Okapi Aiken - Open Source Library For Smart Contracts

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

[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] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

take common validator checks and create a library of helper functions that makes it quick and easy to draft concepts in Aiken

[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.”

It is a library for Aiken, so it depends in the existence of that language, but that is all

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

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

the library will be made open source and freely available for use by the cardano community

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

Aiken is a smart contract language for Cardano that has really taken the chain by storm, developed by an awesome team with a simple and easy to read syntax that is massively optimised for efficient on chain validation.

Okapi is a library of helper functions I have been developing as I have built smart contracts in Aiken, that is currently neither ready for publishing nor optimised for performance.

The goal of this proposal is to dedicate 2 months working on Okapi directly, optimising and adding to this helper function library in public.

I will make youtube videos covering the process, design decisions, and optimisation process.

My goal is to create a toolset that can be taught to beginners to help them understand and design their own smart contracts.

I will use this as a way to create both a tool that the community can use and one that can help budding smart contract developers quickly draft and test their ideas as a proof of concept mechanism to even further improve the amazing dev experience that the Aiken team have put together

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community.

If you have every written any contracts on Cardano you have probably heard of the plutarch-extra library, it was such a great tool for developers working in plutarch that it became a standard integration and starting point for many smart contracts, it is both a heavily used and appreciated tool to make the developer experience a lot better than it was without.

The library I am putting together is similar, although not as desperately needed as plutarch-extra, it is something that can be used by any smart contract dev working in aiken to speed up their workflow, especially in the drafting and discovery phases.

Each function will be drafted and optimised to ensure that it doesn't add unnecessary bloated computation to contracts it gets used in.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

I recently did a youtube video that teaches fractionalised NFTs in Aiken, I introduced Okapi during that video and we pulled helper functions out of the validators to prevent duplicate code.

[Project Milestones] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Create a draft of the library functions with some tests to benchmark against optimised versions later

publish a video explaining the process and design decisions with some examples

rewrite library through incremental optimisations aiming to reduce code bloat and minimise the computation cost of running the functions

publish a video showing the testing and optimisation process

open source the library and publish a video that demonstrates the library with an example smart contract (similar to the YouTube video I did recently)

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Rhys Morgan smart contract dev

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

30K ADA right now is about 9K GBP this represents 2 months of dev time for myself

and this will also cover my time recording and publishing the videos.

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

it will help make the development process much easier and faster on Cardano, which in turn will help onboard more developers to the ecosystem and make writing smart contracts even easier than it currently is with Aiken

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agrees to Fund 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.