Add social connectivity for Stakepool Operators and Delegators to HAZELnet

[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)

We will add support to our widely used product for SPOs to verify and send announcements to their communities and delegators to subscribe to pool updates using their preferred IM and social media apps

[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.”

No dependencies.

[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

Apache License 2.0

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution.

The solution in a single paragraph:

Ray is a stakepool operator that regularly asks his delegators to which charity the current quarter's dedicated 10% of stakepool profits should go. He's compiling a list of three organizations he has trusted relationships with and creates a quick Voteaire.io poll for his delegators to participate in. After verifying he is indeed owner of WORG pool, he sends the link to the poll and a summary to his delegators. Somehow, Evita, who Ray has never met (and whose wallet address, Discord handle or phone number he does not know) gets both a Discord notification and a text message about the upcoming poll. She votes that same evening, happy she did not have to worry about missing the vote, after all the work-related distractions that kept her busy throughout the week.

As we approach the era of governance on Cardano, more and more polling systems are being built, both for the purposes of use in DAOs, but also for the purposes of Stakepool operators engaging with their delegators. SPOs contact their delegators and even prospective delegators in matters of blockchain parameters, community building, raffles, charitable contributions, ISPOs (Initial Stake Pool Offerings), real world meetup organization and many other topics. This affects both the part time stakepool operators as well as SPOs that have made running a stakepool or multiple stakepools their primary source of income.

Recent polls initiated by IOG and CF around stakepool parameters have shown that many SPOs want to engage with their delegators with regards to their opinions for the purposes of polling, but many found out that there are several problems with actually reaching your delegators, because Cardano itself is no scalable messaging-solution that can be leveraged. Other major problems are:

• Delegators have vastly different sets of messaging apps and social networks in which they are active
• There is no system that keeps delegators social identities separated from their delegated wallets, making it so that often times you have to dox your wallet to engage in conversation with someone based on holdings or delegation
• Wallet providers could build solutions but are occupied with more important problems to solve at the foundational level, and without the majority supporting the same set of protocols, people not using a supporting wallet would still be left out.

On the delegators' side, a different set of problems exists, which also can be solved with the same set of technologies. Delegators want to know about changes in their stakepool's reliability, margins and costs, opportunities for airdrops. There are some tools to subscribe to stakepool changes via Telegram, but it is limited to very specific updates, not configurable to subscribe to only a certain kind of news or thresholds, nor does it allow to receive announcements from your SPO.

Another major issue is stake not moving from retired pools, because delegators do not regularly actively seek updates on their stakepools, leaving many millions of stake that does not generate rewards and can cause frustration for those delegators that miss out on their rewards, as well as other SPOs that are active in Cardano.

Our application HAZELnet already has many of the requirements and infrastructure in place to solve these problems and build foundations for future growth, as the SPO ecosystem matures.

For this proposal, we would add the following capabilities to our existing system:

• Ability for stakepool operators to verify their identity via CIP-0022
• Verified stakepool operators can send messages to anyone who is delegated to their pool
• Delegators can subscribe to basic stakepool parameter changes via the website (margin, total stake, own stake, pledge, min fee, pool retiring and more, if sensible)
• Both types of Messages will be delivered via Discord and at least one supported additional channel (examples include Tweets, Telegram messages or Facebook postings) - recipients can decide on which channels to get updates (for private message/notification-based applications)
• Stakepool operators can configure Discord channels to have automatic pool updates
• Privacy settings for delegators to accept/deny receiving notifications (custom messages, pool updates etc.)
• Public APIs for the SPOs to leverage to allow integrating with their own websites and partner projects

What we are NOT trying to solve with this solution

• Polling. There are various existing polling solutions both for on- and off-chain polls, some even integrated into HAZELnet already. We are not building such a solution in this proposal and instead want to make it easier to integrate with those existing solutions.
• We are not committing to integrating all major social networking/messaging apps, just a subset as polled from the community and building a foundation for additional integrations.
• We do not plan to build a Stakepool discovery platform at this time. Stakeboard was not funded previously and we believe discovery of stakepools is best done in-wallet, where delegation is completed.

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

The solution brings value to the ecosystem and stakepool operators by providing them with tooling to connect with a diverse set of delegators, with different preferences for receiving information about and interacting with their stakepools. Generally, stake moves slowly, which is in part due to the lack of information flow to delegators unless they actively seek out updates on non-common channels (like pool.pm, cexplorer.io).

It also creates more engagement between SPOs and their delegators, which will become relevant as we enter the age of governance on Cardano.

The key metrics for success are the number of actively subscribed delegators (i.e. users that have verified delegated wallets and respond positively to the opt-in messages to receive updates about their pool)

The second main metric will be the number of stakepool operators that verify their identity to be able to communicate with their delegation team.

The outputs of the development work will be immediately visible in the open-source repository for HAZELnet, as they reach a working status. In addition, our existing public dashboard can be enhanced to show if people start leveraging the feature without revealing any information about specific delegators or SPOs that do participate (to avoid influencing).

Our existing public dashboard: https://hazelpool.grafana.net/public-dashboards/37b024d96570451780c6354f70944b47

[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 am Director of Development at a leading business process management solution that builds enterprise grade web applications. With over 25 years of experience in web development, building full stack applications for companies with more than 50.000 employees, I was able to bring this knowledge to Cardano to build a community integration solution called HAZELnet, that as of today is used by more than 600 Discord servers serving more than 600,000 users. In two years of consistent contributions in code, leveraging Cardano infrastructure as a stakepool operator of HAZEL as well as providing educational content for the Cardano ecosystem, I have shown the ability to build, deliver and reiterate on my projects, all the while making sure that the input of the community comes first in deciding what needs to be done.

