Software as a Service for Cardano

TANGOCRYPTO

Problem statement:

With the current landscape, the first step to start developing on Cardano is to install a Cardano node and some other dependencies like: Cardano DB Sync, Cardano GraphQL, Cardano Wallet etc. It requires infrastructure management, tasks such as server or cluster provisioning, patching, operating system maintenance, and capacity provisioning. All these time-consuming tasks are just the first steps to start developing. Deploying a high-available infrastructure can cost around $1000 per month and this can stop developers from starting to build new ideas or growing their products.

We believe that developer APIs are paramount for getting real-world usage. To make Cardano the world's financial operating system, we need easy to use and scalable APIs to build more applications and attract more users. 

Describe your solution to the problem:

We'll provide a suite of high-availability APIs and developer tools (SDKs) for fast and reliable access to the Cardano network that requires only minutes to integrate. Our goal is to lower the entry barrier for development on Cardano by providing reliable infrastructure and easy to use API that will allow developers and enterprises to focus on building their business model and growing next-generation software without worrying about infrastructure and operational responsibilities. 

The platform will include a FREE subscription for developers to start building their ideas right away.

Our solution sits on top of Cardano and will provide the following components:

• HTTP API
• Notify
• Monitor
• Query Composer 
• Data stream

The communication layer will provide access through: 

• REST 
• Webhooks
• Websockets
• Email
• Mobile Push Notifications
• Kafka streams
• AWS Kinesis Data Streams

On the application layer developers will be able to interact with Cardano through the following components: 

• JS SDK
• IOS SDK
• Android SDK
• Kafka Sink connectors
• Kinesis consumer 

Use cases and customers

Our APIs and developer tools (SDKs) can be used to power up a wide range of products like:

• Lightweight Wallets
• NFT Marketplaces
• DEX (Decentralized Exchange)
• Oracles
• Listing ADA on exchanges
• Liquidity providers
• DAOs
• DeFi Apps
• Data platforms and blockchain explorers

Relevant Experience

Our team members have experience in different technologies, including backend, web and mobile development, distributed systems and databases, Cloud Architecture and Big Data. We are the Stake Pool Operators (SPO) of the pool TANGO and the developers of cardano-wallet-js (https://github.com/tango-crypto/cardano-wallet-js), a javascript/typescript SDK for Cardano with multiple functionalities. You can use it as a client for the official cardano-wallet and also create Native Tokens and NFTs. Our SDK has several downloads every week using NPM and has been used in other community projects and university assignments. Also, we created a POC in order to showcase some usability of the SDK on this NFT Marketplace: https://www.tokens.tangocrypto.com. 

Meet the team:

Product Manager: Javier Toledo Cordova. Professional solutions architect with more than 10 years of experience in technology, specialized in software architecture and cloud computing. Started his career as a network architect designing data center networks and now focuses on cloud architecture and product design. 

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/javiertc
• Email: javier@tangocrypto.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/javiertc86

Sr Full Stack Developer: Leobel Izquierdo. Software Engineer with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and over 7 years of experience in the Software Industry. Working for the past year with blockchain technologies like: Ripple, Ethereum, and Cardano.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leobelizquierdo
• Email: leobel@tangocrypto.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/leobelizquierdo

DevOps: Manuel Morejon Espinosa. Cloud Engineer and Docker Captain, passionate about Cloud Native Architectures topics and more than 10 years of experience. Has technical and communication skills to help teams to improve their workflow and to reduce deployment times. The goal is always to maximize productivity by minimizing errors. Enthusiastic about teaching and sharing the knowledge with the Community.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelmorejon/
• Email: manuel.morejon.85@gmail.com
• Website: https://mmorejon.io
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/morejon85

Tech Lead and Solutions Architect: Hector Raul Perez Lugo. Tech Lead/Cloud DevOps with more than 10 years of experience. Specialized in software architecture and cloud computing. Building applications that can scale on the cloud while maintaining an elegant design at the code level. Scrum Master with a solid background in cloud design patterns, microservice architecture, event-driven system design and distributed applications.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hectorraul/
• Email: hector.cwpro@gmail.com

