[Top Builder 2024]: Resolvr_R2

[TheSchwab]

🏗️ Top Builder 2024 Application Form to track progress through Round 1 - 3 ~ Currently in Round 1

📝 Instructions

1. Only complete this form if you have been chosen for Top Builder, by PlebLab.
2. Provide detailed information to assist the judges in evaluating your project.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Team

• Team Name: Resolvr
• Number of Founders: 7
• Team Background:
  • Aaron: Practicing appellate attorney. Author of the Bitcoin Brief newsletter and regular contributing author to Bitcoin Magazine.
  • Brian: Front end web developer and crypto enthusiast.
  • Chris: Nostr developer and creator of http://blogstack.io/, a longform nostr platform. Streaming nostr programming workshops on https://zap.stream/ Youtube.
  • Dave: Legal tech startup guy, Ex-Accenture Strategy.
  • Randy: Full-stack developer currently working on Greenlight at Blockstream.
  • Ras: Bitcoin hacker. Founder of Bitcoin Grove, a community accelerator and physical hacker space in Miami.
  • Tommy: Google Software Engineer who enjoys making the State obsolete in his free time
  • Utibe: Product designer and web adventurer.
• Bitcoin & Lightning Involvement: Resolvr utilizes Bitcoin DLCs for escrow, as well as non-escrow bounty payouts over Lightning. We also use Nostr and Nostr polling for voting on disputes, as one adjudication method for resolving bounty disputes.
• Origin Story: The intersection of the law and bitcoin is critical for the future success of the ecosystem, particularly in the domain of voluntary dispute resolution which Aaron has been speaking and writing on for some time. Resolvr was formed in Oct '23 to compete in the Bolt.Fun hackathon, where our 10 team members built an open source bounty site that integrates with nostr, uses lighting payouts, and has built-in dispute resolution between bounty makers and bounty takers. This is a great tool and test bed to further build out the Resolvr protocol for dispute resolution, which we will endeavor to further develop during Top Builder.

💡 The Idea

• Project Overview: Resolvr offers Bitcoin-native open source dispute resolution, enabling individuals to voluntarily resolve their disputes without resorting to slow, expensive, unpredictable, corrupt, or nonexistent state-run courts. Voluntary and enforceable dispute resolution will be a critical and necessary component to build out a hyper-Bitcoinized world.
• Website: https://resolvr.io/
• GitHub: https://github.com/Resolvr-io
• Project Stage: Describe the current progress.
• Supplementary Materials: Provide any proof of work, workshops, or demo videos.
  • Live alpha:
https://resolvr.io/
  • demo video (~5 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_STomyKxa8,
  • Hackathon pitch: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rx1KDC8mQMDgMJDKHL5yLRCZl_GWtwKF_NS0YIKnyNw/edit? usp=sharing
  • Bolt.Fun Hackathon Project Page: https://bolt.fun/project/resolvr

📚 Additional Information

• Additional Links/Info: long form interview w/Bolt.Fun (~1 hour): https://www.youtube.com/live/7AVu10ZteT0?si=c6I2pddMOo1_rjA7

📌 Submission Type

• [X] Initial Project Creation

🚀 Current Project Progress

• Progress Made: bounty alpha site launched https://resolvr.io/
• Challenges Faced: limited lighting payout amounts for bounties, high network fees for Bitcoin basechain DLCs, no great way to measure reputation or trustworthiness of a nostr ID.
• Future Roadmap of what's next: identify viable escrow L2 to provide lower fee escrow solution.

⏳ Round 1 Milestone

• Keep in mind that completion will need to be by February 10th, 2024.
• First-round milestone the team has set for themselves:
• [X] Desktop app
  • View bounties, apply as taker, accept application as maker
  • QR-based zaps (should also allow for user to copy invoice text)
  • Encrypted chat should probably be punted (put something in the UI that can bounce the user to a different Nostr app that supports NIP4/NIP44)
• [ ] Negative reputation (outstanding balance) *only maker
• [X] Positive reputation (some sort of algorithm that will definitely be gameable, but is still a useful tool to help users decide who they do/don’t want to work with)
• [ ] Spin up an official Resolvr relay Create reputation system design

⏳ Round 2 Milestones

• Completion by Feb 25, 2024.

• Second-round milestone the team has set for themselves:

• [ ] Reputation

  • Positive Reputation: Sats Stream indicator.

