Last updated a month ago
Our current Data Availability Layer is now live with a testnet.
The problem is that it isn't centralized and for that, we need a scalable Multisig Protocol.
Sky Protocol level 2—a Scalable MultiSig Protocol for DA Subcommittees This proposal can work in synergy with our other Catalyst proposal about Sky's Gossip protocol, or independently.
Please provide your proposal title
Sky Protocol - Implement a Multisig protocol
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
100000
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
6
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
What is the problem you want to solve?
Our current Data Availability Layer is now live with a testnet.
The problem is that it isn't centralized and for that, we need a scalable Multisig Protocol.
Supporting links
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
No
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
No dependencies
Will your project's outputs be fully open source?
Yes
License and Additional Information
Apache licence V2.0
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal
Infrastructure
Mention your open source license and describe your open source license rationale.
Apache 2.0
We believe it's a moral and technical imperative to offer fully open source solutions that people can reuse as they see fit and above all, understand.
In the world of web3, you have to assume everyone is potentially malevolent until proven otherwise, which is why we want a fully auditable code.
How do you make sure your source code is accessible to the public from project start, and people are informed?
Our Git hub repository is public and shareable.
Our discord is where all the code talks happen in public, so the public can track down all the discussions between our devs.
We also offer regular video updates and live demos to show our code and vulgarize it.
How will you provide high quality documentation?
Readme files, video explanations, discord and X live spaces.
We will abide by the same standards of code as before, and our goal is to be as precise as possible. Take a look at our git hub to see the quality of commented code as well.
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
Thanks to Catalyst Fund 12, we have a smart contract for Cardano and some minimal (centralized) off-chain infrastructure to test it. For Catalyst Fund 14, we will implement prerequisites for a decentralized network for the DA infrastructure: in this case, a scalable protocol for contract-verified MultiSig, so that members of validation committees can generate MultiSig signatures that a Cardano contract can efficiently check. The protocol includes not just the cryptographic primitives, but also all the steps of the communication and synchronization over the network. We will assume a suitable MultiSig protocol will otherwise be developed in another subproject, and for this project will be satisfied with a centralized coordinator handling the communications between participants.
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
Our project lowers costs of launching scalable DApps on Cardano, both in development time and in capital to immobilize for continuous DApp validation. This subproject will be usable not just for SkyDA but by any other DApp that runs on Cardano and needs scalable multisig.
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?
We have been developing products for Cardano since 2020, and so far we have always delivered what was expected from us (notably GLOW, AVOUM, and the testnet of Sky Protocol).
We have completed all of our milestones, for our Catalyst Fund 12 project, which was the beginning of our work on building the data availability network on Cardano.
We have also developed traction among the Cardano community, and we continue to do so. Relevant community growth metrics include
More than 2,800 followers on X
More than 580 members on our Discord server
Milestone Title
Study of Scalable multisig protocols
Milestone Outputs
The first milestone is to study what is the existing offering in terms of MultiSig protocols that could be added to SkyDA: if possible written in Haskell and readily usable by our Cardano-flavored code base, but more importantly, able to scale to a very large number of nodes each interested in a small subset of “topics”, yet to be verified by a smart contract on Cardano.
Acceptance Criteria
Our report lists all the pieces of tech that already exist to know what is missing on Cardano.
The report lists what we can already implement properly and what we have to build from scratch, precisely.
Evidence of Completion
A specific commit of our GitHub repository that contains a document being the report from our study. The report will recommend a design, explain our design choices, and a minimal API for the MultiSig protocol.
Delivery Month
1
Cost
20000
Progress
10 %
Milestone Title
Initial Experimental Implementation of the MultiSig
Milestone Outputs
This milestone will demonstrate an experimental implementation of the MultiSig protocol. It needs not be completely fleshed out or have all the features we need, but it will demonstrate two essential features that we seek, (a) the ability to scale to a large number of machines each handling only a small subset of the topics, and (b) the ability to integrate into the rest of our Cardano-friendly SkyDA code base.
Acceptance Criteria
When executed, our test script allows for a multi signature interaction between participants.
The multi signature procedure works according to usual game theory standards: parties have to assume they don't trust each other.
Evidence of Completion
A specific commit of our GitHub repository that contains the code as well as a test script so that anyone can reproduce a test deployment of this experimental MultiSig protocol. No feature is required beside basic operation and integration with our code base; the integration can be minimal and fail to implement any SkyDA feature beside a demo.
Delivery Month
2
Cost
30000
Progress
40 %
Milestone Title
Implementation of the MultiSig Protocol
Milestone Outputs
For this milestone, we will implement a minimal yet complete enough variant of the MultiSig protocol as specified in the report from Milestone 1. Integration with the rest of SkyDA will remain minimal, with no actual SkyDA feature implemented with it.
Acceptance Criteria
The multiple participants involved can generate a signature following an on chain verification contract.
The test deployment is reproducible through a clear procedure given by the Sky Protocol team.
Evidence of Completion
A specific commit of our GitHub repository that contains the code as well as a test script so that anyone can reproduce a test deployment of this minimal yet complete MultiSig protocol. No integration with SkyDA yet besides test use of the MultiSig. An on-chain verification contract will be provided as well as an off-chain protocol for multiple participants to generate a signature.
