stx-grant-bot[bot]
commented
2 years ago Thanks for submitting a grant proposal. Our team will review your submission and get back to you.
Closed kcvmeow closed 2 years ago
stx-grant-bot[bot]
commented
2 years ago Thanks for submitting a grant proposal. Our team will review your submission and get back to you.
kcvmeow
commented
2 years ago Thank you for your reply. We look forward to your review result. Thanks!
will-corcoran
commented
2 years ago Hello and thank you for the application!
We would like to ask you to please submit your grant application again using our new Grants Dashboard since we will no longer be monitoring this repo.
Thanks in advance, Will
Background What problems do you aim to solve? How does it serve the mission of a user owned internet?
The Stacks community members are aware of the risk associated with the PoX(proof-of-transfer) method when mining Stacks-based project CityCoins and are also becoming doubtful about the value of CityCoins. To solve such problems, we organized a DAO within the community, and KCV DAO will participate in mining of every current and future CityCoins to improve its ecosystem. We think the biggest problem that CityCoins are facing at the moment is its formidable barrier to entry. There are a few reasons that mining CityCoins is especially difficult for those who just entered the STX ecosystem. First, CityCoins adopt PoX mining, and small STX holders find it difficult to risk burning their investment for zero reward. rSecond, whales who already own a large number of CityCoins’ tokens are dominating with a high chance of winning. Such miners pose fear to entry members by bidding an enormous amount. Of course that is allowed, but it certainly raises the barriers to entry much higher for beginners. Lastly, CityCoins’ value is yet to be proven. After the current CityCoins getting listed on exchanges, there have not been any practical use cases. Miners ended up dumping their tokens to the market and panicked CityCoins holders and stackers. What attracts many people to CityCoins is the reward they can earn by stacking their tokens during bonus periods. However, there needs to be more than this. We need to change people’s perspective on CityCoins by creating use cases.
Project Overview What solution are you providing? Who will it serve?
1) KCV Mining Pool KCV DAO is planning multiple projects to provide solutions to the problems stated above. The first project to introduce is KCV Mining Pool. The transparent Smart Contract guarantees the pool’s reliability, and the best blocks to mine are selected by reflecting investors’ opinions. KCV Mining Pool lowers the entry barriers for new investors to CityCoins and reduces the risk of burning small investors’ assets in vain. Also, this avoids the oligopoly of CityCoins and deconcentrates them to many investors, preventing block sales of few large holders.
KCV Mining Pool provides a good solution to the risk of PoX that small investors fear the most. The investors who want mining raises their winning probability by gathering their fund, and this eventually results in every investor winning CityCoins without failure. KCV DAO, before an actual mining, collects data from the first few blocks, calculates how many blocks to mine with how many STX to bid on each through careful statistical analysis, and based on the analysis, determines the size of the pool. Then it begins collecting the funds.
For instance, when a new CityCoin is released, KCV DAO (1) begins fundraising through the KCV pool (2) chooses the best blocks to mine by statistical analysis on the real-time mining commitments, (3) present the real-time mining data transparently, (4) by then end of the mining period, distributes the reward STX to the investors in proportion to their CityCoin investment. 2) KCV Market When a new CityCoin is released, many investors find it difficult to first obtain it because it takes a considerable amount of time until a new coin gets listed on an exchange and also mining it has a non-negligible risk. KCV DAO is planning on opening a P2P market and offering some of the mined CityCoins to them at a minimum cost. For example, KCV DAO can run KCV Mining Pool to mine a newly published CityCoin and uses some portion of the mined CityCoin to provide liquidity to KCV Market so that the Stacks community members can have access to the new CityCoin. (1) KCV DAO provides liquidity to KCV Market by utilizing mined CityCoins (2) The price is determined by the minimum expenses to mine the CityCoins, and the feature to swap CityCoin/STX will be available on the market.
