proof of concept performance tests, test users feedback and general interest from the community in contributing in the future.

The first versions on the Preprod and Preview networks will also be important steps in assessing the feasibility of the approach, particularly in terms of the project's modularity and scalability.

[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: New version architecture, preliminary design & PoC

Duration: 3 months

Tasks:

• Service architecture
• Preliminary software conception
• Backend+Frontend Proof of Concept development and test

Milestone #2: Alpha version v0.0.1

Duration: 3 months

Tasks:

• Homepage development
• Stake pool pages development
• Deployment automation
• Onboard test users and gather feedback
• Discord server creation
• Alpha version release

Milestone #3: Beta version v0.1.0

Duration: 3 months

Tasks:

• Stake address pages development
• Token pages development
• Test suite development
• Preview network support
• Beta version release

Milestone #4: Version v1.0.0

Duration: 3 months

Tasks:

• Sponsored features added
• Source code review & release
• Release officially https://pool.pm, https://preview.pool.pm & https://preprod.pool.pm
• Process reported issues
• Prepare and send Catalyst Close-Out report

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

Deliverables:

Milestone #1: New version architecture, design & PoC

• https://test.pool.pm improved performance proof of concept version

Milestone #2: Alpha version v0.0.1

• https://alpha.pool.pm with improved homepage & pool pages

Milestone #3: Beta version v0.1.0

• https://beta.pool.pm with improved stake address & token pages
• https://preview.pool.pm for Preview network

Milestone #4: Version v1.0.0

• Source code available on https://github.com/pool-pm
• Documentation available on https://github.com/pool-pm
• Completed release version running on https://pool.pm
• Preview network version running on https://preview.pool.pm
• Preprod network version running on https://preprod.pool.pm

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

Assumptions:

• Company hourly rate: $70 per hour before all tax
• 1 ADA = 0.253 USD (value used by Catalyst to set categories budget in ADA, including $1,200,000 for SPO Tools & Community Projects)

Project Cost:

• Design / Architecture: 30 hours = $2,100.00
• Development: 640 hours = $47,040.00
• Project Management / Reporting: 96 hours = $6,720.00
• Support / Maintenance: 384 hours = $26,880.00
• Public Communication: 24 hours = $1,680.00
• Infrastructure: 24 months = $12,000.00

Subtotal: $96,420.00 = 380,666.16 ADA

ADA Slippage Tolerance: 5% = $4,821.00

TOTAL: 399,699.47 ADA

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

1. Pool.pm is a net positive for the Cardano ecosystem: it helps onboarding new SPOs, has served tens of thousands of users since its release, with hundreds of users simultaneously most of the time. It contributed significantly to the growth of the Cardano NFT ecosystem and is often praised for its unique & intuitive visual representation helping new users to understand how the blockchain works.
2. Because of my 3 years experience developing it and my 20 years professional experience, the cost for someone else to build it from scratch would be much higher.
3. Making an improved Open Source version would result in a positive benefit for Cardano and Catalyst as it would secure an important piece of software in the ecosystem and community, paving the path for future contributions, evolution and modifications.
4. The wage used is very reasonable from a French company with the level of experience involved. For example https://www.malt.fr/t/barometre-tarifs/tech/developpeur-backend/developpeur-fullstack indicates an average of 564€/day (€70.5/hour) for an experienced full-stack freelance developer, and this does not include the required blockchain expertise.
5. The time allocated to design and development is not very high compared with the time spent over the last three years, but it is based on a realistic estimate based on accumulated knowledge and experimentation, as well as on the reasonable scope of new functionalities included in the proposal despite the intention to develop many more if the project goes well.

[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.