ErgoDex Plutus Port

ErgoDEX is a set of protocols and an ecosystem built on top of them allowing to trade any pair of tokens through a single interface in various ways:
- through atomic-swap orders
- orders with partial filling
- and finally AMM pools
It is now in active development on Ergo blockchain. As soon as Ergo and Cardano share a similar eUTXO model in their core, ErgoDEX contracts and all its ecosystem (UI, bots) can be relatively easily ported to Cardano.

Background: ERGO

Ergo was founded by Charles Hoskinson's "favorite technologist" Alex Chepurnoy who contributed to the development of Cardano, co-founded smartcontract.com (now Chainlink) and was a core developer at Nx, the first Proof-of-Stake chain. In an interview, Hoskinson described Ergo as;
"It's one of the most revolutionary cryptocurrencies ever built. Got so many crazy ideas like sigma protocols and pruning the blockchain and roller chains. All this crazy stuff. Even has proof of no premine. So really a technological marvel in many respects, and it reflects about 8 years of knowledge that Alex has amassed as both a researcher and a developer. Super concise code and it blows my mind that the market cap is where it's at. It should be a top 10 coin or top 15 coin" — Charles Hoskinson
Ergo is one of a very exclusive group of blockchains that had no premine, ICO or VC funding. Built with fairness in mind. While developers are starting to appear, access to funds would allow us to hire more UI devs, and create a more robust and tested system in time for Alonso.

Current state of ErgoDEX

ErgoDEX protocol is described in EIP14 (https://github.com/ergoplatform/eips/blob/eip14/eip-0014.md) and will be fixed as standard DEX protocol for Ergo. Most contracts from the protocol are already tested in the ERGO main-net and now developers are mainly focused on delivering DEX UI, SDK and security audit of the protocol.
Unfortunately ErgoDEX is now being developed by very few devs what makes it hard to deliver good UI and port the app to Cardano, so additional funding is required in order to attract more developers and deliver DEX in time when communities of both Ergo and Cardano need it most.

UPD:

Automatic swaps against AMM pool (TestUSD -> TestERG) are tested in the mainnet:
https://explorer.ergoplatform.com/en/transactions/bc638795df9d5411c8213296b13f69e078c5dd0bc37bba53deedb44b29650cf7
The TestERG|TestUSD pool:
https://api.ergoplatform.com/api/v1/boxes/unspent/byTokenId/d7d0d6ecc4ed6c282a22655da253070157b381173460a6a8f556eace1529791e

Team

- Ilya Oskin (oskin1) is a Software Engineer, Core Developer of Ergo, Lead Developer at Mail.ru Group. [Github: https://github.com/oskin1]
- Dmitry Usov (eilemust / deadit) is a Software Engineer, ex. Frontend Team Lead at Citymobil, Javascript developer at Chatfuel. [Github: https://github.com/deadit]

Experience

Ilya Oskin has a broad experience in core blockchain research and development. He previously worked as a core developer of Ergo reference node, backend developer of ErgoWallet, Ergo Blockchain Explorer, Prism (a language for financial contracts). Experienced in functional programming in Scala, Haskell.
Dmitry Usov is a frontend dev with 6+ years of experience in commercial development and 2+ years of blockchain-related development. He took part in projects like ErgoExplorer UI, AgeUSD UI (algorithmic stable coin), Ergo JS SDK.

Ergo->Cardano ports

This is not the first contract that will be ported to Plutus, IOHK, Ergo, and Emurgo designed the economic model of AgeUSD. Its economic model maintains the conservative settings for collateral reserves and avoids the need for liquidations. Along with that, it supports a fully decentralized stablecoin emission setup. Thus, AgeUSD will offer the world a stable, simple, and decentralized UTXO stablecoin.
The AgeUSD contracts were also converted to Plutus, and are currently being implemented by Cardano, the original drafts of the Plutus contracts can be seen on the AgeUSD github.

Proposal impacts on key metrics

Finally, the ErgoDEX will create the necessary conditions for expanding the audience using the Cardano protocol. Transparent tokenomics and familiar UX will allow to attract more LPs and users to Cardano DeFi. In 12 months, we expect the number of active users of the exchange to exceed 100,000 in a week.
ErgoDEX will serve to successfully implement cross-chain swaps between the Ergo ecosystem and Cardano in the future. We have a unique opportunity to test all contracts on the Ergo blockchain and successfully implement them in Cardano.
We expect that the LVT indicator for the first 3 months of the exchange's existence reached $ 100 million, for the next 3 months $ 300 million, and at the end of the year it will be equal to ~ $ 1 billion. This rapid growth will ensure the popularity of the Uniswap exchange.

Definition of success

3 months: Successful tests of contracts on the Ergo ecosystem (already done). Ready to use version of ErgoDEX UI (AMM and OrderBook included). Successful tests of contracts on the Cardano ecosystem, which are based on solutions for Ergo;
6 months: Conducting protocol research for cross-chain swap protocols, getting first results. Added support for concentrated liquidity in AMM;
12 months: Cross-chain DEX implemented. ErgoDEX UI fully adapted to work with cross-chain swaps.

Plan in detail

1. Develop a UI for AMM first and then for OrderBook
2. Run public tests on the Ergo blockchain. Collect and analyse feedback from community.
3. Port tested protocol to Cardano (port contracts to Plutus)
4. Based on already developing ErgoDEX SDK implement Javascript SDK for the Cardano. (https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo-dex-sdk-js/tree/dev)
5. Update backend services (DEX bots) in order to serve ErgoDEX on Cardano (Already implemented for Ergo: https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo-dex-backend))
6. Update the DEX UI in order for it to work with both Cardano and Ergo networks
7. Test and launch the app on Cardano

Further steps (not included in this funding proposal, probably will be funded from DEX fees)
8. Research a protocol allowing to transfer liquidity among Ergo and Cardano networks
9. Add the inter-chain swap protocol to ErgoDEX allowing to trade assets between two networks in a decentralized manner
We estimate UI development to take 3 month assuming a team of 3 UI devs working simultaneously. Core development will take less effort as soon as pretty much work is already done so far, so 2 devs for 2 month (working in parallel with the UI team). Overall estimated development time from the start of UI dev to the public launch on Cardano is 3.5 month including tests (2nd half of August 2021).
* All code is open source under the Creative Commons license.

Funding:

UI development
- 2 UI devs full time, 3 month: 30K$
- ErgoDEX UI/UX: 10K$
- 1 QA, 2 month: 6K$
Core development (Port of contracts, SDK and backend update)
- 2 devs full time, 2 month: 30K$
Management:
- 1 Product Owner full time, 3 month: 15K$
*Any remaining funds will be dedicated to a research of inter-chain Ergo-Cardano swaps protocol.

Links:

- Technical protocol description: https://github.com/ergoplatform/eips/blob/eip14/eip-0014.md

- Non-tech protocol overview: https://github.com/oskin1/ergo-dex/blob/master/README.md

- Non-tech project presentation: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/idea/352410/38579/download

- ErgoDEX SDK: https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo-dex-sdk-js/tree/dev

- Trustless matcher bots: https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo-dex-backend