PEP65: SCAN (Support Continuation And Needs)

Proposals Ecosystem
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Author: @b3n @Dermot @JackALaing on behalf of PNF
Recipient: Poktscan.com

TL;DR:

This proposal requests funding of $20k / month until the launch of the Shannon upgrade for POKTscan to continue their work supporting the Morse protocol.

Background / Motivation:

In the past, PNF made a decision to fund Poktscan.com, specifically the indexer and dashboards, to ensure continued data access for various stakeholders during a challenging phase in the project’s development. While this decision was ultimately necessary, it could have benefited from improved community communication, a lesson we have taken to heart. We now seek funding approval from the DAO to continue supporting Poktscan.com.

Furthermore, the Foundation’s direct funding should be restricted to keystone projects and the PNF team’s operational expenses, as outlined in the recent PNF budget post, excluding ERA funding and any other DAO funding mechanisms. Core infrastructure funding falls outside the Foundation’s purview. PNF’s prompt decision to fund Poktscan.com was warranted given its significance to the ecosystem’s data access. Now, the DAO should assume responsibility for its continued support.

The continued support requested herein is intended to cover the period until the Shannon launch and the conclusion of the current Era. This ensures that the data requirements of a diverse range of stakeholders (outlined below) will be met as we approach our most significant milestone. It also provides the DAO with ample time to discuss and coordinate on strategies to meet the expanding data demands of our growing stakeholder base.

Poktscan was funded, developed, and supported for over two years by Poktscan Technologies as a contribution to the Pocket Network community. Subsequently, given Poktscan Technologies’ financial limitations, PNF allocated up to $20,000 in funding to ensure the project’s continuation.

Rationale:

Poktscan stands as the official blockchain explorer for the Pocket Network, serving as a comprehensive tool for exploring and analyzing Pocket Network data. It empowers developers and users to gain valuable insights into the network’s performance, node activity, and overall health.

Functioning as a critical infrastructure component within the Pocket Network ecosystem, akin to block explorers in other blockchain networks, Poktscan.com transforms raw blockchain data into a structured and searchable format.

This enables various stakeholders to access the information they need to effectively interact with the POKT Network blockchain. Poktscan provides valuable insights into the network’s performance, node analytics, transactional activity, and the overall health of the ecosystem. Additionally, Poktscan offers unique insights specific to POKT, including relays/rewards, per chain, per node/operator, and, most recently, per gateway.

Poktscan.com: A Vital Tool for the Pocket Network Ecosystem

Poktscan.com is an essential tool for a wide range of stakeholders within the Pocket Network ecosystem. It provides comprehensive data and insights that are crucial for various activities, including:

  • Developer Operations: Developers, including the Pocket Network protocol development team, rely on Poktscan.com to access and analyze data about the blockchain. Without Poktscan, these teams would face longer runway and lead times due to the increased time required to manually gather and analyze data.

  • Financial Market Insights: Financial institutions, such as investors, aggregators, and exchanges, utilize Poktscan.com to gain valuable insights into the Pocket Network ecosystem. This data is essential for making informed investment decisions and evaluating the overall health of the network. Poktscan’s data has been instrumental in securing listings on centralized exchanges, Coinmarketcap, Messari, and Token Terminal.

  • Node Runner Monitoring: Noderunners, researchers, and individuals use Poktscan.com to access blockchain data for various purposes, such as monitoring network performance and conducting research. PNF, for instance, relies on Poktscan.com data to perform various analyses and monitoring tasks related to ecosystem performance and governance.

  • Individual Stakeholder Tracking: Individuals can track their POKT holdings, confirm the status of transfers, and understand their staking performance using Poktscan.com. This data is crucial for making informed decisions about their participation in the Pocket Network ecosystem.

Funding for Continued Operations

The requested funding is intended to support the continued operations of Poktscan.com in the ways directly related to the above-mentioned stakeholders. Specific areas of focus include:

  • Poktscan.com Maintenance: This includes managing servers, storage, networking, monitoring, alerts, and ongoing bug fixing and improvements to ensure data accuracy, performance, and scalability.

  • Development of New Core Features: Poktscan.com is committed to developing new core features that benefit the entire ecosystem. Recent examples include governance data visualization, Gateway fee representation and tracking updates, and support for the growing Gateway-verse ecosystem.

  • Ad Hoc Data Requests: Poktscan.com provides ad hoc data support for various entities, such as Messari, the Governance upgrade project, TogetherCrew’s new community metrics dashboard, and others.

  • UI Improvements: Poktscan.com is continuously enhancing its user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) to make it more accessible and user-friendly for a wider range of users.

  • Shannon Migration: Poktscan.com is preparing for the launch of Shannon, ensuring that it has feature parity for Shannon at the time of the upgrade.