• [x] Github Bounty Scraper

  • Bot that scrapes Github issues and automatically creates issues/ bounties.
  • Click button to add issue to the bounty site, easy!
  • Cont. to seek out feedback from our alpha users/testers.
  • We want this for ourselves, dog fooding.
  • Note: The issue vs. bounty hierarchy is helpful for our dispute architecture outside of bounties.

• [x] Pitching & Traction

  • Advance our B2B biz dev discussions.
  • Elevate pitch to capture a cohesive, focused vision for the Resolvr for-profit business.

📝 Submission Complete

• All required information has been provided above.

📅 Top Builder Program Structure

Registration Opens: Monday, December 18, 2023

• Application: Interested teams apply for Top Builder.
• Selection: Teams will be chosen based on their application. See FAQ for details.

Round 1: January 13 - February 10, 2024

• Workshops: PlebLab weekly workshops start, available live and online.
• Chat Access: Selected teams join the PlebLab internal chat.
• Mentorship: Begins for teams.
• Project Milestones: First-round milestones assessment.

Round 2: February 10 - 25, 2024

• Team Reduction: Half of the teams continue.
• Project Milestones: Second-round milestones assessment.
• Workshops: Continued weekly workshops.
• Mentorship: Continues.

Round 3: Starting February 26, 2024

• Team Reduction: Narrowed down to 6 teams.
• Final Milestones: Set for the last round.
• Preparation: For pitch in Austin.

Final Round at Startup Day: March 14, 2024

• Preparation: Final pitch preparations at PlebLab.
• Presentations: Before judges on Startup Day.
• Deliberation: Judges decide during a happy hour.
• Announcement: Winner announced at Austin BitDevs.
• Celebration: After-party for Top Builder.

[TheSchwab]

In the spirit of customer validation, we've been gathering feedback on our Discord Feedback channel from current and prospective users of our alpha, including feedback from people wanting to post bounties for the nostr ndk, which you can access here: https://discord.com/channels/1158556817182433421/1197237841231618180. We've also met with https://bitcoin.design/ to review our current and to-be designs to help us iterate towards our vision and roadmap, follow up meetings to be had.

[TheSchwab]

• Making good progress on NIP-43 Bounties, for deeper explanation see: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EoYpH5JnXw1ZCxyUsZwA6x-O1HQ0MagmzxHoKzty8uE/edit?usp=sharing.
• To track merge progress see: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/865.

[TheSchwab]

### Resolvr proof of work update, Feb 1, 2024

Web interface / resolvr.io:

We've done a TON of work refining the UX/UI and massively improving the site under the hood, including creating our own react nostr library, which we've pulled into our GitHub. See activity here for the web repo https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr.io/activity... and https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr.io/deployments to see the deployment notes (vanity URLs for bounty makers, nip05 support, and a huge frontend refactor, among other items!). Check out a vanity URL: https://resolvr.io/u/alby for our friends at Alby!

Desktop App:

Starting our work on this repo this week of Jan 29, with the goal of feature parity with the web application within the next week or so. Follow our activity here: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr-desktop/activity.

Future State Design:

We've been doing a lot of work in Figma and other places to detail out the future of the site with many exciting new features. Check it out here: https://www.figma.com/file/rw4Tt59eZqIpaJ8UxntuLg/Resolvr-Designs?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&mode=design&t=9kmKLwtEcOfLqsyk-1.

Elevator Pitch, Q&A Refinement:

The sessions have been inspirational and are helping us to see ourselves more clearly. We're updating our elevator pitch and a Q&A that you can see here (work in progress!): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ca5bTJRB6I7Fm1PPcB6UsMbCqfGvWlwb/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107739949956682711629&rtpof=true&sd=true

[TheSchwab]

Round 1 Milestones Summary / Recap; Feb 2, 2024

MacOS Desktop App

• [X] :sunglasses: View bounties, apply as taker, accept application as maker; PoW: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr-desktop

Reputation

• [ ] :finnadie: Negative reputation (outstanding balance) *only maker: NOT done. Want to tweak adjudication process and that's a blocker for neg. rep.