The price can fluctuate based on the real-time cost for mining, which, for example, we calculate by (# of blocks committed) input STX / (# of blocks won) NYC/block when we mine NYC. The P2P market for each CityCoin closes when it gets listed on an exchange. KCV DAO does not pursue its own profit but pursues positive contribution to the Stacks ecosystem, promotes new investors, and offers mining service to new and small investors who are hesitant to invest due to the risk of PoX. Also, we will do our best to help CityCoins develop into a more efficient and effective ecosystem through various suggestions and active communication. An example would be that we initiate CityCoin-based use cases (ex. NFT and Game) to add values to CityCoins. Finally, KCV DAO will offer more rewards to the Stackers who contribute to the Stacks ecosystem.
Scope What are the components or technical specs of the project? What will the final deliverable look like? How will you measure success?
1) KCV Mining Pool It implements an effective mining strategy through mining data analysis, keeps high CityCoin profitability of its participants by fully utilizing funded Stacks gathered through Smart Contract, terminates mining before the start of the next Stacking cycle for participants who want to stack their CityCoins rewards, and distributes the mined CityCoins immediately to participants by the amount proportional to their investment using Multi-Transfer technique.
2) KCV Market KCV Market is a P2P market where its users can obtain CityCoins at a reasonable price without participating in mining from KCV DAO providing its mined CityCoins. This allows the community to purchase CityCions to stack them before exchange listing without going through troubles to mine them individually. Every feature on the KCV website will be offered with security and transparency through trades via Smart Contract. The entire process will be accessible real time on the KCV Dashboard, and the change in token price can be monitored there as well. Once everything is developed, users should be able to mine or purchase CityCoins more easily.
Budget and Milestones What grant amount are you seeking? How long will the project take in hours? If more than 20, please break down the project into milestones, with a clear output (e.g., low-fi mockup, MVP with two features) and include the estimated work hours for each milestone.
Total Grant Request: $30,000
Timeline : January 15, 2022 - April 30, 2022 (16 weeks / 640 hours)
Milestone 1 1) Statement Of Work : Design user scenarios and model features to build prototype 2) Estimated Time to Complete : 3 weeks / 120 hours 3) Budget : $5,000 4) Result : Overall mind map and draft of service prototype 5) Budget Usage : (1) To pay developers for service design (2) To pay designers for draft of service prototype
Milestone 2 1) SOW : Design the details of mining pool service and develop and test its core features 2) ETC : 8 weeks / 320 hours 3) Budget : $20,000 4) Result : KCV website with mining pool feature included 5) Budget Usage : (1) To pay developers for service design (2) To pay designers for UI design and web publishers (3) To pay developers for Clarity programming and website construction (4) To pay for the server for website and email usage
Milestone 3 1) SOW : Design the details of KCV Market and develop and test its core features (+ additional process to finish market UI and feature development initiated in M2) 2) ETC : 3 weeks / 120 hours 3) Budget : $5,000 4) Result : KCV website with mining pool and market features included 5) Budget Usage : (1) To pay developers for service design (2) To pay designers for UI design and web publishers (3) To pay developers for Clarity programming and website construction (4) To pay for the server for website and email usage
Team Who is building this? What relevant experience do you bring to this project? Are there skills sets you are missing that you are seeking from the community? Please share links to previous work.
The initial team members are Mocha (@mochabtc), Alex(@callmealex_btc) and Heungseob (@stacksranger).
[Mocha] I am a software engineer who has 7 years of work experience, and I have worked on web development, especially server development. I have worked in the engineering field, for example making a music related open market and opening an Amazon store with Amazon in the eCommerce field. I mainly use Java, Python, and JavaScript to code.
[Alex] Alex is a visual and graphic designer with over 10 years of work experience, including over 3 years of working in the field of web and app design. He is in charge of the overall design such as branding design, entire UI and UX design, and themes to be used in marketing. He is currently working on designing KCV Web Service development as a KCV DAO designer and also on a roadmap design.
[Heungseob] I am working as an external consultant to a tech startup company and have been in charge of many tasks in the market research and problem solving team of a consultant firm. I quickly locate problems in a startup company and offer solutions and directions to the problems. I kept a good relationship with partners and increased work efficiency in various aspects in the firm and helped customer management. As a project manager in KCV DAO, I am in charge of the project’s non-technical aspects such as business design and development, governance structure, community management, marketing, business plan, documentation and non-technical operation.
