Wolfram UTxO History&Collaboration

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Research active and historical UTXO blockchains, research papers and developers. Build educational materials.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

We’ve built blockchain study group materials and research documents and have already started UTXO discovery work.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Key Points

• Create a significant list of “active” and “historical” UTXO blockchains.
• Acquire white papers of active and historical UTXO blockchains.
• Assemble a list of researchers and developers working on exploring UTXO chains (non-public, shared with UTXO Alliance members).
• Build larger education information on UTXO chains.
• Build and Strengthen connections with UTXO chains.

Understanding the historical and present environment is critical for blockchain ecosystems to grow. Many account-based blockchains have added EVM compatibility and now provide a de facto common research infrastructure. UTXO chains need to gather up historical and present information to create a rich archive of materials. This will ensure recognition of meaningful trends of R&D that UTXO chains have in common and help foster a vibrant UTXO research, development and user community.

This UTXO project is one aspect of our new education center, for which we will engage in the creation of deep research, computational data and interviews.

Wolfram Blockchain Labs (WBL) joined the UTXO Alliance in April. One of the initial things we noticed is that there is a significant number of UTXO chains; however, there isn’t a large list of these UTXO blockchain chains. So, we set to work starting to research both active and historical UTXO blockchains.

However, as we began to assemble this list, we thought of what might be next.

Then it came to us, we’ll figure out how to expose this content in different ways that are useful to UTXO Alliance, the Cardano community and the public.

Among these areas for education and information:

• Educational module, including a ledger list noting UTXO chains, white papers (along with glossary terms) and interviews of UTXO ledger leaders
• Other public resources, such as a display of blockchains and a glossary

This project will also provide information to help expand UTXO cross-chain activity of all types.

I. Research and Discovery Phase

We plan on executing a discovery phase from April until the decision (September). During that time, we will continue to gather our list of active and historical UTXO chains, acquire white papers of those chains and assemble a list of resources. 

• Assemble resources
• Collaborate with Cardano and UTXO Alliance communities

Please view our supplemental materials (to be added soon) to get a better idea of what we’ve done so far, especially if you have information and research that you could provide.

II. Working Phase

During this phase, we will work on assembling data into formatting where we can discover common details through different blockchains. We will go further by making the various datasets computable as well. We will also finalize how we will conduct interviews of UTXO chain community members.

We’d like to get the Catalyst (and UTXO) community involved to help us write initial versions of some of the glossary terms—and we want to have bounties on these terms so that people are rewarded for their participation.

• Assembly of data
• White paper analysis framework
• Design of a web application for the presentation for users
• Blockchain interview structure
• Glossary terms

III. Presentation Phase

We plan to create a simple web application to provide data for users to explore.

• Create an engaging interface for people to review the information

Supplemental Information

https://wolfr.am/UTxO-History-Collaboration

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The Catalyst Fund9 Cross-Chain Collaboration challenge mentions that it is an “open-ended challenge that welcomes any proposal geared for cross-chain collaboration, co-innovation, and interoperability. These can be any community-led projects, initiatives, solutions, tools, or services. It could mean for instance:”

• Common research, education, outreach and innovation projects with other chains and communities (e.g., podcasts, hackathons, webinars, communication hubs, educational resources)

We feel this idea is explicitly mentioned in the Fund9 Cross-Chain Collaboration challenge. In addition, we plan to include current UTXO Alliance blockchains and potentially help recruit more UTXO blockchains to UTXO Alliance.

“The UTXO Alliance is an initiative created to kickstart collaboration with individuals and organizations working to make the UTXO model more scalable, secure, and interoperable.” You can learn more about the UTXO Alliance here: https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/10/15/utxo-alliance-fostering-innovation-and-collaboration-across-the-blockchain-space

Thus, the entire proposed project will help increase cross-chain possibilities for collaboration. The more UTXO cross-chain possibilities there are, the more UTXO chains will grow—including Cardano.