Funding

This proposal seeks funding for:

  • $20k/month (in POKT or wPOKT)

This funding will continue to the launch of the Shannon upgrade, currently slated for late Q2 in 2024. Payment is to be made on a monthly basis in POKT based on the 30-day average price as specified in the DAO payment principles.

FAQs

  • Does this relate just to the POKTscan.com costs, excluding the POKTscan noderunning business and the new pnyx entity? Yes, the operational and labour costs relate directly to POKTscan.com. While some resources support both projects, only their time committed to POKTscan.com is included. The monthly costs for POKTscan.com only are said by the POKTscan team to be over $26k/month.
  • Why did PNF not remove this single point of failure? It was clear to all from the previous transparency notice around support for POKTscan.com that PNF was open to supporting community alternatives that came up. PNF itself was and still is focused on executing against our keystone ambitions and does not have the direct means or the capacity to lead on this. Given the community did not take up this activity or exploit this clear opportunity we hope that perhaps this DAO proposal will reinforce the opportunity that exists for alternatives to be supported or retroactively rewarded for removing this dependency. However, to be clear, that is something for the DAO to coordinate on and decide AFTER providing certainty to our ecosystem and stakeholders that our data needs will be met up to and including the launch of Shannon.
  • Will you continue to support current alternative options? Yes, we will continue to support the socket for @iannn and will add our voice and neutrality to the exploration of other alternatives the DAO decides on.
  • Why is POKTscan.com not required to open source? ​​Poktscan is a public good that has never charged ecosystem participants for its service. It will take months to work through open-sourcing the portal and it will have less value by then as it will require major changes given we will almost be at Shannon. We care most about providing security and certainty in the short term for Morse and Shannon Day 1 which is what this proposal aims to do. We will work with the community to explore options that remove closed source dependencies for after the Shannon launch.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

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POKtscan.com is a great tool and should be supported to keep giving value to the ecosystem.

I’d be interested to see a bit more a breakdown of the $20k month - how much is going to infra, how much salaries etc? How was this figure decided?

Also the below again with some breakdown and supporting evidence would be helpful if it’s going to be used as supporting evidence itself:

I am in support of giving funds to POKTscan, i’d just like some more clarity on the numbers.

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I second @Cryptocorn’s sentiment and I’m also in favor of continuing the support for POKTscan.com. I’m not as interested in seeing a breakdown because 20K / month doesn’t seem like much given the platform they provide and the quality and involvment of the team behind it.

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This was my concern. Shannon is a full re-write… not just some small changes, so wouldn’t it be possible to make the re-write open-source from the start? Since every service in POKT needs to re-write anyways, it would be helpful to have someone take the lead on showing how it could be done.

Would there be a place were if we PNF provides more funding to POKTScan they have the sources to make all their Shannon work open-source? Is there any kind of deal there that can be made?

They are a deserving team, they deliver great products, and they are needed for a Shannon launch… but I’m just hoping it can be done in a way that add more to the POKT development community as a whole.

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The re-write for Shannon will not include all parts of POKTscan. The site is divided in several modules, with one being the most affected by Shannon, the block sync process, this is the one that will need a complete rework. All other modules (like internal db, API, website, aggregations, etc) will remain the same as we will try to keep the history unbroken in our site.

This is going to take a lot of work that we are willing to do and we are already preparing to do, but it does not compare to what means to make the project open-source. The effort of separating the sync process and start it as a new stand-alone module which should be open-source and open-developed is much much greater.

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Thanks for the clarification.

Two questions:

  1. Are you saying this aspect will be open-source in the current agreement?
  2. Could you explain the block sync process? I’m trying to understand exactly how this module would be used. Any insight would helpful :+1:
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No, this agreement is the continuation of the previous one previous one . No code will be opensource due to it.

The sync is the process of reading the blocks, parse the information and save it to the internal db. It is the process of interacting with the blockchain.

But again, this is not separated from the rest of the Poktscan stack and wont be open sourced. The cost of doing so is nor negligible and cannot be covered by this agreement. Our personnel is very limited, because, as for all teams in the space, staying alive was not easy.

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My hope was that at-least there would be something tangible for POKT developer community to aid in the transition to Shannon. We will literally have to do the exact same work as you for CC (which reads and parses block information to get session data). We made our Morse implementation open-source and put it inside of a tool. I’m sure others will have to do other implementations for their tools.

I’m on the fence. I understand if PNF move forward with it because POKTScan is a needed tool for Shannon, but it is a hard pill to swallow IMO.

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Love PoktScan, Love @RawthiL, but I love open source. Its legit in our DNA so if its being funded at least portions of it that need to change should open source - this would actually make it a public good. Not a private entity providing a service they cannot maintain. The difference is clear.

