GIP-61: Shall GnosisDAO fund BootNode as a Core Contributor Team?
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GIP: 61
title: Shall GnosisDAO fund BootNode as a Core Contributor Team
author: Manuel Garcia <manuel@bootnode.dev>
status: Phase 3
type: Funding
created: 2022-07-29
Simple Summary
BootNode proposes to contribute engineering and development services to the Gnosis DAO ecosystem by building a hands-on autonomous team with relevant experience in multiple disciplines that will focus on growing the GC ecosystem adoption, starting with the following priorities:
- Further strengthening and decentralizing the DAO development by incorporating an additional specialized Contributor Team working towards a shared goal.
- Bridges operation: product discovery, development, coordination, and engineering to count with an up-to-date and sustainable Bridges operation: present infrastructure and future initiatives.
- Circles: build the required infrastructure so many teams ideally can bring a wave of new users to the gnosis chain.
- Gnosis Chain decentralization and security: running chain, beacon chain, and bridges nodes.
- Other initiatives the DAO might need.
The team will commit long-term by starting with a 6-month engagement.
Motivation
Since the early days, many BootNode (BN) team members have contributed to the Gnosis ecosystem by being exposed to different projects:
- POA Network: creating the required infrastructure used later to build xDAI.
- Gnosis Chain (formerly xDAI): from bootstrapping the network and being core contributors to different bridges and dApps, to educating, onboarding new projects, and consulting.
- Core contributors to the Circles infrastructure.
- Core contributors to the Gnosis Safe (BN became a Safe Guardian) and other projects such as Auctions, COW Protocol, Omen, and dxDAO.
We believe that the Gnosis DAO will benefit from the value BootNode can add due to its outstanding team and relevant experience. BootNode accelerates the building and growth of protocols, dApps, and networks through engineering, development, and governance.
We are confident we can work productively alongside the Gnosis DAO on different projects. We will push growth forward of the Circles, the Gnosis Chain, and other initiatives.
At BootNode, we share a vision to build a decentralized organization and network with a decentralized ecosystem of contributors. We strongly believe in a positive sum game for Gnosis DAO, where many protocol developers, web2 and web3 builders, infrastructure participants, researchers, and community members can work together.
Specification
The following items are the initial areas of contribution. However, they might change if they are no longer needed or if there are other initiatives where BootNode can provide higher value.
1: Bridges
The team will work closely with all the involved parties to maintain and improve the bridge solutions that empower the Gnosis Chain (the native bridges OmniBridge and xDAI Bridge as well as other solutions such as Connext Bridge and Hop Exchange). Also, it will work on a new bridge that will consolidate existing options in one place. Last but not lease, we will contribute to the research and development of the trustless bridge already in progress.
Milestones can change once the revised roadmap is discovered and created.
Milestone #0
- Goal: create a comprehensive roadmap and kick-off onboarding
- Tasks
- Refine scope of work and iterate over a roadmap
- Define communication processes (roles, channels, etc.)
- Defile roles, assign responsibilities and allocate resources and team.
- Define specific milestones, timelines, and deliverables.
- Deliverables
- A detailed roadmap with milestones, timelines, and action items.
- A document that defines the processes, workflows, and methodologies.
- Outcomes
- Stakeholders agree on the roadmap.
- The team has a refined execution plan.
- A team with the required skills is allocated to deliver the results according to the roadmap.
- Kick-off date for starting executing the roadmap.
Milestone #1
- Goal: Maintenance and operational management
- Tasks
- Improve financial operations of the bridges.
- Native Bridges (Omni + xDAI).
- Non-native bridges (Connext + Hop).
- Identify liquidity management needs on other bridging solutions such as Hop and Connext.
- Develop monitoring tools and dashboards to measure financial performance easily. (this one can be used as a starting point: Compounding in Gnosis Chain (xDai) bridges )
- Improve observability and monitoring of the bridge’s infrastructure.
- Live Monitoring application that shows transaction status for each validator and can monitor transactions in both directions. (this can be used as a starting point: AMB Live Monitoring application - TokenBridge )
- Increase decentralization and scalability of both native and non-native bridges.
- Identify routers’ and validators’ maintenance needs.
- Communicate and coordinate with involved stakeholders.
- Identify and document technical debt.
- Identify governance issues if any and create a plan to solve them.
- Improve financial operations of the bridges.
