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Welcome to the Stacks Foundation Grant Program. Community members interested in submitting a grant proposal may do so by opening an issue in this repository and filling out the grant application.
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Stacks Messaging Design #729

Closed rswol closed 1 year ago

rswol commented 1 year ago

APPLICANT

Type:                                                                        Direct Application

Email:                                                                    bowtiedarcticwolf@gmail.com

Discord:                                                    BowTiedArcticWolf#5365

Twitter:                                                        BowTiedArcticWo

Stacks Forum:           

GRANT BASICS

Grant Name:                                        Stacks Messaging Design

Total Budget:                              10,000

Total Duration:                 160

Grant Type:                                               Open Source Dev Repeat Grantees

Grant Track:                                          Stacks Interface

Grant Goal:                                               Create New Technology

Grant Audience:             Developers

Specific Audience:         This is a design that allow developing new generation communication dapps

Grant Team:                                       rswol

Previous Grants:                      https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grant-Launchpad/issues/250, https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grant-Launchpad/issues/657

Ecosystem Programs:      StacksOnChain is a Stacks Accelerator alumni (cohort 2)

GRANT MISSION, IMPACT, RISKS & REFERENCE

Grant Mission:         Communication is the most common use case for the Internet, with email being one of the first techs built on top of it. It is still the most widespread communication medium despite being insecure and not providing meaningful privacy with vendors actively selling user data.

Some building blocks in the Stacks tech stack can enable private, secure, and censorship-resistant communication - specifically, cryptographic keys and names. Stacks ecosystems introduced BNS names attached to wallets. While using it as a domain makes sense, the more popular use case for identity is communication. There are some missing components, such as discovery, transport medium, temporary storage, and any interface.

This work is intended to describe the future system and identify the components (smart contract, services, protocols) needed to build it.

Grant Impact:               Clear, transparent design that can be implemented by any competent developer

Grant Risks:                          Stacks tech stack might not be suitable for communication without significant changes (although it is very unlikely)

Support Link:                                     Stacks on Chain enables comprehensive blockchain analytics and provides in-depth insights, transactions, events, token transfers with real-time and custom reports based on real-time smart contract usage.

GRANT ROADMAP & DELIVERABLES

MILESTONE 1:

Deliverable:                   The complete design with set of components needed for implementation

FINAL DELIVERABLE

Deliverable:                   A protocol design with set of components needed for implementation

stacks-foundation commented 1 year ago

👋 @rswol
Thanks for your application! We will do a pre-review and let you know if we have any immediate questions. In the mean time please refer to our review schedule here for a detailed timeline and response dates.
Best, Will

friedger commented 1 year ago

How does it relate to console, to chat of ecosystem dao, matrix,..?

will-corcoran commented 1 year ago

Hey @rswol - Thanks for submitting! Can you confirm you will be able to complete #657 prior to the award date for this cohort (11/23)? Only asking because we only allow one active grant at a time. Hope so!

Thanks, Will

rswol commented 1 year ago

(edit)

no, I will not be done prior 11/23. Maybe we should push it to Cohort 20 then?

rswol commented 1 year ago

@friedger it is more like a mail system rather than an online chat

friedger commented 1 year ago

More like pravica?

will-corcoran commented 1 year ago

@rswol this is a really compelling application. Thanks for submitting it. I couldn't completely understand your deliverables - will the end result be the design / technical scope documents only? Or will there be a working prototype?

Also, any thoughts on how an effort like this could be the basis of a much larger decentralized communication / social framework not unlike Lens Protocol - but on Stacks...?

rswol commented 1 year ago

@will-at-stacks This is just a design for email-like system based on Stacks/Bitcoin tech stack (BNS and friends). I might add a prototype as a milestone, but I don't know the amount of work needed (hence the design first). I believe existing protocols solve a much larger problem of generic communication - this one is just a first step in this direction (async messaging with no strict timeframe, focus on security, privacy, and integration with Stacks & Bitcoin)

will-corcoran commented 1 year ago

@rswol Can you compare and contrast the scope of your application to that of #714 ?

rswol commented 1 year ago

@will-at-stacks, that proposition is for a specific implementation, which relies on a smart contract to store initial (routing?) messages and then use IPFS and IPNS for further communication. It doesn't show how communication is done on IPFS, so it is more of a discovery protocol. Also, IPFS means the recipient has to be online, so it is not suitable for async communication. IPFS can leak IP addresses leading to privacy problems.

This design will describe a specific protocol for communication and what services are needed to implement to achieve privacy, security, and performance for asynchronous communication. It will answer who will store the actual messages in the interim (and for how long), and what information can be hidden (e.g., can we hide the recipient?)

Scarlett-Web3 commented 1 year ago

I think you have an interesting project. If you haven't already gone through the Stacks Web3 Startup Lab, I would like to invite you to apply. Here's a 5-minute read on how we can help you turn your startup idea into an investment-ready startup: www.web3startuplab.io

If you are interested, you can apply through the "Apply Now" button.

Feel free to ping me on email: scarlett@stacks.ac

MarvinJanssen commented 1 year ago

I would be curious to see the outcome of what is suggested in this grant application. At Ryder we also thought about some kind of messaging component briefly. Hiro Wallet does not currently allow you to encrypt and decrypt payloads which makes an integrated experience more difficult and less universal. I wonder if you thought about it or are planning to explore things in such a direction as well?

friedger commented 1 year ago

Does it make sense to be compatible with Wallet Connect? https://docs.walletconnect.com/2.0/introduction/chat

Maybe cooperate with @yknl and the grant https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grant-Launchpad/issues/646

rswol commented 1 year ago

@MarvinJanssen yeah, the goal is to identity the gaps in the current stacks tech stack so some other parties can develop missing pieces. I think we have about 80% of tech, just no clear understanding of how to stick it together to create the open and thriving platform.

rswol commented 1 year ago

@friedger interesting, I wasn't aware of this project. It could be an integral part of the design from my first skim of the docs

will-corcoran commented 1 year ago

Hello @rswol

Thank you for the application and for your patience with the grant review process. We did a thorough review of all of the applications (each application received an average of 6 reviews from members of the Grants Review Committee).  However, after much consideration, we decided not to fund any of the Cohort 19 grant applications as we did not feel they aligned with critical priorities core to the development of the Stacks blockchain.  

We invite you to please read this blog post we authored to help elaborate on the reasoning behind this decision and clarify the current mission of the Grants Program.

Thanks in advance, Will Stacks Foundation Grants Program Manager