• [X] :sunglasses: Positive reputation: Done. NIP39 integration + vanity URLs (verified bounty posters): PoW: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr.io/tree/vanity-urls

  

  • https://resolvr.io/u/alby

  • [X] :sunglasses: Create reputation system design:

  

  Designs include many of our positive repetitional elements for our next series of frontend enhancements: https://www.figma.com/file/rw4Tt59eZqIpaJ8UxntuLg/Resolvr-Designs?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&mode=design&t=2hkiXVTl37T9Dqe3-1.

  Note: Negative reputation will initially be based on a failure to adhere to adjudication rulings.

Relay

• [ ] :finnadie: Resolvr relay: NOT done. We love it, we will do it, but deprioritized a relay vs. a rad thing... Keystache, see below!

QR Zap

• [ ] :finnadie: QR-based zaps: NOT done. In process. Coming soon.

NEW STUFF not in our original Milestone 1 goals

Keystache :key:

• Keystache allows Resolvr and ANYONE building nostr🦩 MacOS apps to store their keys. Like the browser Alby extension, but for desktop utility. We think it's cool and so do some others.

• [X] :sunglasses: WORKS and it's LIVE in our MacOS Resolvr app. Proof of Work:

  

• Feedback: :eyes: fiatjaf called keystache idea "absurdly good" and to "nip this as soon as possible". So we built it and now we're going to nip it as soon as possible.

  UX/UI and Tooling

• [X] :sunglasses: Built a resolvr react nostr🦩 library from the ground up. Proof of work: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/react-nostr

• [X] :triumph: Completed a full backend refactor for resolvr.io. Very large amount of changes. Faster performance, tighter integrations, multi-relay bug fixes and enhancements... and much more. This was a big lift. Proof of Work: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/resolvr.io/pull/82

Mix Kind Feed, more nostr🦩 contributions

• [X] Identified another future nip🦩: bounty kind shown here in a mixed kind, feed which we also plan to write a nip for > in the future, Chris showed how this can work here/PoW: https://nostrings.news/

:rocket: Traction :eyes:

Great continued support from Alby, fiatjaf, and more on the bounty site, now totaling tens of millions of Sats in open bounties... with some active bounty hunters! We also have a bounty hunter/taker for our own bounty to implement nostr🦩 badges on Resolvr... is that cheating? :see_no_evil:

[TheSchwab]

Round 2 Week 1 Summary

Feb 17, 2024

Keystache

• Updating branches with demo, etc.: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/Keystache/tree/demo.
• Keystache Download Page Designed (still tweaking copy):

Github Scraper

• Spoke with other BTC job sites on utility of scraper, confirmed useful for bounty posters to make it much easier to turn a github project into a bounty post with a click or two.
• Making significant build progress!

Traction

• Met with COO of BTC based insurance company.
• Obtained additional insights into pain points and challenges in the insurance market.
• Completed ProForma revenue and burn rate buildup, using our first B2B deal we have in the pipeline to model these numbers (albeit very early and rough numbers).
• Confirmed Resolvr team buy-in to dive deeper into potential B2B deal to build out POC for insurance adjudication use case.
• Circled back with LSP (lightning service provider) prospective partner/investor to set up time for additional discussions to scope the deal.
• Refining pitch for investment ask to pursue first b2b (a POC with an LSP) deal full time.
• Meeting with Ego Death Capital next week to pitch.

[TheSchwab]

Round 2 Summary:

Notes:

• :white_check_mark: Hit the majority our goals for Round 2 (PoW in the post below).
• We are seeing exciting signs of traction in B2B, more below, spurring Resolvr into raising a Seed round. :seedling:
• And here's a demo by Brian, Resolvr dev, that includes Keystache and Resolvr desktop. We had Keystache working on the backend at the end of R2, but this demo is all Round 2 freshness, hot off the press. :newspaper: https://youtu.be/hP3s2XX069s.

As a reminder, Resolvr:

• Provides organizations with community/industry-specific Private Legal Systems (PLSs). These PLSs have instant and programmatic enforcement of arbitration decisions through the bitcoin network, creating trust and assurances across borders to reduce and manage risk.

There are some complex issues facing the Bitcoin ecosystem:

• Bitcoin and L2 tech like the Lightning Network open new markets for goods and services by eliminating currency mismatch and providing instant settlement.
• BUT many markets are characterized by low trust and lack of assurances, especially emerging markets. Transactions in these markets remain inefficient and often prohibitively risky.

