DAppNode request for funding

[eduadiez]

Team name: DAppNode

Proof of concept / research whitepaper: https://dappnode.io - https://github.com/dappnode

Burn rate: ~$15k/month

Legal structure: DAppNode has no formal legal structure, instead it is helping to pioneer the Giveth platform.

Team and roadmap

Proposal

DAppNode is an open source project, our main goal is to create free software that allows individuals a secure and easy way to connect to the decentralized web. By creating infrastructure that eliminates centralization we are solving a major issue that most DApps have not even begun to think about. We believe that this simple tool that will empower everyone to join the decentralized world and spread adoption of decentralized technologies.

DAppNode’s mission is to create communities around trusted nodes and help spread the mass adoption of decentralization.

Abstract

What happens when you’ve got to use a Decentralized P2P network, but securing your own nodes takes a lot of time and effort?

You see what we have now, a Decentralization bottleneck.

At no point in the last 2 years has there been more than 13,000 Bitcoin nodes online and that number got as low as 5500

MetaMask and MyEtherWallet/MyCrypto are the primary wallets used on Ethereum and most users are using these wallets’ default nodes… This is a huge centralizing force in Ethereum.

The people who do run their own node end up having to spend a lot of time, troubleshooting keeping it updated and synced without the ability to easily share their node (and efforts) with family and friends.

DAppNode is creating an infrastructure that addresses these issues and more by building a simple, easy, self-empowering system made specifically for hosting P2P clients for DApps, Cryptocurrencies, decentralized websites, IPFS, and more. Members of the WHG believe DAppNode is an essential censorship resistant tool that will empower everyone to join the decentralized world we are all working towards.

The Desired Final User Story:

Luis has several cryptocurrencies he follows and is ready to stop using his laptop to run clients, but doesn’t want to have to pay a monthly subscription in fiat to some company he doesn’t trust with his private keys.

He hears about DAppNode and decides to buy a top of the line preloaded DAppNode Server (as opposed to buying his own server and installing the software himself) from one of the many certified independent vendors.

It's delivered to Luis’s front door, and when he opens the box he finds a simple 2 step instruction card:

Step 1.) Plug in the Server.

Step 2.) Go to dappnode.org/initialize

On this website there will be an extremely simple walk-thru to set up the credentials and choose which clients to deploy.

By just checking a few boxes Luis deploys his own VPN; gains access to the decentralized version of MyCrypto.com directly connected to his own node.; Ethereum, Bitcoin, Monero and Dogecoin Full nodes; A ZenCash Secure Node and DASH Master Node; He joined the IPFS Consortium making it possible to pin the files of his favorite projects like Aragon, Giveth, Status and Swarm City among others, becoming a supporter of these projects with a couple of clicks.

Deployed a TrueBit Verifier and Livepeer node; and hosted Giveth, Swarm City, Status, and Decentraland Helper DApps to ensure that his interaction with these DApps cannot be censored and are fully trustless.

Luis then tells his friends and family that he is the admin for his own DAppNode and is able to send them a link to set up their own credentials with access his DAppNode, and Luis can deploy any other DApps that him or his friends and family want to have hosted with a couple clicks.

Even though Luis opted to buy a very powerful DAppNode, he ends up being able to pay off the cost in 2 months with the profits made from his ZenCash, Swarm City, DASH and TrueBit Nodes. He also canceled his VPN and all of his Digital Ocean accounts because now he has his own server that he can host all of his services on. Without even trying, Luis has a couple extra hundred dollars a month because he’s running the many services that incentivize node operators on his own personal server.

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[YalorMewn]

Done and Done ✍🏼@mariapao

[YalorMewn]

Hi @mariapao we seem to be having a glitch in the matrix, the CLA is showing it's been signed when we click through but it's not showing on GitHub. Can you help us resolve this ?

[Smokyish]

@YalorMewn Hi, have you tried clicking on the recheck button in the CLA bot message? https://cla-assistant.io/check/aragon/nest?pullRequest=57

Do you perhaps have multiple email addresses listed in your account in GitHub?

[YalorMewn]

@Smokyish my email address is private and it's not one that I usually use communicate with your team, is that an issue ?