Front-end developer: Juan Manuel Menendez. Senior Front End Developer with over 8 years of experience in software development.Advanced experience in JavaScript, Typescript, ReactJS, Apollo GraphQL, CSS, HTML, NextJS, Responsive Web Design, NodeJS, OOP and Functional Programming. Familiar with VueJS, Angular and common practices like Scrum, Git, Continuous Integration, and Testing.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-manuel-menendez/
• Email: juanma@gmail.com

IOS developer: Evelio González Maqueira. IOS Software Engineer with over 5 years of experience writing IOS native apps using Swift. Working on enterprise mobile apps for international customers who need the best native experience.

• Email: e.gonzalez5690@gmail.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evelio-gonzález-maqueira-ba88a310a/

Android developer: Omar Mainegra. Mobile Engineer with over 6 years of experience writing native Android apps using Kotlin and Java. Previously worked as System Engineer and Backend Developer. Passionate about mobile technologies, functional programming, and testing.

• Email: omainegra@gmail.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-mainegra-95526582

Technical Information

These are architecture patterns and technologies used in the backend system. Serverless, event-driven architecture and single table design is used across all the microservices deployed:

• Event-driven and microservice architecture that dynamically scales.
• HTTP REST API for all endpoints
• Push Notification/Websocket for network notifications and communication.
• Combination of SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Global CDN and edge caching.

Proposal Components

TangoCrypto HTTP REST API

The HTTP REST API (https://www.tangocrypto.com) goal is to make development faster and easier. There is no need for syncing with the blockchain and maintaining complicated setups. No more complex and multiple requests to the blockchain from different entry points, the developers can get all the data they need for transactions, token information and debug, in fewer requests.

Our goal is to provide the most accessible and reliable Cardano infrastructure, freeing companies and developers from the responsibility to maintain complex infrastructures and focus instead on building their business logic and provide value to their customers. 

• Enterprise-grade infrastructure: Harness the processing power of our globally distributed cloud-hosted node network. Our API alleviates the friction of maintaining your own compute and storage resources, lowering the barrier to entry for developers and enterprises.
• Built for developers: Easy to read documentation and resources to help developers get started quickly.
• Gain app insights: Our dashboard provides direct insights about API usage. Drill down into specific request methods and get response times, most used endpoints, usage by time of the day, IP address, countries, and more. These insights are a great way to optimize applications based on user behavior.
• Standard Interface: Supports Mainnet and Testnet via client-compatible REST API over HTTPS.
• Always Online: Running on the latest network upgrades with a minimum 99.9% uptime guarantee.

TangoCrypto Notify

With Notify (https://www.tangocrypto.com/notify.html) developers will be able to integrate production-ready notifications with our webhooks and SDKs integrations. Get access to all of the blockchain events your users might care about, like successful transactions, payments, minted blocks by a pool, new delegations. 

• Payments and transactions: This allows sending notifications to users to know when their deposits, purchases, in-game actions, or other on-chain activity has officially occurred.
• Address Activity Webhooks: Let your users know when transaction activity occurs on their address. No more refreshing the page or having to use the dust to identify a payment.
• Smart Retries: Sometimes receiving endpoints fails or hangs more often than you think. That's why we provide automatic retries to ensure deliverability.
• Monitoring and debug: We log every triggered webhook so you can monitor their deliverability to different endpoints, disable failing ones and notify your customers.
• Development experience: Offer your users a great developer experience, including the ability to test and inspect their webhooks.

Tangocrypto Monitor

It's a monitoring and observability service built for developers and the operation team. It provides data and actionable insights to monitor applications, respond to performance changes, optimize resource utilization, and get a unified view of the operational health of the apps. It can be used to detect anomalous behaviour, set alarms, visualize metrics, troubleshoot issues, and discover insights to keep your applications running smoothly.

• Observability on a single dashboard: Monitor key metrics for apps, including requests per second, webhook utilization, error rate and response time. Explore, analyze, and visualize your requests and efficiently troubleshoot operational problems.
• Usage Analysis: Review specific app usage over time, identify access patterns and optimize user experience based on most performed actions.
• Geographic distribution: Gain invaluable insights on user behavior with aggregated geographic, traffic, and activity data without compromising privacy or security.
• Alerts and reports: Receive automated alerts through email or SMS based on predefined thresholds. Stay informed and be proactive by getting a daily or monthly report of key health metrics.

