Cardano Rust SDK Babbage

dcSpark will make the required changes to cardano-serialization-lib to update it for the Babbage hardfork

dcSpark employees Rob and Sebastien are two of the top contributors to the cardano-serialization-lib project and are the original two developers who started the project.

[IMPACT]

Cardano-serialization-lib is an SDK for Cardano used by almost all dApps and wallets that allows users to create transactions, create wallets, parse blockchain data and more. It needs to be upgraded for ever hardfork to include the latest protocol changes and we plan to make these changes.

Cardano-serialization-lib is open source and used by almost all projects in Cardano. Updating the library in a timely fashion will ensure all Cardano projects can smoothly update to the next hardfork with no or minimal downtime.

• Hardforks are managed by IOG and so often times they make last-minute changes. We can include these changes in serialization-lib last minute as well, but it leaves little time for dApps, wallets, etc. to upgrade
• Ownership of the cardano-serialization-lib repo belongs to EMURGO (our past employer) and so often times code changes to serialization-lib take a few weeks to be merged and released. This is beyond our control unfortunately, but we try our best to coordinate with EMURGO to ensure changes are released in a timely fashion

[FEASIBILITY]

We plan to have an initial implementation of the changes at least one month before the hardfork. It's hard to provide a concrete schedule for this proposal as the hardfork schedule is decided is decided by IOG and so they can always move their schedule which affects us.

The full budget will be used for development of support for the Babbage hardfork and continued maintenance of the library as any issues or improvements are found by users.

The dcSpark team has a lot of experience with Cardano as core contributors to cardano-serialization-lib. Sebastien and Rob (two dcSpark employees) are two of the top contributors to the codebase: https://github.com/Emurgo/cardano-serialization-lib/graphs/contributors

[AUDITABILITY]

Progress will be measured as timely integration of the hardfork changes

Success means projects that depend on cardano-serialization-lib are able to make the necessary changes ahead of the hardfork to avoid any timeline

Continuation of https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/352480-48088