- Deliverables
- Documented process of bridge operations.
- Control dashboard for measuring bridge’s financial performance.
- Documented architecture of infrastructure, pipelines, and technical workflows.
- Reporting about bridge usage, costs, and revenues associated with bridges.
- Communicate additional capabilities of Omnibridge to developers.
- List of financial KPI to keep track of.
- P&L reporting.
- Outcomes
- Better financial control, visibility, and transparency of bridge operations.
- Operation improvements reduce manual and reactive work that leads to slow, unproductive, and error-prone issues.
Milestone #2
- Goal: Consolidate Omni + xDAI UIs
- Tasks
- Create UX wireframes for a consolidated UI.
- Create the front-end and UIs.
- If needed, refactor Omni bridges and xDAI bridge backends and infrastructure to easily make the UI merge.
- Deliverables
- A repository with the new consolidated UI.
- New UI is deployed.
- Outcomes
- UX is improved, aiming for fewer dropouts.
- Facilitate bridging operations into Gnosis Chain by a fairly simple process.
Milestone #3
- Goal: Security assessment plan and evaluation of bridges operation and infrastructure.
- Tasks
- Evaluate the current security (web2 and web3).
- Define a security plan and action items to improve the security of the bridges.
- Deliverables
- A document that describes the security assessment.
- A detailed security roadmap and best practices to follow.
- Outcomes
- Improved awareness of the current security.
- Increased security of the operation and infrastructure.
- Reduced risks associated with possible security breaches (web2 and web3).
Milestone #4
- Goal: Evaluate options for native bridges to bridge to other networks (today, only mainnet is supported).
- Tasks
- Analyze and research the needs and motivations to do it natively versus using/integrating with 3rd party solutions.
- Research and evaluate technical improvements and enhancements according to the research.
- Deliverables
- A technical plan for enabling users to easily bridge to as many networks as possible.
- Submit GIPs according to research.
- Outcomes
- The needs of assets bridging of users and protocols are clearly defined.
- Everyone can provide feedback on the future steps.
Milestone #5 (might change the priority to be done sooner)
- Goal: discovery phase to build a Bridge Aggregator.
- Tasks
- Evaluate building a consolidated app that helps users to bridge assets from all kinds of chains to GC using any supported solution (could be a combination of Li.finance, xDAI, Omnibridge, Connext, Hop, and other options).
- Identify technical and business requirements.
- Create a Product Specifications Document.
- Create a roadmap with milestones, timelines, effort estimates, etc.
- Deliverables
- Evaluation result: Go / No Go.
- Product Specifications Document.
- Product Development Plan.
- Outcomes
- Stakeholders understand if such a product is needed and its value to the ecosystem.
- The team has complete visibility on what needs to be built.
Milestones #6 and beyond: TBD
2: Circles infrastructure
When referring to Circles Infrastructure, the Circle UBI project has been lacking continuity of a development team, therefore, making the product roadmap hard to plan as every milestone relies on software development. As a result, the enormous potential of this ecosystem is not being fully realized. However, we could envision a possible roadmap:
- Contribution to user-friendly frontends, including Circles.Land and Gnosis Safe.
- Backends / Subgraphs
- Monitoring
- Dashboards
- SDKs
- Tech support to other teams building on Circles infrastructure
- Contribute onboarding DAOs to benefit from Circles features.
Roadmap: it is currently under development being built by several parties. To be published soon.
Scope of Work: Bootnode’s team has already been working on this initiative as an ongoing project since May 2022, contributing with: back-end, front-end, QA, UI, and Project Management.
As an outcome of this proposal, we expect to maximize the overall Circles UBI growth.
The ecosystem will initially benefit as follows:
- Circles users (individuals and DAOs): will enjoy new features, improved reliability, and great UX.
- Gnosis DAO: additional level of certainty in fulfilling the Circles UBI vision.
- Projects building on top of Circles; core infrastructure:
- Public roadmap with the features the team will implement in the future.
- Access to propose and prioritize feature requests.
- Gnosis Chain: higher block utilization due to the expected growth of the Circles protocol.
3: Gnosis Beacon Chain decentralization and security
BootNode will setup and run the Gnosis Chain full-stack (validator nodes and bridges) focusing on the Gnosis Beacon Chain and its path to the merge contributing to making it happen before Main net.
