WE WILL BE PUBLISHING A NEW PROPOSAL AT A LATER DATE WITH A NEW VALUE BREAKDOWN.
Attributes
Author(s): Shane Burgett
Recipient(s): Decentralized Authority
Category: Reimbursement + Funding Runway
Fulfills: RFP-7: Node Deployment Tools & RFP-8: Node Monitoring Tools
Asking Amount: 266,000 POKT
Summary
POKT Lint is an open-source tool and service that enables node runners to test their node’s latency performance against every location the POKT Portal is deployed. Since the Portal favors nodes that are able to respond to requests within 100ms, it is increasingly important that node runners be able to gauge their latency performance. Pocket Lint is the first publicly available tool for measuring node latency.
The purpose of this proposal is to reimburse for the development of Pocket Lint and fund future development plus its deployment in all 14 Portal locations as a free API service for the POKT node community. Since the beta launch in March, POKT Lint has already been used to test/troubleshoot hundreds of POKT nodes.
To see POKT Lint in action, check out our presentation and demo from the March 25th Community Call.
Background
Decentralized Authority is the development group behind Node Pilot and Node Launcher. It was started by long time POKT contributor, Shane Burget, and long time web3 developer, Ryan Burgett. POKT Lint was a joint effort between Shane, Ryan, and POKT community member @noproblem, who is the creator of the awesome https://pokt.tools.
What’s the deal with calling it POKT Lint?
Wikipedia: “Lint, or a linter, is a static code analysis tool used to flag programming errors, bugs, stylistic errors and suspicious constructs.”
We couldn’t resist! Credit: @noproblem
Motivation/Rationale
Any POKT node runner knows that the most important factors to maximizing rewards are: 1) chain selection and 2) relay latency. Fortunately, through tools like POKTscan, node runners can research chain rewards to identify which chains they want to serve… but there are no practical ways for node runners to identify their relay latency in respect to Pocket Portal locations. This leaves most node runners in the dark regarding how latency may be affecting their rewards.
Pocket Lint was built to fill this gap in node tooling by empowering node runners with the ability to identify their relay latency per chain, per Portal location. It’s being deployed as an open API for the Pocket community to freely test their POKT nodes. We’ve also created an open-source GUI that is hosted at poktlint.com which makes it simple for users to test their nodes by simply dropping their node addresses.
See instructions in how POKT Lint works here.
POKT Lint can also be added into other tools through an API. Node Pilot and pokt.tools already plan to integrate this as a feature to their platforms. Documentation for using the API can be found on the POKT Lint Github.
POKT Lint is built as a small microservice that has been packaged as an AWS Lambda function or an Docker container, making it easy for others to deploy as well. This could be useful for commercial node operators who need more flexibility for running larger scale tests. Deployment information can be found on the POKT Lint Github.
As Pocket Network’s node ecosystem grows, its important that there be tools that help node runners, large and small test latency and chain connectivity. POKT Lint does this in a way that is accessible to all types of node runners. Improved relay latency not only can help node runners with rewards, but it also improves the latency performance for apps using Pocket.
Objective(s)
-
Reimburse for the past 5 months of development
-
Cover costs of running and maintaining POKT Lint and the POKT Lint API as a free community service
-
Provide a funding runway for upgrades and new features
Objective Key Results
- Provide POKT Lint as a free, open-source tool for the Pocket community
- Deploy POKT Lint to every region of the Pocket Portal
- Allow applications free access to the POKT Lint API
- Host poktlint.com as a free GUI frontend
- Provide documentation on APIs and deployment.
Needs Being Met
POKT Lint is a tool address both RFP-7: Node Deployment Tools and RFP-8 Node Monitoring Tools. POKT Lint helps with node deployment by enabling node runners to identify the latency of both mainnet and testnet deployments. If node runners are seeing high latency through POKT Lint, they can adjust deployment strategies if a location is hindering performance. It can also be used to troubleshooting to ensure latency is not affected by changing hardware or other infrastructure changes.
Relay latency testing is frequently brought up in the weekly Node Runners Community calls on Wednesdays at 12pm EST. The node runner community has been asking for a tool like POKT Lint.
Dissenting Opinions
Shouldn’t the the Pocket Network Foundation should be the ones to operate and maintain this kind of community tools?
While PNF does create and run a number of POKT related services (example: The POKT Portal), many community services are operated and hosted by community teams. Services like POKTscan, POKTwatch, POKT.tools are all operated by different teams, adding team distribution and creative diversity to the POKT ecosystem.
Beyond providing free software for independent node runners through Node Pilot, Decentralized Authority is excited to also provide this service to the larger node community.
Deliverable(s)
- POKT Lint (80%):
- Completed
- Relay Latency tester
- Chain selection
- Sample rate
- In progress
- Ping tester
- Testnet support
- Completed
- POKT Lint API service (70%)
- Completed
- Deployed in most Portal regions
- In progress
- Deploy to all Portal regions
- Provide public APIs for each region
- Completed
-
POKTLint.com (60%)
- Completed:
- MVP GUI
- Wallet address importer
- Multiple node support
- Auto multi-region
- Auto multi-chain
- In progress
- New Professional GUI
- Ping latency results (the ping time to the node) and the process latency results (the amount of time it take the node to process the request)
- Testnet support
- Completed:
Budget
Reimbursement
POKT Lint has been in progress for 5 months. The time invested went towards:
- Planning
- Research
- Development
- Testing
- Documentation
- Deployment
- Community support
Reimbursement budget: 130,000 POKT
Runway
We plan to keep growing and improving POKT Lint. New features are outlined in the Deliverables section. We also expect to update POKT Lint as we begin receiving feedback from users. To ensure we have funds to maintain development, runway funds to add new features, add new chains, and provide community support.
Runway budget: 60,000 POKT
Administrative Costs
To cover business taxes, legal expenses, the volatile nature of being paid in a crypto asset (non-stable coin), and the lack of high liquidity options for US entities, we are including a 40% administrative safety net. This is required to adhere to business best practices.
Administrative Costs: 76,000 POKT
Total Budget: 266,000 POKT
Beyond This Proposal
Depending on the needs of the POKT Validator community, there may be features, upgrades, or maintenance costs that will require further funding to complete. This current proposal covers the stated upgrades, expected community support, and expected maintenance/hosting costs.
Contributor(s)
Shane Burgett - Long time POKT contributor with a background in business development, marketing, media production, and community growth.
Ryan Burgett - Full-stack Web3 application developer with 5+ years of experience in the areas of wallets, interoperability platforms, mining, and node deployment.
Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.