Delivery Month
3
Cost
25000
Progress
60 %
Milestone Title
MultiSig with Sky DA Integration
Milestone Outputs
For this Milestone, we will integrate our MultiSig protocol with our SkyDA data availability servers, in a way sufficient for the main committee to sign a block update that can be published onto publish and retrieve data to and from arbitrary other nodes of the network data.
Acceptance Criteria
Using the multisig protocol allows to sign and publish updates to the Sky Protocol Data Availability Layer that is currently available, using a test sript that we provide at this milestone for everyone to reproduce the procedure.
Evidence of Completion
A specific commit of our GitHub repository that contains the code as well as a test script so that anyone can reproduce a test deployment of our MultiSig protocol and its use to sign and publish updates to the Sky DA bridge. No other feature is required and in particular, no decentralized consensus is required.
Delivery Month
5
Cost
20000
Progress
90 %
Milestone Title
Video wrap-up and final report
Milestone Outputs
This Milestone culminates in a demonstration of a Proof-of-Authority Data Availability Network with Data published and read on different nodes. For this Catalyst Grant we will not be dealing with payment and scalability functionalities.
Acceptance Criteria
The video explains where to find documentation and code repositories, test procedures and written readme files.
The video also explains which functionalities were developed and what they do precisely.
Evidence of Completion
Project Close-out Report and Video with demonstration.
The video is typically 10-20 minutes long and highlights all the key functionalities developed over the course of the project.
Delivery Month
6
Cost
5000
Progress
100 %
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
100% of our costs are going to the developers
Operational costs are already covered by our company, along with our project manager, CFO, lawyer and CMs.
The budget accounts for two full time developers plus our CTO supervising them.
2 developers - 7K ADA each for 6 months - 84K ADA
CTO - 16K ADA
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
Currently, there are DApps that can't exist on Cardano, for a very obvious reason: the bandwidth is too damn low...
Sky protocol's intent is to increase that bandwidth by multiplying Cardano's transactions per second by 10,000 and later by millions...
This will allow Cardano to compete with all the Web2 service providers in terms of infrastructure: an untapped market.
Terms and Conditions:
Yes
François-René Rideau, Chief Scientist and Lead Developer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fahree
François-René has extensive experience building on Cardano.
François-René has been making programming languages and distributed systems usable for 25 years. Alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, Former Senior Engineer at ITA Software, he also worked at Google and Bridgewater Associates. While working in the industry, he notably maintained and rewrote ASDF, the build system at the heart of the Common Lisp open source community; he also kept publishing academic papers and speaking at programming language conferences.
Gauthier Lamothe, Chief Operating Officer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauthier-lamothe
Gauthier has participated in a few blockchain projects, for entities such as the Free Republic of Liberland (that recently started using Polkadot), and worked on decentralized justice systems, tokenization of governance, and of course crypto-currencies.
Yaroslav Kozhevnikov, Developer
Yaroslav Kozhevnikov has been a professional software developer for over 6 years. His past development projects have included the following.
Verifying subset of ASN1.C compiler, specifically the encoding/decoding of primitive types
The backend for the exchange (fiat to crypto) based on the Lightning Network
An e-learning project, rewriting parsers for the existing storage format and worked on the backend for the platform
The backend for the smart-contract startup for businesses (the idea was to have templated contracts for businesses, that they can use to hire workers/contractors and do other business related items), as well as on the smart contract language (embedded in Haskell) itself. The service was based on the Solana blockchain.
Working as a contractor to help refactor, clean and modernize a database for a company under NDA. This contract included helping profile and optimize contracts for the Cardano.
Yaroslav is currently working with François-René on the Sky backend, such as nodes, data structures for the data availability and handling infrastructure setup, among other features.
Manuel Simoni
Manuel has almost 30 years of programming experience and has worked in bio-, edu-, ad-, and fin-tech. He is fascinated by blockchain's potential to create previously impossible systems(hyperstructures). His hobbies are designing and implementing programming languages, operating systems, and hypermedia platforms.
Zoe Braiterman, Technical Community Manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoebraiterman
https://github.com/zbraiterman
https://twitter.com/zbraiterman
Zoe Braiterman has experience ranging from cyber security, data science and system architecture to product development. Passionate about helping startups to scale, she also has experience as a teacher and business manager. Her work as a security consultant has included diversity and education initiatives in collaboration with UN Women, along with similar diversity leadership initiatives utilizing artificial intelligence and other technologies, and she brings her passion for change making and social impact to the Web3 space.
The Sky Protocol team (https://skyprotocol.org/team))
Peter Hubshman, Chief Financial Officer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterhubshman
Peter is a finance and operations expert focusing on early round startups. With origins in private equity, fund management and leveraged buyouts, in the early 2000’s he operated Internet Real Estate Group, a Web 2.0 studio in Boston which successfully developed businesses including Creditcards.com; Phone.com; Luggage.com; Jeans.com and a dozen other early primary domain businesses. There, his pioneering team of engineers created some of the earliest successful affiliate marketing and advertising platforms on the Internet, and were early experts in search engine optimization.
Alexander Smart, Chief Legal Officer
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandersmart
Alexander has always thought fast, but learned to think deep and sharp at UChicago. After studying law at Pepperdine, he spent nearly fifteen years guiding executives and decision makers through litigation, in matters ranging from shoplifting and speeding tickets to multi-forum international investment bank disputes. His practice honed his ability to quickly assimilate and master new information, and deliver that information clearly at any level of sophistication. Tiring of courthouses, he found his skills were readily applicable and desperately needed in the blockchain space.