GIP-61: Shall GnosisDAO fund BootNode as a Core Contributor Team?

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.
  • 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
2 Likes

Could you please elaborate how do you plan to improve financial operations of the bridges?
as for now, all revenues from fees and lending of stable tokens in Aave v2 in Compound on Mainnet are going directly to KarpatkeyDAO.

From my point of view what can be done better:

  • liquid tokens which can be lended and have enough liquidity in bridge pools should be lended (WETH, WBTC)
  • tokens which are not lended/ or can’t be lended should collect transactions fees, e.g. WBTC
  • tokens of friendly projects (GNO, COW, SAFE) shouldn’t have exceptions in fees (0 fees)
  • revenue from bridges should flow directly into tokenomics of GNO

After the merger of xDai and Gnosis, there are new stream of GNO into the open market

  • ex-STAKE holders
  • future staking rewards of GBC
  • liquid staking rewards from Stakewise
  • grants to core clients and infrastructure providers
  • vesting of new team members of GnosisDAO
  • Gnosis Builders VC fund rewards
  • OTC deals between GnosisDAO and external VC funds
    to name a few.

Most of that GNO capital is flowing on the market for future promises and value for such contributions was not determined by the open market before. What should support GNO tokenomics?

There are very limited “once in a while” mechanics to remove supply GNO from the market like buy back and burn, providing liquidity to GNO pairs from revenues of the network.

I believe canonical bridges are cash-cow businesses for L1 ecosystems since they are not replaceable and used by state channel bridges, can collect fees on all transactions and use idle capital without sharing revenues with their users. They should be a pillar of tokenomics.

As a suggestion

  • missing opportunities (WBTC, WETH)
  • projections for revenue streams for other lending protocols
  • usage of bridge revenues after collection by Karpatkey
  • Goal: Consolidate Omni + xDAI UIs

Omni and xDai UIs are not open source. Do you mean to build a new UI for bridges?
We didn’t have any discussions with you or another party to combine both UIs. It’s better to add xDai UI into Bridge UI instead of building it from scratch.

3 Likes

Hi Igor, just a clarification, Karpatkey is not a custodian of funds (we don’t have access to them). The funds are owned and handled solely by GnosisDAO.

As far as I know, Karpakey is still a custodian and have access to funds in question. Here is a proof from “Governance Multisig of Gnosis Chain” coordination chat dated June 23 2022. A black box was added on the list of governors’s telegram handles for opsec reasons.

The funds are owned and handled solely by GnosisDAO.

Not true. They are handled by KarpatkeyDAO.

1 Like

Hi Igor,

As always, thanks a lot for the feedback and the suggestions. Great input for the initial milestone.

The plan is to work closely with those involved in the GC’s bridges to identify where we can add the most value. As an example, we could start working with KarpatkeyDAO to identify how we could facilitate their work by building tools, monitoring dashboard, bots, etc. to help them analyze the performance of the different bridges from and to the GC, identify assets in need of improved liquidity in terms of bridges to GC, bridge infrastructure and maintenance, liquidity balancing, etc.
Of course, tasks and priorities might change after the initial discovery phase.

Thx for the heads-up. It would be great to discuss the options when we get there.

There was a mistake in that message in the bridge governors’ TG channel, it should have referred to the safe as “GnosisDAO daughter safe”.

BootNode may terminate this agreement upon four 30-day notice as a new discussion thread in the GnosisDAO forum.

  • BN has unilateral termination powers whereas GnosisDAO must go through its governance process. This is not balanced.

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.

*Meaning this agreement will auto renew after 6 months absent some intervening act? I am not a fan of this clause. It makes more sense to have GnosisDAO vote on a renewal term or even a new package at or near the end of the 6 month duration so the DAO can review/evaluate the work product before making a longer commitment. It would be hard for me to vote for something that is locked in for an indefinite period of time.

1 Like

Hi boonjue.eth,
The “Duration and Termination” section was taken and adapted from other proposals. Thank you for pointing out those two items.

I believe 30-days is enough for the DAO to discuss over the forum and go through a snapshot proposal. We can adjust if needed.

I will remove it from the proposal as it contradicts another part of it: closer to the end, a follow-on proposal will be created.

Hi @mgarciap,

I have a few questions on the payments (ideally, we’d need you to add the replies in the proposal).