[YalorMewn]

Just reset my email to main email address, and removed the privacy setting.

[eduadiez]

We're still looking for the model that best fits in DAppNode, respecting the fundamental idea that it's a project by and for the community. So for now we're still quite open minded in this topic but at the moment we've two ideas mainly.

The first would be to obtain a donation or fee from the manufacturers that want to sell their hardware with DAppNode pre-installed. On the other hand we want to obtain some income from projects, those that want us to integrate and maintain their application for the DAppNode and another case would be those projects that want to appear in the "DAppStore"

[Smokyish]

@YalorMewn @eduadiez For this particular case, meaning this Pull Request, it has only 1 commit, which has been done by @eduadiez, which means that he has to sign the CLA.

[mariapao]

Hi @eduadiez we are happy to hear that the fundamental idea is that this is a project for and by the community. To find a self-sustainable model is an issue that the open source community projects face so we totally understand and solving this will be part of the work.

Regarding the roadmap, we have some minor comments:

1. What will the SDK technically entail?
2. How much effort will be spent on improving the core to take it out of an MVP? It looks like 2 to 4 months, right?
3. Given the nature of the project, at some point in the milestones it'd be nice if there was a video demo of it working, as well as installation.

We are looking forward to seeing DAppNode being widely used :)

[eduadiez]

Hi @mariapao, I'm going to try to solve your doubts

1. What will the SDK technically entail?

With the SDK we want to create a tool that allows developers of DAppNodePackages (aka DNP) to create packages in the simplest and fastest way possible. That means automating these steps that today they have to do manually to create a DAppNodePackage:

1. Create an APM (Aragon Package Manager)
2. Upload the avatar of the DNP to IPFS
3. Build the docker image of the project
4. Compress the docker image
5. Upload the docker image to IPFS
6. Generate the DAppNodePackage manifest with the previously obtained hashes
7. Upload the DAppNodePackage manifest to IPFS
8. Create a new version on the APM and link it to this hash.

It isn't a very complicated process, but rather tedious. So we want to create a tool that automates it as much as possible. Obviously for the part that regards the APM we'd like to collaborate with Aragon, we believe that DAppNode can also help people to use APM in a more generalized way and facilitate its use.

2. How much effort will be spent on improving the core to take it out of an MVP? It looks like 2 to 4 months, right?

Today we have a functional core, you can already use it but our intention is to improve it during the next months. It isn't something that concentrates in two months as it may seem in the roadmap, but something that will evolve over the 6 months until January, when we hope to have the DAppNode beta. So the real time of effort will be 6 months, we've put it in the second block because we want to take advantage of the feedback obtained from the first installations and the first developers in order to implement the improvements they believe necessary, but to obtain this feedback first we need to make the things easy for them, an SDK :-). But there is a very important part of debugging, adaptation and also improvement during the first block. The core is the key piece and the one that requires all the effort, I doubt that one day we stop developing it.

3. Given the nature of the project, at some point in the milestones it'd be nice if there was a video demo of it working, as well as installation.

We are already working on it, an example would be the video that we've added on this medium post to show how to access to a dapp. This is something that we'll be doing during the development, although our idea is to focus on improving these videos and the documentation in the last phase. We understand that documentation is one of the keys to achieve a widely adoption, so our intention is to make videos and documents as the development progresses to facilitate its use and adoption and understanding, some videos will be short and associated with a specific task and others will be about the product more generally.

[mariapao]

Hi @eduadiez thanks for the explanation! After reviewing the application, we have decided to approve your request for funding! Welcome to nest :)

Next steps: I'll send you a message via the Arachat to schedule a call to go over some minor details to close the application phase and give you an intro to the onboarding process.

We are looking forward to see DAppNode being widely used!

[Smokyish]

@eduadiez Please sign the CLA at https://cla-assistant.io/aragon/nest?pullRequest=57 so we can move forward with merging this PR.

[YalorMewn]

It shows signed on our end @Smokyish ?

[Smokyish]

@YalorMewn @eduadiez Yes, CLA looks all good now and this can be merged! cc @mariapao