[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

Anvil - CSL‑Lite: Modular Cardano Serialization Toolkit

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

85000

[Proposal Summary] Time

Please specify how many months you expect your project to last

5

[Proposal Summary] Translation Information

Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated

No

Original Language

en

[Proposal Summary] Problem Statement

What is the problem you want to solve?

CSL+WASM hurts Next.js/web: big bundles, SSR workarounds, memory issues. Teams need a lightweight, pure‑TS Cardano parse/serialize toolkit, not a monolith.

[Proposal Summary] Supporting Documentation

Supporting links

• https://github.com/Cardano-Forge
,
• https://dev.ada-anvil.io/
,
• https://ada-anvil.io/

[Proposal Summary] Project Dependencies

Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'

No dependencies

[Proposal Summary] Project Open Source

Will your project's outputs be fully open source?

Yes

License and Additional Information

Fully Open source (Apache-2.0)

[Theme Selection] Theme

Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal

Infrastructure

[Campaign Category] Category Questions

Mention your open source license and describe your open source license rationale.

Anvil has selected the Apache-2.0 license for its open-source protocol to maximize adoption and long-term sustainability.

Apache-2.0 is a permissive license that allows developers and enterprises to freely use, modify, and integrate the protocol. It provides explicit patent protection and contributor safeguards, reducing legal risks. Lower barrier to adoption while ensuring legal clarity, Apache-2.0 creates the optimal balance between openness and enterprise readiness, helping Anvil’s protocol scale as a foundational standard within the Cardano ecosystem.

How do you make sure your source code is accessible to the public from project start, and people are informed?

We plan on building in the open, on Github, from Milestone 1 of the proposal.

Repository will be created as part of our initial milestones, and we will start to socialize that through Catalyst and our official Social Media accounts.

How will you provide high quality documentation?

We pride ourselves on our documentation and examples that support developers of all skill levels. See the examples below for some of our public documentation.

Our first open sourced project Weld is commonly cited as being easy to use and well documented. https://github.com/Cardano-Forge/weld

We have several positive messages about ease of use of our documentation for our Anvil API https://dev.ada-anvil.io/

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

Parse/serialize Cardano primitives for dApps/wallets. Modules: CBOR, Bech32, crypto, address, keys, tx parsing, CSL compatibility adapter. Non-goals: transaction building, fee calc, Plutus evaluation.

Technical Approach

• Language/Build: TypeScript, ESM-first output, side‑effect‑free modules for tree‑shaking; shipped types; strict lint/tsconfig.
• CBOR: Implement a compact CBOR encoder/decoder focused on Cardano use (byte strings, arrays, maps with deterministic ordering, tagged ints where needed). Optional adapter to cborg for teams preferring third-party codecs.
• Bech32: Wrapper over @scure/base with checksum validation; support for CIP‑5 bech32 prefixes (e.g., addr, addr_test, stake, stake_test, vkey, xpub).
• Crypto: Use well‑maintained, pure‑JS libs (@noble/curves for ed25519, @noble/hashes for blake2b/sha256). Custom BIP32-Ed25519 implementation for Cardano HD key derivation. No Node crypto dependency to keep browser/edge compatibility.
• Address module: Parse and construct Shelley addresses (base/enterprise/reward/pointer), network id handling, payment/stake credential types, script vs key cred detection.
• Keys module: Parse/encode bech32 and raw key materials; minimal BIP32-Ed25519 derivation helpers (hardened only) for common Cardano wallet paths. No hardware transport.
• Tx module: Parse/serialize raw transaction CBOR (body, witnesses, metadata, auxiliary data). Provide helpers for hashing transaction body (blake2b‑256). No fee calc or coin selection.
• Compatibility: @csl-lite/compat-csl exports familiar names (e.g., Address.from_bech32, Transaction.from_bytes, Ed25519KeyHash, etc.) mapped to internal modules so teams can swap imports with minimal changes for read/inspect flows.
• Performance & Footprint: Each sub‑package targets <20KB min+gzip, with @csl-lite/address <10KB; typical dApp using address+tx aims for <35KB added. Benchmarks and size reports in CI.

