cPoker Hydra Case Study: Implement Interactive dApp

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Seomon Register

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

Entity (Not Incorporated)

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

4

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

No

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

Develop a Case Study to re-implement an existing multi-user interactive dApp using Hydra, with focus on collecting transactions and exchange communications implementing a cryptographic protocol.

[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.”

This project's aim is to study an alternative solution to exchange transactions in an interactive dApp, which is internally developed. The only external dependency is towards the Hydra team. The Hydra team is reliable, even if the Hydra protocol is evolving and we know that there have been considerations about implementing poker, instead of Doom, in the past.

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

Yes

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

The results of this case study will be fully open source. This include the PoC with two use cases, and the related documentation and video.

[METADATA] Horizons

Research

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

The team is currently developing cPoker: an interactive dApp based on Kaleidoscope and Royale: two IOG's research paper focusing on implementing cryptographic protocols to allow multiple users to interact in a game. Please, see the video at the bottom of this section, to have a glimpse at the cryptographic protocol being implemented.

The team is currently using an in-house communication solution (DRED: Decentralized Redis) both for handling transactions and for exchanging information for the implementation of the cryptographic protocol.

We developed DRED because Hydra was not available when we started development. Now that Hydra has been released and tested, we think that our dApp would be an extremely interesting real-world use case for implementing a PoC demonstrating how to handle real-time interactions.

Specifically, we want to study a possible implementation of handling both the transactions and the cryptographic exchanges directly on Hydra.

The scope of our solution will be the following:

• Verify the feasibility and outline the implementation of a testnet smart contract that will:
• lock funds for a number of participants, in order to start the game
• enable to perform in-game transactions directly on the Hydra sidechain
• release funds according to game results
• Verify the feasibility and outline the implementation of a cryptographic protocol exchange using hydra, specifically a Threshold Elgamal exchange, in according to what what is presented on the Kaleidoscope paper, with focus on
• implementing an exchange between participants to agree on a shared key
• enable the participants to perform partial encryptions (and notify others)
• enable participants to perform partial decryptions (and notify others)
• Implement a PoC to consolidate both the previous implementations.
• Produce documentation and video explanation detailing the results.

Please, note: Since this is a research project, we will produce adequate documentation and evidence, but the output result may vary.

The video below gives an idea about the experience of the team implementing the cryptographic protocol, and how the Hydra study should be placed in the solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOVCTPa5ZB0

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

The cPoker Hydra Case Study will lower the barriers for developers looking to use Hydra to build interactive multi-user Cardano dApps, particularily those requiring implementing cryptographic protocols or handling transactions on a side chain.

By Re-implementing parts of an existing dApp using Hydra, the study will provide practical guidance on transaction collection and cryptographic communication.

The positive impact will be:

• Knowledge Sharing: We'll share findings through our case study, detailed documentation, and open-source code.
• Community Empowerment: Through a concrete example, the developers will be able to reproduce and implement their own version od real-time interaction and secure transaction handling with Hydra
• Measurable Outcomes: We will measure impact quantitavely by tracking metrics such as the number of feedbacks from the developer community.

[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?

Our team already delivered a PoC of a dApp implementing the described cryptographic protocol. Besides having a real need for this study, our team includes Cryptographic experts, and experienced software engineers and blockchain experts which have the capabilities needed to understand Hydra, implement the needed smart contracts, and implement the Cryptographic protocol that we want to test.

Our Capability to Deliver can be demonstrated by what we have already done, what we are doing, how we are working together, and by the reputation of the team members:

• We developed DRED, a foundational library at the core of this proposal. The DRED project, successfully delivered by the same team was itself a research project.
• We are developing a commercial gaming application using DRED, of which we have a working PoC.
• The team is capable, meets regularly, and has a good track record of github commits, and of published documentation and videos for the current projects.
• We already worked in other Cardano projects, and we are technically ready to take the challenge.
• We work on this project since long time. We know the technical challenges well because we put our own ressources to work on this project.
• Our team members are well-known in the community, joining and organising community events on a regular bases for years by now. In the past, we also organized and participated in Challenge Teams, such as the Open Source CT.