[Future Needs]
Risks What dependencies or obstacles do you anticipate? What contingency plans do you have in place?
Technical Obstacles The purpose of the KCV DAO is to effectively utilize the most important language in Stacks development, Clarity. We value credibility the most since it will be a place where many people’s assets will be gathered as the number of users increase. Any technical failure during their use can undermine credibility. To minimize risks, we are planning on having developers who previously worked on Smart Contract related projects and mining pools to check our code first. We are also planning on hiring inspectors with a good reputation to examine our code. When the testnet opens, the DAO members will first run a stress test on the server, and by this, we plan to comprehend possible bugs and to go through the debugging process before opening the mainnet.
Community/Marketing KCV DAO depends on CityCoin-based projects like KCV Mining Pool. Therefore, it is very possible for us to unintentionally compete against individual miners or other existing similar project teams. Furthermore, if future new CityCoins fail to be attractive to people, people’s interest in the entire CityCoin project will decline, and this results in the decrease in the effectiveness of every project KCV DAO is working towards. Then with a lack of new users, the mining pool may end up getting discontinued. KCV DAO works in partnership with many Stacks-based projects to implement marketing strategies to minimize the potential danger. We also help to manage any complaints within the CityCoins community to encourage existing miners to use our platform. We can hire a marketing specialist if needed and form a database to do market research and systematically plan marketing to enter the ecosystem with a more professional perspective.
CityCoin Project Direction/Oligopoly When the CityCoin project team changes its project direction, the worst case scenario we can think of is CityCoins losing users and miners. Also the biggest problem that has been mentioned in the community so far is that few whale miners bid high to increase their winning probability and monopolize mining. Those whales can dump their mined tokens when it becomes tradable on a coin exchange, and the resulting low price may stop new miners and developers from entering the ecosystem. Also, this drops the value of the overall CityCoins project. KCV DAO has been aware of such risks. We will continuously join CityCoins’ community calls and give our opinions on project directions. By this, we will actively contribute to the improvement of CityCoins ecosystem and furthermore will predict and respond to the changes in its future plans. Our mining pool can be utilized as a means of preventing whales from monopolizing mining and massive price dumping.
Similar Projects There are other various projects being developed in the Stacks ecosystem, and DAOs of different forms and project teams are being organized. Considering the expanding CityCoins projects, services similar to what our DAO will provide may also be available in other projects. However, the competition can be overcome by the high level mining strategy and low fees that KCV DAO offers, and, knowing how open and friendly the Stacks ecosystem is, KCV DAO can even collaborate with other teams that design similar projects. KCV DAO will do its best to be a good friend to everyone who wants to positively contribute to the Stacks and CityCoins ecosystem.
Community and Supporting Materials Do you have previous projects, code commits, or experiences that are relevant to this application? What community feedback or input have you received? How do you plan to share your plan to the community over time and as the final deliverable?
Mocha is a software engineer with more than 7 years of experience and has worked as a web developer, especially as a server developer, mainly using Java, Python, and JavaScript. Currently, he, as a Clarity developer, is working on projects related to Smart Contract and is making bots for different NFTs and projects in the Stacks ecosystem. Heungseob quickly locates problems that startup companies have and offers solutions and directions to the problems. He increases work efficiency in various aspects in companies, helps customer management and makes good relationships with partners. As a Stacks Korean Community ambassador now, he is a professional of community management and operation and has a good knowledge of the needs of Stacks holders and their views on CityCoins.
KCV DAO previously opened a demo version of the KCV Pool website and ran 8 rounds of the pool (this is different from CityCoins’ reward cycle). Every process was open to the public on the KCV discord channel and twitter, and our credibility over time greatly increased by accepting and reflecting feedback from the pool participants on the process immediately. An example of the mining data we shared with the pool community is shown below in <Table 1> . We are working on to announce more details on our future plans and roadmap on our twitter, discord and the currently developing KCV DAO website.
KCV Mining pool(KCV DAO).docx