Roadmap: https://evening-lake-61d.notion.site/Gnosis-beacon-chain-merge-ca7e8759e5094b18accdc077e4959315
4: Gnosis DAO growth
We believe that by relying on a long-term committed engineering team, GnosisDAO ecosystem will be able to work on a more sound, clear, and executable vision, considerably increasing the probability of hitting every milestone in the roadmap. Therefore, many other Gnosis ecosystem’s efforts can count on the outcomes produced by this team:
- Support community development and education about Gnosis Chain, Bridges, and Circle UBI.
- Be available for different potential needs of the DAO and the community.
- Support research, create, and deliver new proposals within GIPs and expand Gnosis Chain to other ecosystems (protocols, networks, infrastructures, etc.).
- Protocol smart contracts development and GIP support.
- Attend technical conferences and Gnosis DAO events to support growth.
- Support pair programming sessions and education with dApp teams to share best practices and one-on-one support.
- Bootstrap, run, and manage Gnosis Beacon Chan and Gnosis Chain validators aligning long-term via GNO incentives.
Team
BootNode excellence in delivering an outstanding contribution and thinking outside the box is leveraged by already existing characteristics that have been poolish as a result of a team with an average of 10+ years of experience building and shipping software for many industries and 5+ years for the EVM ecosystem in particular.
We have identified the right candidates to build a 6 to 8 members cross-functional and autonomous team (a Squad) with all the required skills to work on the proposed scope of work, contribute to the network roadmap, and other potential work valuable to the chain.
Some team members have participated in designing and developing the two existing native bridges (OmniBridge and xDai Bridge) and have worked with other cross-chain projects contributing to the core protocol and integrations, such as Connext Network. Also, part of the team has been contributing to building the Circle infrastructure developing a “Group Currency” layer on top of Circles for a couple of months and is fully knowledgeable about it.
BootNode’s track record of experience in the field provides a competitive advantage to the GC that could speed the solution, derisk the DAO, and meet expectations.
Progress status
- Bi-monthly progress reports in the forum.
- Participation in the community calls.
- Discord channels.
- Roadmap, backlog, prioritization discussions, etc. are transparent and visible in notion, GitHub, and any other tool consistent with the other teams.
Terms of the Agreement
- Time horizon: 6 months (closer to the end, a follow-on proposal will be created).
- Amount: $580k in stable coins.
- GNO: 580 GNO (exclusively for running GBC validators for at least 12 months).
Duration and Termination
- This proposal shall come into force and be binding upon the Parties from the date the proposal is approved by the GnosisDAO governance mechanism.
- This agreement has an indeterminate time duration since it is approved unless any renegotiation and/or termination of this agreement occurs, always through the governance mechanisms of GnosisDAO.
- The GnosisDAO may terminate BootNode’s engagement under this agreement for any reason by Governance Mechanism.
- BootNode may terminate this agreement upon four 30-day notice as a new discussion thread in the GnosisDAO forum.
- Without previous notification, BN will be entitled to terminate this agreement if GnosisDAO fails to make payments for more than 2 consecutive periods.
About BootNode
BootNode is a long-term dev & engineering partner focused on the Ethereum ecosystem that accelerates the development and adoption of decentralized infrastructure, protocols, applications, and ecosystems through engineering and investment.
Founded by a team of engineers with an average of 10+ years of experience building and shipping highly available, highly scalable software for many industries and 3+ years for the blockchain ecosystem in particular.
Boot Node contributes in different phases as an interdisciplinary team, from ideation to massive adoption:
- Protocol and architecture design and specs
- Integration and usage of existing battle-tested Ethereum components (Oracles, AMMs, Multisigs, Lending/borrowing, DAOs, and much, much more)
- UI design and dApps development
- Bots, relayers, backends
- The Graph Protocol Subgraphs
- SDKs and reference implementations
- Cross-chain integrations
- Ecosystem and dev adoption through grants programs design
- Staking/validation infrastructure
Our team has experience shipping projects for the top projects in the industry:
- AAVE
- MakerDAO
- Ocean Protocol
- xDAI network and bridges
- Synthetix
- The Graph Protocol
- Set Protocol
- Curve Finance
- Gnosis Safe wallet and Gnosis Auction
- Opyn Options Protocol
- AragonDAO
- Kyber Network
- POA Network
- dxDAO DutchX and Fairdex Exchange
