Our mission is to make Cardano as distributed as possible. This is a core tenant of Cardano succeeding as a ubiquitous distributed network. For this, the Armada alliance not only works on documentation but also puts the Cardano software onto as many different platforms as possible such as ARM, Apple Silicon, and Android devices. To achieve this goal, members of the alliance occasionally need to purchase hardware to test (and develop).

Most of the software developers and stake pool operators need such as the cardano-node, cardano-cli, and other critical software are freely provided and hosted by a few developers at the Armada Alliance. We are aiming to increase our ability to provide native ARM processor support for Cardano software/tools by adding more powerful hardware to our developer team for building and hosting services. This will help us ensure we can keep providing the tools we already host and more while remaining open-source well into the future.

These funds will be allocated towards three categories:

Hardware/hosting services
Research and Development costs
Documentation

Let's take a look at the three main points for this Open-source challenge:

increase the number and the quality of Cardano Open Source projects
increase the number of contributors
increase of open source tools and frameworks from the community for the community (dog-fooding)

Our proposal aims to hit all three of these KPIs:

By providing developers/builders with more options for hardware to run the various Cardano tools/software needed we will help increase the quality and amount of Cardano Open Source projects. We have already had an impact by helping NFT projects by providing the software and documentation needed for ARM computers like the raspberry pi which have been used for various NFT projects.
We have many active contributors already to our ARM, Apple, and Android development community but our goal is to increase this number even more with this project.
We would like to provide even more Cardano tooling provided through IOHK and other community-built ones to work on the various processors/computers we already will into the future.

The cost of hardware/hosting services increases over time due to macro events like supply chain issues for example or inflation. The other potential risk is the overall need for more powerful build machines to build the Cardano tooling we provided, currently this is not an issue but it may be in the future.

The need for more developers/contributors to help us keep providing the open-source tooling and documentation may increase over time as well.

[FEASIBILITY]

Q2 2022 - Purchase two additional build machines to help increase resiliency/reliability and reduce build times for various tooling.

Q3 - Q4 2022 - Add more open-source tooling to run on ARM, Android, and Apple computers. Such as Ogmios, Oura, and Cardano wallet/light wallet tooling. We can add more based on demand and types of software needs for developers

Q4 2022 - Move documentation from paid hosting service to our own fully open-source and self-hosted documentation site.

Q4 2022 - Add new tutorials and guides for using the various developer tools and software on Cardano.

The project is already delivered in large part so we will mainly be maintaining, updating, and hosting all the various services for the foreseeable future and ensure Cardano developers can use them freely.

Here is what we already provide for free and open-source:

Github Repo for Binaries: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries

Documentation: https://docs.armada-alliance.com/learn/

Website: https://armada-alliance.com/

Hardware for R&D (slef-hosted): 5,000 USD

Continuous integration and hosting hardware/services cost: 10,000 USD

Documentation (development, maintenance, hosting): 5,000 USD

Software and tooling Developers: 10,000 USD

Wael - Project Lead

GitHub: https://github.com/AstroWa3l

Tony - Developer, IT, Networking

GitHub: https://github.com/eastpiada

Wayne - Developer, IT, Networking

GitHub: https://github.com/wcatz

Daniel - Developer

GitHub: https://github.com/rekuenkdr

[AUDITABILITY]

The number of stake-pool operators who join the Alliance and run on ARM computers.

Github metrics such as Stars, Forks, Pull requests, and Contributions from our various repositories.

SEO and traffic metrics to our documentation site, website, youtube, and GitHub.

Social media metrics and SEO for our Discord, Twitter, and Telegram communities.

Increase the number of open-source tools and software that run natively on ARM and other devices while providing hosting, support, and documentation for developers/stake pool operators utilizing ARM computers and Cardano.

This is an entirely new proposal but the work is already continuously ongoing and mostly complete.

Completed outcome

Download report

Monthly report

November 23, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: -

Summary

We have finished the final critical tasks for our gitlab and hosting services and are fully operational. Added two servers for "runners" in our gitlab pages features. This will allow us to run our own type of GitHub pages feature for our own projects and potentially others in the future. Added to our documentation website enabling small features and adding additional guides for developers who seek to use various testnets on Cardano.

Evidence

New docs website: https://armada-alliance.com/docs Github Repo: https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs GitHub repo for Binaries/tooling: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries Nonce Server:https://nonce.armada-alliance.com/next.json Leader Logs Code: https://github.com/QuixoteSystems/cardano-leader-slot GitLab Server: https://gitlab.armada-alliance.com Koios Python Cardano Community project: https://github.com/cardano-community/koios-python

Explanation

We have now setup the gitlab servers and runners for our code repository hosting/version control service and for our CI/CD service. This adds more redundancy to our code/tools/websites that we currently have on GitHub by adding a way to ensure if GitHub goes down or our code is lost somehow we have backups. I have also included links to the documentation website and code repository to show we are trying to update our large amount of content. I have then included the other community tools and projects we have now been working on that are not on this specific proposal's road map of deliverables. We had a bit of issues at first completing the gitlab for the Armada Alliance which caused a delay but if we have no more server/instance issues this month we plan on closing out this proposal.

