CNTools - SPO tools and services

Tools and services to help SPOs setup/manage stake pools reduces the risk of wrongly configured pools that cause chain density degradation.

Ola Ahlman - SPO since 2019 (ticker: AHL)

Built various SPO tools and scripts (CNTools, gLiveView, ITN installation script for JorManager)

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The original author(Damjan) transferred proposal ownership to Ola

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Overview

It was clear from the beginning that creating and managing the necessary keys and running required CLI commands to build and manage your stake pool would be a pain to handle manually. The idea that a tool was needed to easily wrap all the underlying commands needed to perform the tasks required by a stake pool operator was evident. CNTools was born and quickly gained traction. In the last four months, since the launch of the Haskell TestNet, a lot of work has been put in and it's now a tool many SPO's rely on to manage their stake pool.

In addition to CNTools, Guild LiveView was created. It solved the need to be able to monitor the stake pool metrics while at the same time safely be able to run cardano-node as a service.

Funds will be used to continue the development started with these tools. Add new features and fix bugs as they arise. Funds will also be used to sponsor other guild collaborators like the topology updater service hosted by Markus @ CLIO1 that greatly help make the Cardano MainNet network as stable and reliable as it currently is until p2p is fully implemented.

Impact

It's not possible to get an exact estimate on how many stake pools that have been created using CNTools. Based on metadata and some other metrics, I estimate that at least 1/3 of all stake pools have been registered using this tool.

Risk Assessment

I'm invested in the project as a stake pool operator and I estimate the risk of being unable to maintain and keep the code up-to-date with upcoming changes or added features as low. The guild repo is open source and as such the tools will always be available for continued development.

Deliverables / Metrics

Contributions, activity, and continued development can be tracked through the public GitHub repository. New releases will be released on an on-demand basis as changes and/or fixes are needed and features added.

Some highlighted features that are on the ToDo list to be implemented/evaluated but in no way a complete list. Features will be added as they emerge.

• Security upgrade with offline mode to be able to keep private keys on air-gapped pc. (in the final stage for release 6.0.0)
• Mnemonic wallet import (included in 6.0.0)
• Multi-sig for payment and pool registration
• Usage of separate wallet to pay for transaction fee
• Improved block overview with leader schedule/block verification
• General-purpose log parser for blocks, pooltool sendmytip etc
• Provide a compact pre-built virtual machine with CNTools for offline key signing, cross-platform
• Improved documentation to go more into detail about the different features
• Video tutorial going over the different parts in detail
• …

The repository is open to post ideas on how to improve the product and I welcome any issue opened for how to make it better.

Code:

https://github.com/cardano-community/guild-operators
My handle: @Scitz0

Documentation:

https://cardano-community.github.io/guild-operators/#/Scripts/cntools

IP/Copyright

Open source and licensed under MIT License (Expat)

Costs / Funding

Recalculated for 6 months to better match the fund2 challenge and numbers adjusted after reevaluating how much time I think is realistic

Requested funds are based on my previous contributions to estimate the time that would be needed to maintain and extend the tools provided for a period of 6 months.

Fund request breakdown:
At 45 USD per hour, 12 hours per week -> 540 USD per week
For 26 weeks -> 14,040 USD -> ~140,000 Ada @ $0,1

More time has been spent up until this point to lay the foundation and get the tools and documentation to their current state. I expect this to decline slightly going forward as the tools mature and this is included in the calculation.