GIP-74: Should GnosisDAO support Gnosischa.in Explorer hosted by beaconcha.in?

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GIP-74: Should GnosisDAO support Gnosischa.in Explorer hosted by beaconcha.in?

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title: Should GnosisDAO support Gnosischa.in Explorer hosted by beaconcha.in
status: Phase-2
type: Funding
Created: 2022-12-09

Gnosischa.in by beaconcha.in

https://snapshot.org/#/gnosis.eth/proposal/0x668ad502b088d88e55aef4de530437d6ba227fb855d72ee13044d17ce6c362a7

Description

Gnosischa.in is an open source explorer that provides users with an easy and accessible way to explore the gnosis-chain. Our explorer is designed to be user-friendly, making it accessible to non-technical users. In addition to our web-based explorer, we also offer an open source mobile app for iOS and Android, providing users with the ability to monitor their validators on the go.

Our goal is to make it easy for anyone to access and understand the data on the gnosis-chain, regardless of their technical expertise.

Gnosischa.in will be maintained by bitfly which also operates beaconcha.in, Ethermine Staking, Ethpool and several mining pools.

We have a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities in this space and are confident in our ability to deliver value to users of the gnosis chain.

Project Details

Gnosischa.in – One of our key features is the integration of both the consensus layer and the execution layer in a single explorer. This allows users to easily access and analyze data from both layers, providing a more comprehensive view of the gnosis chain.

In addition to that, it has a mobile app for stakers to monitor their validators & machines.

Product Features

Beaconcha.in’s first-party integration with its ecosystem will enable current beaconcha.in premium users to access premium features on the mobile app, as well as API access to gnosischa.in and vice versa.

General

  • Open Source (GNU General Public License v3.0)
  • Supports Execution Layer and Consensus Layer
  • Supports multiple networks
  • Written in Golang
  • Visualization of blocks and epochs
  • Public API endpoints
  • Dashboard for validator monitoring
  • Various tools to export income for tax purposes
  • Client Metric exporter for mobile monitoring

Website

  • Validator Dashboard with status, income, balance, attestations, proposals and charts
  • Overviews about blocks, slots, epochs, transactions, validators, slashings and the mempool
  • Leaderboards about validators and deposits
  • Charts about various network stats
  • Monitoring
    • The monitoring feature analyzes blockchain data and (optionally) data provided by a user’s staking setup
    • Highly configurable notifications and notification channels
      (mobile push, email, webhooks)

Tools

  • APIs for Execution Layer and Consensus Layer
  • Income History
  • Profit Calculator
  • Block Visualizer
  • Unit Converter
  • Graffiti Wall

Beaconcha.in Mobile App Integration

  • Open Source (GNU General Public License v3.0)
  • Dashboard with similar info as the website
  • Notifications about client updates
  • Machine stats with charts
  • Widgets
  • Themes

Funding & Disbursement

Hosting costs cover high-capacity bandwidth, infrastructure upgrades, data storage and maintenance.

Amount is paid up front for the year and can be renewed annually. Payment can be made to beaconcha.in’s Gitcoin address 0x9d4E94dB689Bc471E45b0a18B7BdA36FcCeC9c3b in USDT/USDC/GNO ERC20.

$250,000 annually
60% in USDT/USDC - $150k in USDC/USDT
40% in GNO - $100k in GNO (2 Year lockup)

6 Likes
2

Unfortunately I was not able to add more than two links into the main post :frowning_face:
The most important ones are our repository and main website

  1. https://beaconcha.in/
  2. GitHub - gobitfly/eth2-beaconchain-explorer: Open source golang based explorer for the eth2 beacon chain
1 Like
3

I fully support this proposal:

  • Beaconcha.in mobile app is very useful for home stakers, who may not have sophisticated alerts
  • Alerts may help with the participation of the network, help node operators remain online
  • New version of the Beaconcha.in explorer supports EL and CL, offers diversity to users