October 23, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: -

Summary

We added a new epoch nonce calculation for leader logs for SPOs to use freely and we now host the nonce at https://nonce.armada-alliance.com/next.json via one of the servers we purchased for the Armada Alliance. We have also collaborated with two other members on the code for leader logs https://github.com/QuixoteSystems/cardano-leader-slot

Evidence

New docs website: https://armada-alliance.com/docs Github Repo: https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs GitHub repo for Binaries/tooling: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries Nonce Server:https://nonce.armada-alliance.com/next.json Leader Logs Code: https://github.com/QuixoteSystems/cardano-leader-slot GitLab Server: https://gitlab.armada-alliance.com/users/sign_in Koios Python Cardano Community project: https://github.com/cardano-community/koios-python

Explanation

We have now setup the gitlab servers and runners for our code repository hosting/version control service and for our CI/CD service. This adds more redundancy to our code/tools/websites and more that we currently have on GitHub by adding a way to ensure if GitHub goes down or our code is lost somehow we have backups. I have also included links to the documentation website and code repository to show we are trying to update our large amount of content. I have then included the other community tools and projects we have now been working on that are not on this specific proposal's road map of deliverables. I think we will be making the close out video and report in the coming month of November for this proposal since we have finished everything we had on the road map other than Github to gitlab migration which is going to be done before first week of November.

September 24, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: -

Summary

Since the last report we have added the search bar functionality to our Armada Alliance website for documentation and tutorials, been working on setting up a new VPS to host our gitlab but this is not fully implemented at the moment but should be done before next report. Lastly, we have added a few more tools to our static/dynamic binaries including cardano-wallet and cardano bech 32 convertor tool as per request of members/developers.

Evidence

New docs website: https://armada-alliance.com/docs Github Repo: https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs GitHub repo for Binaries/tooling: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries

Explanation

Last month I reported we would finish search bar integration, add another VPS for Gitlab code repo hosting and CI/CD, update guides, and add new cardano binaries/tooling for ARM machines. This shows the website with the search bar functionality added, Github repo to the docs to show recent work and updates, and Github repo for our binaries/software/tooling we provide for free. Although we had a little bit of delay with creating and hosting our Gitlab, we are in the final stretch of deliverables, unless we find more improvements to add before we make our close out video.

August 23, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: -

Summary

Not at this time

Evidence

New docs website: https://armada-alliance.com/docs Github Repo: https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs

Explanation

We have now moved all our documentation off of Gitbook's paid hosting service and to our own self-hosted/developed docs website which I have shared the correct url. I have linked the GitHub repo as well to prove we are actively working on it. You can also see the new guides we have been working on like our cardano node docker guide, how to build on Oracle cloud free arm servers (other cloud provider based guides might be added in the future), and Apple Mac Mini guides on for using Ashai Linux OS and another on standard MacOS. We are now in the process of adding more redundancy and security to our documentation repos by hosting our repos from our own servers and using Gitlab Open Source Software to move/sync our Github repos, this is not even on our proposal to do but we feel it necessary to take this measure. The only things left for us to do on the proposal is set up our last CI/CD build machine for our cardano tools and cardano node/cli binaries and test it all out. And in the meantime we will update and clean up current guides, add new features to the Armada Alliance documentation website (like a search bar), and finally I would like to add even more guides for building on other ARM based hardware and other OS like FreeBSD.

July 22, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: -

Evidence

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SfMvtYT_K9kFdz7dGE09KtmZoNq0cy4g

Summary

Some good things to report are the increase in ada staked to our alliance pools has increased based on a few factors including primarily Cardano Foundation delegation and addition of new pools and delegators. This is good and I hope we can add a few more pools to get to 50 (which would be our record) by the end of the year, if prices stay low for ada over the next six months I can see more people starting to experiment with running pools and using ARM servers. We have added some more hardware with the money we have received to help host various tools for the Cardano developers/community. This is includes but not limited to cardano-submit-api, Freeloaderz load balancer relays, Tosi Drop, Koios DB, and more. We purchased 1 additional Oracle Cloud VPS costing around ~80-110 usd per month to host a few of the main heavy applications and services. Next step is going to add another low cost server to host our hydra CI/CD pipeline for building the static binaries for cardano-node/cli, cardano-submit-api, cardano-wallet (still waiting from IOG to get help to get and issue addressed), tx-pipe tools, and much more. We have finished the main migration of the Armada Alliance gitbook documentation from gitbook to our own custom website but still have work to do on guide on how to contribute to the new documentation site, translations integration, and basic functionality/styling of the website. You can see the website currently launched here: Website for Docs: https://armada-alliance.com/docs GitHub for Docs: https://github.com/armada-alliance/docs

June 21, 2022 Progress report

Status: Launched

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: 11/01/2022

Evidence

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1p6-yUA7JG-5jMvACt9MYJlbLHlVUygOU

Summary

We have finished upgrading/migrating our documentation website from gitbook.io to our own custom built website: https://rekuenkdr.github.io/armada-alliance-docusaurus/docs/ We have been updating the cardano software for arm as well.. Main build server: https://ci.zw3rk.com/ Backup of node versions and dynamic binaries can be found on our GitHub repo: https://github.com/armada-alliance/cardano-node-binaries

May 21, 2022 Progress report

Status: In progress

On track: Yes

Estimated completion date: 11/10/2022

Team

We run the Armada Alliance which is a Cardano stake pool alliance that builds open-source tools/software and educational material all for ARM-based computers. We are a collective of software/web developers, IT professionals, networking engineers, and academics working on Cardano.

wael ivie

Website

https://github.com/armada-alliance

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