SPO - Pool Backup and Disaster Recovery

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Mitch F

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

admin@ada-darkpool.com

Additional applicants

Main Applicant

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

8

[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?

No

[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.” .

No dependencies

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

No

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

Because of the potential sensitivity of the operation, it might be advantageous for parts of the system to be closed-source. The flip side is that I would like community review and have key parts be able to be viewed so there is a level of trust in the system, since you can audit it yourself.

I'm only saying no, because as the architecture comes together there might be some parts of the system that are not publicly viewable and I do not want to miss represent. But my goal is to make it as open as possible, which very well could mean all of it.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

SPOs

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The problem I am trying to solve for is disaster recovery for SPOs. There are SPOs with various levels of infrastructure and disaster plans, if there are plans at all. For a lot of SPOs it financially might not make sense to run a full DR plan or fully redundant systems full time.

I want to have a place where SPOs can go to achieve a minimal level of redundancy. There might be a systemic issue with your configuration. Security breach, DDoS attack. Maybe something as simple as the the power goes out and you need to ensure your blocks are produced. You just want to have a ready to go place where you can spin up a producer to meet your assigned blocks.

The expected outcome of this project is to demonstrate that the service can be created.

I hope to also use this as a springboard to enter the ecosystem professionally. Perhaps even extend it in the future to enable greater automation for running Cardano Nodes. Example. Use the automatons to enable SPOs to leverage their own cloud or local systems for similar functionality.

This will consist of several components.

1) A web-based interface to manage your account, settings, and monitor your service.

2) Infrastructure and automation to host nodes

3) Automation for managing nodes and customer requests for fail-over

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

It is important not just as an SPO, but also Cardano and an ecosystem, that the chain and its stake pools provide value and resiliency to the ecosystem. Part of the expectation as a delegator is that your SPO is managing the pool and operations to be resilient. This service is designed to allow SPOs to provide that resiliency

Its important for SPOs, because they should want to provide the highest level of service available, but it might be challenging to justify the costs.

It is important to delegators that your ADA is generating consistent returns.

It is important to the overall ecosystem that pools are resilient, even if it is mainly optics.

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

I will measure success in the following ways.

1) Develop Front-end to manage your account and status of failover

2) Design Base Infrastructure to meet the compute and storage needs

3) Develop system to rapidly spin up a block producer when needed to produce your pools blocks

4) Stretch goal - Develop system to detect if there is a potential reach-ability issue on your block producer

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

I will share all my results with the community via Twitter, Discord, and the website that will be the landing page for the service. There will be a github repo as well as a website to demo.

Any metrics, proof of progress, or lessons learned can be used to help further the ecosystem.

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

I have been managing infrastructure at scale for almost 20 years in various capacities. I designed and managed datacetners with over 8,000 virtual compute resources and all their supporting infrastructure. From designing data-centers from the ground up to hold over 500 servers to more recently managing several high-profile cloud accounts.

I have extensive background in Datacenters, DevOps, Automation, and programming. I gravitate to infrastructure and being an SPO and wanting to provide tools to manage SPOs is an interest of mine.

I have been operating a stake pool for over two years. The pool has very high uptime, however gaining delegation is difficult, marketing is not my forte, however I enjoy running the node very much. The pool is running on powerful hardware, 64 cores, 256GB RAM, ZFS, NVME.

I will provide regular updates with regards to progress and use of funds (equipment purchases, licenses, any contractors that need to be paid to complete pieces). I intend to keep the funds in my Stake Pool

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

The main goals are as follows.

1) Develop Front-end to manage your account and status of fail-over.

• Is the website up and can perform basic functionality.
• Can users login
• Can users see their account status
• Can users enable or disable their failover

2) Design base infrastructure to meet the compute and storage needs

• Is there hardware allocated to this project
• Is the hardware functional and accessible
• Public cloud integrations and infrastructre as code is developed

3) Develop system to rapidly spin up a block producer when needed to produce your pools blocks

• Is there automation in place that can start / deploy resources on above hardware

4) Stretch Goal - Develop system to detect if there is a potential reach ability issue on your block producer

• Is there a method to detect if a users pool is having an issue and automatically enable the failover

[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.

1) Develop Front-end to manage your account and status of fail-over. - 3 Months

• I expect this to take approximately 3 months. Success will be the ability to use the website in a "MVP" fashion with. This means core functionality is working, but might still need better design or graphics. I expect to use some freelancers for the frontend, as, while I have done some frontend work, It would be much better and more efficient if I consult an expert.

2) Design and source base infrastructure to meet the compute and storage needs - 2 Month

• The front end will need to communicate with a back-end that ultimately runs a block producer on behalf of the SPO that needs the service. This will require hardware and cloud costs. The Purchase, configuration and installation of hardware will be a milestone.
• Infrastructure as code is developed for public cloud resources

3) Design and code the back-end automation - 3 Months

• Integration needs to be done between the fronend, back-end automation, and the hardware / Cloud.

4) Stretch Gloal - Implement a detection system to initiate failover.

• Is it possible to implement a system that can properly detect a failure in a block producer and initiate failover.

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

The ultimate goal is to produce a product that any SPO can use as an emergency backup. Currently there are a lot of nodes that it is just not financially feasible for smaller SPOs to have this level of redundancy. Even for larger SPOs, it is not a bad idea to have a system that is outside your ecosystem in the event of a systemic failure of their local plans.

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

1) Develop Front-end to manage your account and status of fail-over.

• $20,000 - Development time, hosting needed and potential augmentation with freelancers

2) Design and source base infrastructure to meet the compute and storage needs

• $15,000 - POC Hardware needs to be acquired
• $15,000 - Datacenter space rented for POC
• $15,000 - Cloud Costs

3) Design and code the back-end automation

• $ 15,000 - Development time, hosting needed and potential augmentation with freelancers
• $ 5,000 - Develop IaC for Cloud Resources

4) Any administrative or legal resources that are needed

• $5,000

5) Marketing and Promotion budget.

• $10,000

I expect this to be a rather full-time endeavor while it is in development, and some outside resources will inevitably need to be leveraged for parts of this. We are spanning the full stack with this proposal including hosting costs.

Total expected cost.

$100.000

ADA Price at submission: $0.28

ADA: 350,000

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

It is important that the SPO system is healthy and active. This service empowers SPOs to have redundant setups as apart of their disaster plan. It helps remove that operational complexity that allows SPOs to focus on community.

Not only is this helping all SPOs, but it is furthering the ecosystem of people who are working professionally with Cardano.

I want to be sure the project is delivered upon with quality and has the ability to sustain and endure. Hosting, price of equipment, and local freelancers are unfortunately on the expensive side. However, I wish to use this not only to deliver, but to also start a network of local professionals who can work on projects in the 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