I have built prototypes for Twitter integrations and Telegram integrations already and look forward to building a robust integration for this project on top of these. As such and knowing there are many different tools integrating with this, I consider the instant messaging connection feasible. On the stakepool update side, I have extensive experience with both cardano-db-sync and Oura, and know that all relevant stakepool updates that need tracking are available using these tools (they are feasible because I have worked with projects like pool.pm, that already have this type of updates available in a passive consumption style).

In addition, I've proven progress and delivered full solutions for other grant-based projects (Fund 10 Catalyst, dcSpark WalletConnect Grant)

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

Outputs:

• Reach out to SPOs that are willing to test capabilities during development and solidify requirements they have
• Create basic event and database model for on-chain stakepool updates for use in notifications, privacy settings, verification confirmations etc.
• Research and prototype service that consumes/checks Oura/Ogmios/db-sync events and available data that is related to stakepool changes
• Build mockups for SPO verification UI and delegator privacy/notification options

Acceptance Criteria:

• At least 6 meetings with active SPOs to hear about their specific needs confirmed by the SPOs (contact information provided as evidence)
• Database and event model in open-source repository
• Mockups available on request (Figma)

Outputs:

• Add support for individual accounts to verify they are a stakepool operator via CIP-0022
• Decide on social integration to build first (in addition to the existing Discord integration) based on SPO feedback and technical feasibility and build prototype (either from scratch or based on existing code, depending on the choice)
• Create UI and functionality for delegators to set privacy levels
• Create public dashboard to show data from the models created in milestone 1

Acceptance Criteria:

• User interfaces for SPO verification and delegator notification/privacy options live on mainnet website
• New commands available in Discord servers that leverage HAZELnet
• Document with feedback from SPOs and decision on which social media integration to pursue
• Public dashboard has new metrics visible

Outputs:

• Add commands to configure stakepool updates in Discord channels and test with SPOs for fee and margin changes
• Add website functionality for verified SPOs to send messages to Discord users
• Continue work on second social media/messenger integration
• Have first mainnet SPOs verify their accounts and test Discord-based messaging

Acceptance Criteria:

• Mainnet use of SPO update commands in Discord available to all users
• User interface for messaging live on mainnet website
• Number of verified SPOs should be 3+ on public dashboard

N/A

N/A

Outputs:

• Send out opt-in messages to active delegators and starting onboarding of end users
• Create public APIs for use from external websites for SPOs to allow integrations from their own projects
• Finalize second social media/messenger integration
• Adding support for additional update types (pledge change, retiring pools, etc.) in both messaging- and Discord-channel based delegator notifications
• Feedback collection for the participating SPOs

Acceptance Criteria:

• Public dashboard should show 50 or more opt-ins for stakepool update notifications
• Project-End Survey for SPOs available
• New command documentation on website
• New API documentation available via link

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

The project consists of me as the core developer and my wife as a project coordinator that will also function as outreach/community manager.

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nils-peuser-437784a/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-peuser-716a92177/

It also includes the additional SPOs (besides me) that are willing to test-drive the capabilities (we already have several candidates that are interested)

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

Our Budget Breakdown for the total of 125,000 ADA (estimating 0.35 USD per ADA) is:

4 months x $550 for ongoing operational costs + Twitter API

• $300/month (monthly backend server cost - current + estimated additions)
• $99/month GitLab CI/CD pipeline with automated security checks and private repositories
• $10/month cost for AWS Amplify Website hosting
• $30/month cost for Marketing/Licensed Graphic Content material source via Envato Elements
• $100/month for Twitter basic API usage

4 months x $1500 for a part-time project manager position

• Based on an annual salary of $55000 and the expectation that we only need a part-time role with ~ 15 hrs/week.

4 months x $8750 for a full time Full Stack Developer

• Based on an annual salary for a mid-level Full Stack Engineer of $105000 in the US Northwest. Engineers with this level typically have no blockchain knowledge or no enterprise experience. The in-depth knowledge required to work with Cardano commonly comes at a premium that is ignored here.

A spreadsheet of the budget breakdown by Resource and Month can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1evgujdpesbWSJ7yc0YQhM5QvY5glfZHhEpCuFCNUOy8/edit?usp=sharing

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

The inherent value proposition is fostering closer connections between SPOs and their delegators, enabling a more realistic assessment when it comes to participation in governance and polling delegators for their opinions. The basic capabilities for this project will be free to use (i.e. running costs post the project's end date are carried by HAZELnet), allowing every SPO in the Cardano ecosystem to leverage it without additional cost.

The open-source nature of the project allows other developers to leverage even just parts of the project in other ways. This means the money spent makes it so that people can access a source repository that provides example code for CIP-0022 validation in Java/Kotlin/TypeScript, as well as showcasing connectors to different social media apps.

It will also contain code that shows how to receive real-time updates from the blockchain on all stakepool-related activity using TxPipe's Oura or a similar solution.

Lastly, the public APIs for the new solutions will allow SPOs and polling solutions to integrate with us via API calls and webhooks, enabling a network of services without having to deploy them themselves.

[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.