TangoCrypto Query Composer

Make API calls directly from the dashboard in order to prototype and fix failing requests or explore the behavior of new methods. Rapidly prototype and fix requests to the blockchain and save hours of engineering time in the process.

• Zero set-ups: Works straight from the browser, just create a free account and start using it.
• Quicky debug: Replay requests from anywhere in the dashboard, and save hours of debugging and building time.
• Explore: Select from several API endpoints. Test out pre-filled methods from the docs anytime.
• Share results with your teammates: Copy the entire request body with one click to share with teammates, collaborate, or get help.
• Generate code snippets: Generate client code to API calls in different programming languages and frameworks. 

Roadmap

All the functionalities described here will be valid for both Mainnet and Testnet.

First month:

Users will be able to register/login and perform the basic operations (CRUD) for apps and webhooks.

REST API endpoints:

• GET address details: Include balance and assets
• GET address utxos: Include assets
• SUBMIT transactions: Passing the transaction's CBOR Hex
• GET Wallet stake: Total controlled stake, rewards sum, withdraw available etc
• GET Pool metadata: Pool id, url, name, description etc
• GET Epoch parameters: Min fee, key deposit, pool deposit etc
• GET Transaction utxos: inputs/outputs utxos
• GET Transaction metadata: json metadata
• GET Transaction info: Information like: size, fees, ADA and assets amount, etc
• GET Asset: Asset's policy, name, quantity etc
• GET Block info: Information like: txs count, stake pool minted, epoch, etc
• GET Latest block: Latest block info

Second month:

Webhooks notifications:

• Transactions: get notified on each new transaction
• Payments: get notified on new payments filtered by user rules, so you can for example target specific addresses
• Block: get notified on new blocks filtered by user rules, so you can for example target Stake Pools' blocks
• Epoch: get notification on each new epoch
• Delegation: get notified on new delegations filtered by user rules, so you can for example target Stake Pools' delegations

User admin dashboard with analytics:

• Notify: handle all Webhooks offered by the system, CRUD functions.
• Monitor: get an insight about your resources and actions
• Query Composer: CRUD, import/export your own query to test all API endpoints.

Third month:

Integration with the Open Source SDKs. The SDKs will integrate all the HTTP REST API endpoints and the Websockets. It will allow developers to send real-time push notifications to users for engagement and critical events.

• Javascript SDK
• iOS SDK: Swift
• Android SDK: Java/Kotlin

It will support sending push notifications to Android and iOS apps using separate channels for the following push notification services:

• Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
• Apple Push Notification service (APNs)
• Baidu Cloud Push
• Amazon Device Messaging (ADM)

We will provide extensive documentation with best practices (e.g. OpenAPI specification for all HTTP endpoints), use cases, and examples in English and Spanish. 

Key Performance Indicators for the first 3 months (KPIs)

Acquiring customers:

• 500+ users free tier
• 100-200 paid users

 Scaling infrastructure:

• API availability in 3 different regions

Establish a developer advocate program:

• Youtube channel with updates, guides, best practices, and tutorials.
• Blogs post about the API and SDKs

Establish enterprise partnerships and provide support with customised SLAs.

Play an active role as a solution provider for Dapps in Cardano

Budget

We'll need the following roles:

• 1 Backend Developer: ($3000/mo x3 months: $9000)
• 1 Frontend Developer: ($3000/mo x3 months: $9000)
• 1 Technical Project Lead: ($3000/mo x3 months: $9000)
• 1 Systems administrator/DevOps: ($3000/mo x3 months: $9000)
• 1 IOS developer: ($3000/mo x2 month: $6000)
• 1 Android developer: ($3000/mo x2 month: $6000)
• 1 Designer: ($2000/mo x1 month: $2000)

Additionally, we'll need funds for deploying the API in 3 regions around the world to provide high availability and disaster recovery capabilities: $10000