The Feasibility of our Approach is validated according to:

• Our Trackrecord: We already built sophisticated software on which this project builds on. We already successfully implemented the cryptographic protocols which we want to reproduce in this Case Study.
• Incremental Progress: we broke down the problem in subproblems, which makes it easier to solve different aspects
• Pragmatic Approach: incremental implementation during the study, incremental assessment of the deliverables for the project milestones

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

M1: Study and Document transaction handling

Milestone outputs:

• Source code and documentation on https://github.com/Cardano-After-Dark/hydra-poc

Acceptance criteria:

• Verify the feasibility of implementing a testnet smart contract that will:
• lock funds for a number of participants, in order to start the game
• enable to perform in-game transactions directly on the Hydra sidechain
• release funds according to game results

Evidence of Completion

• Article with Feasibility study
• Implementation or partial implementation of the smart contract handling the transactions in a hydra side-chain

M2: Study and Document cryptographic protocol implementation

Milestone outputs:

• Source code and documentation on https://github.com/Cardano-After-Dark/hydra-poc

Acceptance criteria:

• Verify the feasibility of implementing a cryptographic protocol using hydra, specifically a Threshold Elgamal exchange, in according to what discussed on the Kaleidoscope paper, with focus on
• implementing an exchange between participants to agree on a shared key
• enable the participants to perform partial encryptions (and notify others)
• enable participants to perform partial decryptions (and notify others)

Evidence of Completion

• Article with Feasibility study
• Implementation or partial implementation of cryptographic protocol through Hydra

M3: Present result, implement implement PoC

Milestone outputs:

• Source code and documentation on https://github.com/Cardano-After-Dark/hydra-poc

Acceptance criteria:

• Release an Article presenting the Case Study results.
• Release Source Code for PoC implementing
• transactions handling on Hydra side-chain
• cryptographic protocol implementation through Hydra

Evidence of Completion

• Article with Feasibility study
• Implementation of both cases

M4: Closeout

Milestone outputs:

• Source code and documentation on https://github.com/Cardano-After-Dark/hydra-poc
• Video on https://www.youtube.com/@cardanoafterdark
• Closeout Report

Acceptance criteria

• Provide project closeout report and video about the project completion.
• Public release of Source code and Article detaiing the case study.

Evidence of Completion

• Closeout report and video
• Project Documentation and Video publicly available
• List all evidence from previous milestones.

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

P.Suzzi, Developer, SW Engineer - www.linkedin.com/in/psuzzi

• Responsible for development, integration and testing of the communication module.

Jake G. - Developer, SW Engineer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-gonzalez-551306b4/

• Responsible for development, software engineering, testing .

Randall - Software architect, 20+ years exposure to cryptography, accounting, and application development - https://www.linkedin.com/in/randall-harmon-aa52765/

• Designing the architecture and ensuring scalability and security of the system.

Seomon - Project Manager, IT Consultant, Cardano Ambassador

• Managing the project-, timelines, milestones, alignment, reports and community engagement.

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

We have calculated the total costs based on team experience, average market rates, and our willingness to be paid less than average market rate in order to get funded. This is possible because we are really motivated in exploring the Hydra solution, and we're confident about the R&D objectives.

The core team is distributed across the EU (Austria, Italy) and the US (California, Texas). Market rates for the roles needed will average to ~ 90 USD/hour. But we're willing to work for 150 ADA/hour.

Cost Breakdown:

Development Effort:

• Project duration: 4 months
• Total estimated development time: 540 working hours --> 13.5 working weeks
• Research and Development activities: 440 h
• Project management, communications, documentation: 100 h

Development Costs:

• Based on the development team previous experience, we estimate 150 ADA/hour will cover for the estimated development costs in the period.
• Personnel: 540 h * 150 ADA/h = 81 k ADA (~ 26 k USD)

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

By Re-implementing parts of an existing dApp using Hydra, the study will provide practical guidance on collecting transactions on Hydra and on how to implement a cryptographic protocol on it.

The practical results in this real-world product under development will help the developer community. The most interested will be the dApp developers in need of using Hydra for transactional purposes or simply to exchange information.

The price tag of the project is relatively cheap, given the competences needed, and the market rate, which is roughly half the market rate (at current rates 80k ADA ~= 27k UDS) to fund a study that will take approximately 14 man-weeks.

Since we already developed part of the software and we are highly motivated to produce an Hydra solution for comparison, the team can operate below market rates. In our locations, the average hourly rate would be around 90 USD/hour in average (~268 ADA/hour), while our proposed rate would be 150 ADA/hour.