:wrench: What Resolvr is building to (re)solve this complexity:

• Our Private Legal Systems provide assurances of how risk will be managed and how conflicts can be programmatically resolved, while being incorporated directly into currency- and location-agnostic transaction flows.
• Bespoke and customized to each community, yet programatic and flexible, our PLSs will revolutionize entire industries by drivings costs down and de-risking deployment of capital, paving the way for new heights of innovation & prosperity.
• The value of the Resolvr PLS is hard to understate. It is nothing less than the transparent, decentralized, and globally accessible legal system required for human flourishing in the exponential age, with massive short term opportunities in very specific B2B use cases (more below).
• Bounties are our sandbox and a solution we'd like to use ourselves, as well as make available to the FOSS community.
• Both of these efforts rely on the very same components (nostr, lightning, DLCs, reputation propagation, Keystache, Fedi) that are part of our current and target tech arch, our "justice protocol".

Recap of Second-round milestone the team has set for themselves:

Reputation

• [ ] Positive Reputation: Sats Stream indicator. Still in process, but some of the simple stuff is done in Resolvr and Keystache, targeting to launch this in a forthcoming generally available website update.
• [X] Positive reputation design enhancements:
• Check out Resolvr Desktop demo here (same video link as the summary): https://youtu.be/hP3s2XX069s.

:white_check_mark: Github Bounty Scraper :computer:

• [X] Bot that scrapes Github issues and automatically publishes issues to nostr. https://github.com/PlebLab/Top-Builder/assets/61809248/57224204-97d4-4a79-b4d3-3e5334628380
• PoW: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/nostr-issues; https://github.com/Resolvr-io/bot-test
• Click button to add issue to the bounty site, easy!
• Cont. to seek out feedback from our alpha users/testers.
• We want this for ourselves, dog fooding.
• Note: The issue vs. bounty hierarchy is helpful for our dispute architecture outside of bounties.

:white_check_mark: Pitching & Traction :seedling:

• [X] Advance our B2B biz dev discussions. Designing out effort for a paid POC for an insurer where we'd build it out with a Lightning Service Provider (LSP) as a partner and potential investor.
• Pursuing deal with LSP Partner for the a B2B customer in the Emerging Market (EM) Insurance company. Deep diving into POC scope with LSP.
• [X] Elevate pitch to capture a cohesive, focused vision for the Resolvr for-profit business.
• :rocket: Pursuing a deal with LSP and one of their customers (a specific EM insurer in LatAm) for a paid PoC ($250K-$500K as revenue to Resolvr:moneybag:), for an insurance adjudication module.
• Strong investment interest from a couple angels and other sources, spurred on by the B2B deal we have in the pipeline.

BONUS STUFF WE'VE MADE!

Keystache A place to stash your Nostr keys, by Resolvr

• Keystache is a desktop app that enables you to keep all of your nostr keys in a single application rather than pasting your nsec into every application you install on the desktop. It's similar to the nostr support that web extensions like alby or nos2x provide.

• Keystache provides an API (Over a Unix Domain Socket) for other MacOS desktop applications to request a public key (used to sign in to other apps) or request an event be signed.

• But wait, there's MOAR! Keystache works with Resolvr's bounty desktop app (or any other desktop nostr client!) to zap bounty payouts (or any other zappable event!) with ANY bitcoin lightning wallet through a simple QR code interface!

• Keystache website LIVE: https://resolvr.io/keystache

• Check out the video demo here (same video link as the summary): https://youtu.be/hP3s2XX069s.

• Lotta updates, doing some cool stuff, friggin' :fire: UX/UI, all new since Round 1.

• PoW: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/Keystache, https://resolvr.io/keystache

QR codes

• Progress on repo to Include useQRCode logic path to return invoice string
• PoW: https://github.com/Resolvr-io/react-nostr

[TheSchwab]

Keystache website now live! https://resolvr.io/keystache

[TheSchwab]

We have some big plans brewing for Keystache... here's a sneak peak of some of our designs :key: 🥸

The key take away for Keystache is you'll be able to have a sovereign desktop application to manage, use, and control your LN payments and wallets through your Nostr ID. This is an important utility for our justice arch for a lot of reasons, but we want to make the utility available to others who are using Nostr and LN to whatever end, or for fellow builders developing sovereign tech!

Feast your eyes! :eyes: