Koios - Side-chain & Chain Analysis

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

-The lightweight K. API instance microservice-type will introduce lighter, faster and easy to set up node

-The K. side-chain will reward nodes

-Our first Dapp featuring Cardano’s on/off-chain analysis

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Known pool of operators in the Cardano ecosystem who have demonstrated a deep understanding of the blockchain across guild-ops projects besides the accomplishment of developing the 1st Cardano decentralized API framework (Koios), already used by several projects in the ecosystem.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Koios is a decentralized Query Protocol for indexing and caching data from Cardano blockchains and storage networks. The query interface, the topology of the network, and the economic incentives and mechanisms are designed to keep the network running as a public utility.

Koios qualifies as a flexible launchpad for builders removing the overhead costs of setting up, running and maintaining Cardano/Koios components, as well as offering API endpoints for both simple and complex data through open-source standardized queries besides integrating off-chain data to further help developers and content creators.

Koios extension key features are:

• Koios light node microservice
• Fast and easy microservice setup and deploy 
• It will contribute as additional backends for the Koios Full node network topology (aka gRest query layer)
• It will be less resource-hungry allowing better scaling and entry to participate as an instance provider

• Koios side-chain for Cardano
• It will run a separate chain following Cardano’s consensus
• Cardano and Koios networks
• incentivizing Koios contributors and building self-sustainable Koios infrastructure

• Chain Analysis Dapp will feature data aggregation and representation (also throughout API integration) of:
• Chain History
• Block propagation
• Relay distribution
• Topology
• Wallets
• Native tokens
• TXs over time
• Fees paid by TXs
• TVL per token
• And more…

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

With this proposal, we will address 3 different problems with 3 different microservices that synergically will provide support to Koios as well as to the Cardano ecosystem.

We choose to group those 3 problems in one proposal due to the deployment solution we envisioned to better orchestrate and push adoption of the Koios project.

1st Problem:

The current minimum requirements for running cardano-db-sync and cardano-node as part of a Koios instance constitute a barrier for inexperienced users that nevertheless would like to be part of the Koios ecosystem. Moreover, as Cardano grows, these requirements will only increase leading to more expensive and complicated solutions.

1st Solution: A lightweight Koios API instance microservice-type that excludes the cardano-node/dbsync components.

These lightweight instances will be created to complement the existing full-node Instances and be integrated automatically into the Koios network topology. These have significantly lower system resource requirements, which makes it easier for potential operators to install and run them on their infrastructure. This is especially true with regard to the ever-growing system requirements. 

The light node provides certain query results directly and only fetches special results from the full nodes. This achieves a more efficient load balancing and significantly better and cost-efficient scalability. 

2nd Problem:

At the moment, there is no reward program for participants who improve the elasticity of Koios API or help expand its services and adoption. 

Every current Koios node has been set up by farsighted community members that believe in the future of Koios and developers who understand the future of query layers cannot rely on single-dimensional infrastructure and want to contribute to a professional query layer to start building and deploying their Dapps by running nodes at their own economical expenses.

2nd Solution: A Koios side-chain to reward additional nodes.

In order to achieve a wider and faster decentralization along with redundant Koios services, it is necessary to plan and implement a motivation and reward program in a way that efforts and contributions will be incentivized. For this purpose, Cardano technology is used to develop a side-chain and a reward system that provides the contributing operators with fair and reliable returns.

The Koios elastic infrastructure will become fully decentralized also for aspects like governance besides incentivizing the deployment of microservices instances throughout L1 rewards.

Moreover, the bridging to the Cardano network will open new possibilities to the whole ecosystem without adding burden to the congestion of the Cardano Network itself by handling metrics for incentives on a separate network. Nevertheless, any Koios asset will be transferable to Cardano when needed transparently.

3rd Problem:

At the moment, Cardano chain analysis tools in the ecosystem are dispersed through several websites, often providing limited tools, in a centralized way - while the data used either depends on what’s on-chain (which already loses a lot of data that occurs beforehand) or maintaining proprietary data not available for re-utilization.