I am for the grant, IF AND ONLY IF they open source their block sync logic, or whatever specfically is being funded for the transistion to shannon.

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This is too large a request to be approved smoothly. I believe this proposal should be rejected and firmly downvoted. It’s time for the POKT DAO to demonstrate signs of maturation and reject this proposal, unless the Poktscan team agrees to open-source it for the benefit of the Pocket Network project, and not keep POKT DAO (PNF) as a hostage. Remaining closed-source gives them the power to hold all of us hostage. The proposal should be rejected as it stands until changes are made.

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Picking up on a couple of comments here:

I very much understand the sentiment here, but this proposal isn’t about Shannon. It’s about funding the here and the now. There is no alternative to POKTscan for Morse.

We will run a separate open process to fund explorers for Shannon. And we want to work with the community to set the requirements for that.

This proposal should be viewed directly based on whether you are happy to fund POKTscan up until the Shannon launch as is, and if not, you should clearly state what the viable alternatives that will be ready by 1 January when the current PNF funding arrangement with POKTscan ends.

I don’t see how it is a sign of maturation to turn off support for one of our most important pieces of infrastructure without stating any immediately available viable alternative. The fact is that POKTscan has genuine costs it must meet every month. I don’t think that any of us wants to go down the road of POKT Network (and POKT) not being supported on Messari, Token Terminal, DePINscan, DePIN Ninja, etc, overnight and for PNF to have to end any conversation with any new CEX - and potentially risk delistings elsewhere - because we no longer have a functioning block explorer.

For context, almost every other EVM ecosystem pays Etherscan $1-2m per year for a custom version for their chain, with none of the specific data that POKTscan provides on nodes, protocol revenue, and so on. Given that the POKTscan team’s full costs for maintaining POKTscan.com are over $26k / month (ignoring the much larger sums spent on building and maintaining POKTscan to date), $20k / month seems a reasonable compromise to give the community and POKTscan certainty in the run-up to the Shannon launch.

If you want a more diverse future for POKT Network, we would love your support in helping to suggest the right builder teams to build and maintain a world class explorer for Shannon onwards. Right now, it’s time to ensure we have sufficient support for Morse to get us until Shannon, and then to work together on building the future we want for Shannon onwards.

We absolutely need POKTscan right now to continue doing all the great work they do and we would appreciate everyone helping us to give them the support they need so we can get to Shannon safely and without any major interruptions to essential data services in the meantime.

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Could you expand on where this figure comes from and the breakdown? My understanding is that this is a quote from POKTscan without any documentation backing it?

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The funding will be allocated to the following areas:

If you are asking if we have reviewed receipts or a more detailed breakdown for each line item, we haven’t. We don’t do this for any grant recipient. We understand what it costs to build and maintain a comprehensive explorer like this, and this is at the lower end of a range that runs into the millions of dollars per year.

We believe everything they have told us, including the fact that POKTscan’s infra and support become unviable if they don’t receive the asking amount. So the question for the DAO is whether funding POKTscan $20k / month for the next 5/6 months (ie up until the Shannon launch) to continue what they are doing (excellently, I may add!) until the Shannon launch is worth it or not. I believe it is.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have more time to think holistically about the world post-Shannon in terms of what we want the ecosystem of explorers and tooling to look like - eg diversity, types of features, community feedback etc - and how much funding to allocate to such in light of the DAO’s constraints and competing funding priorities.

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So for a $100k+ contract, PNF have done zero due diligence.

POKTscan offer a great product, and I’m not against their team being paid.

I am slightly more concerned that even the most basic request for use of funds wasn’t requested or reviewed. No need to be facetious about line items, but maybe a basic overview would be helpful to understand the request amount?

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I understand where you are coming from but “zero due diligence” is a bit inflammatory given DD is just a risk/benefit analysis… are you saying we haven’t weighed up the benefits and risks?

We did DD on costs for an alternative block explorer that provides less functionality than poktscan. We did DD on the benefits of having poktscan continue and the negative opportunity costs to the project if we don’t take action by Jan 1. We do DD when we confirm Poktscan can and will meet the obligations set out in the agreement above. But yes, if you mean DD as requiring a private entity to give us an itemised breakdown of costs across resources, development, maintenance, hardware etc… then no we have not done that, but given our relative risk<>benefit analysis everywhere else I’m not sure how that meaningfully changes what needs to be done here?

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This proposal is now up for voting on snapshot

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I guess I misunderstood what this was for, apologies. I am happy to vote in favour of funding PoktScan until Shannon. Then I assume we will put up a POP or another sort of thing which would require the winner to open source their solution anyway.

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