CSL Compatibility Surface (initial coverage)

• Address & Network
  • Classes: Address, EnterpriseAddress, PointerAddress, RewardAddress, BaseAddress, ByronAddress, NetworkId, NetworkInfo.
  • Methods (where applicable): to_bytes(), from_bytes(bytes: Uint8Array), to_hex(), from_hex(hex: string), to_json(), from_json(json: string), to_js_value(), to_address(), from_address(addr: Address), getters like payment_cred(), stake_cred(), network_id().
• Keys, Hashes & Signatures
  • Classes: PrivateKey, PublicKey, Ed25519Signature, Ed25519KeyHash, ScriptHash, TransactionHash.
  • Examples (quoted from CSL): Ed25519Signature.to_bytes(), Ed25519Signature.from_bytes(bytes: Uint8Array), Ed25519Signature.from_bech32(str: string); PrivateKey.from_bech32(str: string), PrivateKey.to_public(), PrivateKey.sign(message: Uint8Array).
• Values & Assets
  • Classes: Value, BigNum, MultiAsset, Assets, AssetName, Mint, MintAssets.
  • Read/inspect helpers: to_bytes()/from_bytes, to_hex()/from_hex, to_json()/from_json, to_js_value(); MultiAsset.keys(), MultiAsset.get_asset(policy_id: ScriptHash, asset_name: AssetName), etc.
• Transactions (read/inspect only)
  • Classes: Transaction, TransactionBody, TransactionInput, TransactionOutput, TransactionWitnessSet, Vkeywitness, BootstrapWitness, AuxiliaryData, GeneralTransactionMetadata, MetadataMap, MetadataList, Redeemer, PlutusData, PlutusScript, PlutusWitnesses.
  • Example signatures (quoted from CSL): TransactionInput.to_bytes(), static from_bytes(bytes: Uint8Array), TransactionInput.transaction_id(): TransactionHash, TransactionInput.index(): number.
• UTxO
  • Classes: TransactionUnspentOutput (UTxO tuple of input + output for inspection and serialization).
• JSON/JS value round‑trips
  • Methods: to_json(), from_json(json: string), to_js_value() maintained where CSL exposes them, to enable deterministic round‑trip testing and safer SSR usage.
• Not included in v1
  • TransactionBuilder, fee calculation, coin selection, script evaluation, or ledger rule validation. These are intentionally out‑of‑scope to keep the toolkit lightweight and browser‑friendly.
• Adapter package
  • @csl-lite/compat-csl mirrors class and method names to minimize migration friction and supports tree‑shaking. Example:

// drop‑in replacement for read/inspect flows

import { Address, Transaction, Value } from "@csl-lite/compat-csl";

// instead of: import { Address, Transaction, Value } from "@emurgo/cardano-serialization-lib";

How This Differs from CSL

• No WASM; zero native extensions; predictable in browsers/SSR/edge.
• Modular, tree‑shakable packages instead of one monolith.
• Focused on parsing/serialization and cryptographic primitives—no transaction builder, no evaluation.
• Compatibility adapter eases migration for the common read/inspect APIs.

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

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

CSL-Lite delivers a lightweight, modular, pure TypeScript serialization toolkit. This removes the friction caused by CSL+WASM in modern web environments like Next.js and edge runtimes. By eliminating WASM and large monolithic dependencies, it enables faster, more reliable dApp development with dramatically smaller bundle sizes and no special SSR workarounds. The toolkit provides developers with a drop-in compatibility layer for familiar CSL APIs, making migration simple while ensuring alignment with Cardano standards (CIPs). Open-sourcing under Apache-2.0 maximizes adoption across the ecosystem, empowering wallets, dApps, and SDKs to build leaner and more performant user experiences. This proposal directly strengthens Cardano’s web and mobile developer stack, lowers the barrier of entry for teams, and ensures Cardano remains competitive as a platform for scalable, user-friendly decentralized applications.

[Your Project and Solution] Capabilities & 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?

Year after year, we increase our visibility, and notareiety, in the Cardano develoment space. At Anvil, we have set out to be trailblazers, and diminish the gap between web2 and web3. We create our solutions with every developer in mind and we pride ourselves in the work we do under these community grants. We know our approach is feasible because we have internal consensus as a team.

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Foundations - CBOR, Bech32, Crypto

Milestone Outputs

Deliver the following technical outputs:

• @csl-lite/cbor,
• @csl-lite/bech32,
• @csl-lite/crypto alpha
• Size/bench CI

Deliver the following outputs:

• Documentation started for API
• Github Repository Created

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance depends on us meeting the following metrics/defined goals:

• Unit tests >95% coverage on core
• Bundle size reports published
• ESM/CJS builds verified in Next.js sample app (dev + prod)
• Created Github Repository

Evidence of Completion

• Video to unit tests showing over 95% coverage on core
• Link to Bundle size reports
• Link to Verified builds
• Link to Github Repository

Delivery Month

1

Cost

25000

Progress

30 %

Milestone Title

Address & Keys | Transactions (parse/serialize) + Hashing

Milestone Outputs

Deliver the following technical outputs:

• @csl-lite/address
• @csl-lite/keys alpha
• CIP‑5 prefixes; credential parsing
• @csl-lite/tx alpha
• hash_transaction_body helpers
• metadata parsing enabled

Acceptance Criteria

• Vectors against known addresses/keys
• Cross‑checked with CSL outputs
• Browser/edge tests green
• Round‑trip parse→serialize equals original bytes
• Cross‑checked on a corpus of mainnet/testnet TXs

Evidence of Completion

• Link to video showing evidence of vectors, cross-checks, browser tests, round trip parsing, and crosschecking TXs.

Delivery Month

3

Cost

25000

Progress

60 %

Milestone Title

Compatibility Layer + Next.js Demo + Docs

Milestone Outputs

This milestone focuses on Compatibility, demos, and document deliverables:

• @csl-lite/compat-csl beta
• Migration guide from CSL
• Next.js demo app without hacks or bugs
• API reference site updated

Acceptance Criteria

We propose to complete the following acceptance criteria:

• Replace CSL in demo for read paths by swapping imports
• Verified tree‑shaking
• Production build size < target.
• Updated documentation

Evidence of Completion

• Link to demonstration video showing read paths, prod build, and tree-shaking
• Link to updated documentation

Delivery Month

4

Cost

20000

Progress

80 %

Milestone Title

Hardening, QA, Public Release, and Close Out Report/Video

Milestone Outputs

We will produce the following developmental outputs:

• v1.0 releases of all modules
• typedoc site
• examples
• security review and dependency audit
• semver policy

We will also produce the Catalyst required milestone output:

• Close out Report/Video

Acceptance Criteria

We will complete the following:

• CI matrix (Node 18/20/22, browsers, edge) passes
• Bundle size and perf targets met
• Issues triaged and documentation

In addition to the developmental goals, we will produce:

• Close out Report/video completed

Evidence of Completion

• Link to Video showing public release, bundle size, pref targets, and bug free operations.
• Link to Final Documentation
• Link to Close out Report/Video

Delivery Month

5

Cost

15000

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Total Ask - 85,000 ADA

Core Libraries (48,000 ADA) - CBOR, Bech32, Crypto modules: 28,000 ADA - Address & Keys modules: 20,000 ADA

Transactions & Compatibility (22,000 ADA) - Transaction parse/serialize + hashing: 14,000 ADA - CSL compatibility adapter (compat-csl): 8,000 ADA

Docs, Demos, QA (15,000 ADA) - Next.js demo app, examples, typedoc site: 9,000 ADA - CI, size/perf benchmarks, fuzz/property tests: 6,000 ADA

Review & Maintenance (Post‑release) (0 ADA in‑scope, community supported) - Community triage, minor updates in first 3 months post‑release (covered by Anvil OSS commitment).

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?

This proposal delivers strong value for money by solving one of Cardano’s most pressing developer pain points—CSL+WASM incompatibility in modern web and mobile environments—through a lean, open-source reimplementation of CSL’s core in pure TypeScript.

With a modest, well-scoped budget, the project provides reusable infrastructure that hundreds of wallets, SDKs, and dApps can leverage; in turn, saving the ecosystem time, developer cost, and user frustration.

By focusing only on serialization, cryptography, and utilities, CSL-Lite avoids unnecessary complexity while still unblocking the majority of use cases. Delivered under Apache-2.0 with clear milestones, high test coverage, and Anvil’s proven track record, this one-time investment produces lasting infrastructure that lowers the barrier of entry for developers, accelerates adoption, and strengthens Cardano’s competitiveness.

This proposal is all about value - It's our goal to contribute, at what we think is a very fair rate, to the Cardano blockchain, in an open source and re-useable way. Please consider voting for us to showcase what we are capable of as a premiere development agency on Cardano.

[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation

Terms and Conditions:

Yes