  1. To which address should the payment be made?
  2. In which network is the wallet to which the payment should be made? (ideally, in Gnosis Chain)
  3. Any stablecoins would do? E.g.: XDAI, USDC, USDT

Hi, @DefiFoodie

Safe address in main net: eth:0x3bCba50Ec74d18c583e0A832DD19AE37E9348790
Stable Coin: DAI or USDC

Thank you.

The 580 GNO will used to run BootNode owned and operated GBC validators correct?

They won’t be deposited into a liquid staking service provider such as Stakewise correct?

How many Gnosis Chain validators does BootNode plan on running?

Feels odd giving GNO to a project to run Gnosis Chain validators while other Gnosis Chain validators had to spend their own money to obtain GNO to run their Gnosis Chain validators.

Does BootNode plan on returning the 580 GNO to the GnosisDao after 12 months? If not, please explain why. What are BootNode’s plans for the rewards earned from the Gnosis Chain validators?

Circles UBI is already asking for funding in GIP-59. Why is BootNode also asking for funding for Circles UBI?

3 Likes

The GNO will not be used on any staking service provider (Stakewise or any other). BootNode will setup and run an in-house validator infrastructure.
Our goal is to contribute to strengthening, decentralizing, and enlarging the Gnosis ecosystem by providing more independent validation power to the network. We will provide proof of those validators running as time goes by.

100% of GNO will be used for running GBC validators.

Running GBC validators is only a small part of the proposal (please check the section: Simple Summary).

In many major DAOs, part of the native tokens is used as long-term incentive alignments with its members. This proposal includes such alignment.

The usual way to implement it is through smart contract escrows that usually have a cliff/lock time of 6 to 12 months and vesting over other 6 to 12 months.

Having the GNO locked running validators adding value to the network is better than sitting on an escrow contract. Same as with vesting, it is better to be able to have the option to withdraw rewards and stakes if needed, following the network protocol’s mechanisms.

The GIP-59 title is confusing. It is not for funding the Circles Project but to fund one initiative led by two organizations: Circles Coop eG and Bitsposessed (details here).
As Martin shared in a drawing, there are several teams working on Circles ATM. BootNode has been one of them that joined a few months ago. We aim to build synergetic collaborations with all the teams working on Circles.

The proposal has been created in Snapshot:
https://snapshot.org/#/gnosis.eth/proposal/0x70c0fa32438a38508fa4e011422e8955fad41fc246d569772faaedf9cfbfa876

Start date: Aug 10, 2022, 11:35 AM
End date: Aug 17, 2022, 11:35 AM

2 Likes

Thank you @mgarciap

We have been working with Bootnode and people in the team for many years now on various occasions. We right now need more help with filling all the roles and needs to make Gnosis Chain successful so I am fully in support of the proposal!

2 Likes

Hi @mgarciap. To which GC address do you need the 580 GNO transferred?

1 Like

Safe wallet in Gnosis Chain Network: gno:0x1C7645a077f2f2546bdf896eDEBE5743457462fC

Thank you.

We are thrilled and very excited about the proposal’s result and to be able to continue to work on growing the Gnosis DAO ecosystem.

I want to thank everyone who has participated in this thread, asking questions and providing feedback, and those who took the time to vote on the Snapshot proposal.

We’d like to share an update as the proposal is halfway through.

So far, the team has contributed exclusively to what added the most value: native bridges and the merge. Everything else was deprioritized or discarded once the roadmap refinement advanced. Currently, the team is working on finalizing a Bridge Explorer to help users, the support team, and validators view all bridge-related details (the current status is WIP). Afterward, other teams will now take the work on bridges.

BootNode has a great dApp team, so the focus will turn to other initiatives to keep contributing to the growth of the DAO, particularly the Gnosis Chain.

After gathering different needs and opportunities, we have identified that our capacities will be best utilized, contributing to Agave’s UX/UI and front-end.

Updated team and timelines

The team has been modified to better adapt to the tasks and deliverables:

  • Lead frontend engineer (full-time)
  • Frontend engineer (full-time)
  • UX/UI designer (part-time)
  • UI engineer (part-time)
  • QA engineer (part-time)
  • Project Manager (part-time)
  • Business Analyst (part-time)

The initial engagement end date will be moved from mid-February to early-May 2023 (~3+ months), given that the team is smaller. The rest of the terms and conditions stay the same.

5 Likes