Cardano Tools & Software for ARM

[IMPACT]

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.