As such, this makes it impossible to re-use such queries for Dapps that may want to build chain intelligence tools that look at things like block/transaction propagation, network peering, rollbacks, etc...

3rd Solution: A first Dapp featuring Cardano’s on/off-chain analysis.

By using the already consolidated Koios API (on-chain data normalized) alongside an off-chain data collector (which will also expose a new set of API) we will be able to provide in a decentralized way both an expansion of our API besides a visualization tool covering many of our on/off-chain metrics to help developers as well as researchers in accessing easily those data without risking any downtime risks typical of centralized services.

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

At the moment we don't foresee any blocking risk to the development of this proposal.

The only variable we have and may impact our development, as well as our delivery estimation, is related to breaking changes occurring on the development of both cardano-node and dbsync by IOG, which will consequentially be required from our side to adjust our code accordingly.

To mitigate this risk as much as possible, we monitor on a daily basis all IOG progresses and commits and keep in touch with IOG's developers directly to assist them and ask for assistance on the future changes coming.

Our team has always been committed since Cardano's early days to testing and cooperating with Cardano's core developers therefore our relationship with them has been growing over the years.

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

All deliverable code and artifacts will be open-sourced and available on GitHub.

Koios microservices - light node:

• Development of the Koios lite-node
• Documentation on HowTo use and deploy it 

Koios side-chain:

• Design documentation
• Side-chain parameters and rewards schema research
• Deployment of Koios side-chain
• Development of the bridge to the Cardano network
• Development of dedicated utilities to interact with the side-chain

Decentralised Analysis Tool:

• Design Documentation
• Data processing development
• UX and UI development
• Off-chain data exposed throughout API endpoints implementation
• Decentralized Analysis tool deployment
• Integration within the Koios network infra

Beside this proposal we are also proposing an other parallel proposal for Koios in Fund9 (for Developer Ecosystem challenge), please visit: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/416830

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Costs for Koios extension (Incentives and Chain Analysis) can be separated into several categories:

Koios microservice design and development :

( 6 months ) - 19’000 USD

Koios incentivized side-chain:

(3 months) + maintenance (12 months) - 29’000 USD

Off-Chain analysis API + On/Off-Chain Dapp:

(12 months) - 90’000 USD

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

The group behind Guild-operators (https://github.com/cardano-community/guild-operators/graphs/contributors) is a collection of long-term Cardano enthusiasts consisting of multiple OGs/current/ex-ambassadors that have continually been making immense contributions to the ecosystem without any additional marketing or financial cost requests. We are creators of some of the many popular tools and resources in Cardano - including Koios, CNTools, gLiveView, GuildNet (separate network similar to Testnet, but with small 1 hour epochs - useful for testing) and topologyUpdater along with comprehensive Cardano documentation (https://cardano-community.github.io/guild-operators/, https://cardano-community.github.io/support-faq).

Through its contributions, we have developed a deep understanding of the Cardano blockchain and its components. Apart from our work on Cardano, Guild members have extensive experience in the technology field, with multiple (8+) years of experience across system design, DevOps, system administration, networking, and software development.

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

If funded, we are not aiming to request more funds to Catalyst, our goal with the side-chain part of this proposal is to become self-sustainable and fully supported by the community.

[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?

Due to the Open-source nature of Koios and related extension here proposed, every advancement and/or development accomplishment will be publicly available to everyone to see.

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

The success of this project will result in an even more decentralized and faster Koios API along with a complete set of off-chain data (API) and related Dapp for the community to use.

Moreover the Koios side-chain will open further doors to developers and participants to access to a reward schema to support their efforts and contributions.

[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 an enhancement of a previous and successfully deployed Catalyst project: Koios API.

Once we developed the first iteration of Koios decentralized API we realized that we can further expand the Koios ecosystem taking advantage of what we already developed to improve new Koios features and services while pushing Koios decentralization, adoption and participation to a new level thereby, benefitting Cardano ecosystem further while acquiring more participation.