GnosisDAO currently runs beacon.gnosischain.com, albeit on a fork of an older version of Beaconchain. As we have seen with previous downtimes, running a Beacon explorer is a non-trivial task. Being able to collaborate with the Beaconcha.in team on a GPL-licensed codebase would be great, and we can also help contribute to the codebase (e.g. providing alternatives to Bigtable, perf improvements)

Considerations

From the perspective of the DAO, we should also be aware that our costs are running up for Chain Infra, as our annual burn rate is added onto by:

  • Gnosisscan (Etherscan team)
  • Blockscout
  • Beaconcha.in

While the costs are starting to add up, I believe these are “table stakes” that we have to provide. We have to focus on the main goal - driving demand for Gnosis blockspace, as well as explore revenue structures such as Bridge revenues, to get to sustainability.

5 Likes
4

I support this but, $250K seems a lot. Could we see more datailed brakedown of this budget? How much for each of: high-capacity bandwidth, infrastructure upgrades, data storage and maintenance?

5 Likes
5

I support that. Pricing-wise, coming from high-available infra player myself, 250k/year is about 20k/month which is not cheap but taking into account GCP pricing plus the cost of supporting/monitoring/adjusting to the needs of the Gnosis community, it seems reasonable.

And the value to the community and to validators is very high. :+1: from me for sure.

3 Likes
6

While I agree that the pricing looks reasonable, a breakdown of costs would be helpful. Infra cost, dev cost, ongoing maintenance cost.

4 Likes
7

I like to know if the limitation of adding 100 validators max (currently on beacon.gnosischain.com) will apply or can this be changed to some other number? 100 seems reasonable for most ethereum stakers, but cause running a gbc validator is much cheaper imo the number should be increased.
And also I am not sure if we really need a mobile app, for me it would be enough if I can run it in a mobile browser if this would save substantial costs. If it’s just a small part of the budget to have an app it’s nice to have ofc.

3 Likes
8

hi @yorickdowne & @cnupy

Sorry for the delay in my response. Below is an estimated breakdown of the costs for the project:

  • 4,000 USD for compute and traffic
  • 4,000 USD for databases (SQL and Bigtable)
  • 9,000 USD for senior developers
  • 3,000 USD for junior developers
  • 1,000 USD for monitoring and SRE

This brings the total estimated monthly cost to 21,000 USD, or 252,000 USD per year.

Please note that only 150,000 USD of the grant is immediately available, with the remaining funds being locked for two years. We expect that these funds will be used to run Gnosis validators and signal our long-term alignment. In the meantime, we will cover the difference in costs out of our own pocket.

3 Likes
9

Hi refri,

The 100 validator limit will remain in place for free users. This is necessary because our backend will not function properly without it. We are currently redesigning the beaconcha.in dashboard (frontend and backend) to provide users with more information about their validators. These changes will also be available on gnosischa.in. Additionally, paid users will have access to support for more than 1,000 validators on both explorers. You can think of it as a first party integration into the existing beaconcha.in ecosystem.

3 Likes
10

This feels very important in support of being the most decentralized blockchain.

What would be the timeline for these deliverables?

On the funding, is the expectation to receive $100k in GNO vested over 2 years every year? Or is that a one time settlement, with only the $150k in USD happening annually?
In terms of vesting, is the request to have 100% vested on the 2 years mark, or is it a linear vesting?

2 Likes
11

Thanks for the answer! Can you give an estimate about the fee users have to pay for more than 100 validators?
Also I like to know how much of the proposed budget is attributed for the mobile apps, means how much we might save if we restrict this to a browser based solution.

1 Like
12

Very high cost. Are you hosting at AWS? Out of line for a secondary hosting project.

1 Like
13

What would be the timeline for these deliverables?

We are currently aiming to deliver the first version of gnosischa.in within Q2.
However, we recognize that the integration of the withdrawals function into in the next Ethereum hardfork, could potentially impact our timeline. We are closely monitoring these developments and will adjust our plans accordingly to ensure that we can deliver the best possible product within a reasonable time frame.

On the funding, is the expectation to receive $100k in GNO vested over 2 years every year? Or is that a one time settlement, with only the $150k in USD happening annually?
In terms of vesting, is the request to have 100% vested on the 2 years mark, or is it a linear vesting?

We anticipate that once we have the first full integration of our project, we will be able to reduce the amount of dev resources required, which would lead to a decrease in costs of around 50%
Our current plan is to spin up gnosis validators with the locked GNO for the next 2 years to signal our support of the project.

3 Likes
14

Thanks for the answer! Can you give an estimate about the fee users have to pay for more than 100 validators?
Also I like to know how much of the proposed budget is attributed for the mobile apps, means how much we might save if we restrict this to a browser based solution.

Currently, our pricing for more than 100 validators can be found at the following link: https://beaconcha.in/premium. This pricing applies to any network, including Goerli, Ethereum, and gnosis. Our current premium users will also have premium access on other networks, so we will not double charge.

In addition, we are currently working on improving our dashboard to support 1000+ validators, which will cost around $80. This will allow us to provide the same level of support and functionality on the gnosis network as on the Ethereum mainnet.

Technically it would be possible, but most of the work is integrating the API endpoints in the web app (which we are already working on). Also, I don’t think it would be a good look for our product. to be honest. Preferably we have identical support as on all other networks.

3 Likes
15

Fully agree on this. And looking at your pricing table I see it as a ‘for profit’-product that should be self sustainable and therefore might not need extra funding from gnosis DAO?
Or maybe only for a short period of time till you are able to generate enough revenue by ads or subscriptions?

I don’t mind if Gnosis DAO fund this, but I don’t feel comfortable to fund it and let the users pay on top without any insight in the actual and expected cash flow from operations.

Suspecting you don’t like to sell part of your project to the DAO to generate the funds, I could better go along with buying a certain amount of subscriptions, that can be used as incentives by Gnosis DAO (e.g. to reward validators) instead of paying the setup/development of a ‘for profit’ product without buying in.

4 Likes
16

Our goal is to make the staking experience as easy and accessible as possible for the average person. To that end, we offer a range of features and tools at no cost. Our pricing for the dashboard, for instance, only starts at 100 validators, which we believe is a large enough number to justify a $5 fee. Keep in mind that many of these power users with 100 or more validators typically have their own custom monitoring tools.

In general, I think it would be beneficial for the gnosischain to have a sustainable explorer. Ultimately, all of our products, including the mobile app and web explorer, are open source and can be used by anyone in the long term.

2 Likes
17

Since the cost structure and pricing will change a year from now, wouldn’t it make more sense to frame the scope of this proposal to 1 year, and then go through another proposal with the new pricing info? I feel that will enable the DAO to make a more educated decision than committing to an annual fee up front.

I have a similar feeling to @refri 's. I guess it is perfectly possible that the overall product development requires funding from the DAO, while paid subscriptions only fund additional/marginal features or marginal support. However, more information on this regard (within the scope of what can be publicly shared) will help make a more educated decision.

3 Likes
18

Hi @Sisyphos ,

We appreciate your suggestion to frame the scope of the proposal to one year. However, we believe that committing to a one-year agreement at this time may not be feasible given the uncertainties that exist. For example, there may be various GIPs (Governance Improvement Proposals) that require additional input from our end, which could extend the timeline beyond one year.

In order to support the project for the longterm, we suggest considering an annual fee with a range, rather than a fixed one-year commitment. This could be something like a minimum of $150k (USDC/USDT) and a maximum of $250k, which provides some flexibility for the DAO while still ensuring that we have sufficient funding to carry out our work.

We believe that this proposal strikes a good balance between meeting the needs of the project and providing some flexibility for the DAO. Please let us know what you think :slight_smile:

2 Likes
19

The vote is live:
https://snapshot.org/#/gnosis.eth/proposal/0x668ad502b088d88e55aef4de530437d6ba227fb855d72ee13044d17ce6c362a7

1 Like
20

Hi @butta, is the app life to use with gnosis chain? Might you share a link?

1 Like