We have already created a list of more than 150 active and historical UTXO blockchains and are busy filling in the details on those blockchains. Those details we want to fill out include ticker symbols, websites (or their historical websites using archive.org), social media, contact information (developers and community managers/members) and white papers. At present a majority of the chains are Bitcoin forks, but we continue to find other UTxO chains out there.

Another key interest area is the increasingly large collection of UTXO blockchain white papers (and research papers), which are used to update technical information for the community and innovate new features for UTXO chains. Comprehension and careful analysis of these white papers is crucial to maintaining the health not just of Cardano, but other UTXO blockchains. New research papers help provide new ideas and give a sense of the relative importance of problems. Unfortunately, the size of this collection is making it difficult (if not impossible) for most community members to digest the information that is important.  

The Wolfram Language provides sophisticated tools for analyzing and visualizing text, both structurally and semantically. These tools and methods would include over two hundred types of entity extraction and advanced deep learning techniques. By providing the option of an automated computation layer between the raw feed of white papers and the community, WBL can remove a significant barrier for active participation.

We are also quite interested in the people involved in different UTXO chains; we’d like to interview as many people as possible to help document the initial reasons behind why they started the different ledgers.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

There are few technical issues to execute on this project, and because we have already started the core research gathering, the risks are low. However, low risk does not mean no risk. We have tried to outline the risks here along with how we might mitigate them

Possible risks:

• No UTXO Alliance support (talk to UTXO Alliance members individually to gain support)
• No Cardano community support (discuss project in Catalyst town hall to attract interest)
• Community members of UTXO chains not wanting to do interviews (ask politely with enough and time with a clear interview format)
• No community interest in glossary term writing (make glossary term writing easy and provide bounties)
• Minimal white paper and research paper content available

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

We have created a roughly seven-month timeline for the execution of all items in the plan after the potential award of a grant. This does not include the start of the discovery portion; this began roughly in mid-April as we began the collection of UTXO chains.

We have started this project in advance of the funding; if the project isn’t funded, we will taper the resources put into the project and close it on September 1, 2022, during the discovery phase.

This project would be completed in the following phases:

I. Research and Discovery Phase

Mid-April–August 2022

• Public Wolfram form to submit additional information
• Public Wolfram Cloud document to show summaries of existing information

II. Working Phase

September–December 2022

• Computable data work
• Simple web application design
• Public Wolfram Cloud document to show summaries of existing information

III. Presentation Development Phase

January–March 2023

• Web application completion
• Presentation via a virtual seminar

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Team Costs: 28,500 USD (writing, programming, modeling, design and teaching costs)

Glossary Bounties: 10,000 USD (community-oriented glossary term writing)

Supplies: 5,000 USD (hardware, books and other associated costs)

Marketing & Outreach: 5,000 USD (marketing budget to promote events)

Website Application & Design: 18,500 USD (computable publication costs)

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Wolfram Blockchain Labs, through our partners at Wolfram U and Wolfram Research, have significant experience creating educational video content.

In addition to the principal people listed below, Wolfram Blockchain Labs has additional engineers within its blockchain group and has additional resources within our parent company, Wolfram Research.

Leanne Ussher (Economist), Jon Woodard (Research) and Steph Macurdy (Research and Community Outreach), Jesus Hernandez (Programmer) along with other members mentioned in our biography document here:

https://wolfr.am/UTxO-History-Collaboration

In addition to Wolfram Blockchain Labs, we also plan to engage people in the Cardano community with bounties for glossary terms.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Most likely we will not; however, if additional features are requested we might return.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

1.    The number of UTXO Alliance interviews

a.    The number of viewers of UTXO videos

b.    The number of education video viewers

2.    The number of community contributions

a.    Glossary

b.    UTXO blockchain suggestions

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

The completion of the project will be measured using the following deliverables:

1. Community participation with chain suggestions and glossary term writing
2. Data collection (finding and collecting data that can assist in programmatic evaluation)
3. Educational module completion
4. Engaging web application
5. Presentation seminar

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal.