Vitwit's Funding Proposal: Supporting Public Goods - Resolute

Hub Proposals Community Spend
1

Change log

  • 2023-09-26 Created initial post
  • 2023-10-10 Update with funding terms and forum link
  • 2023-10-10 Update with funding account, vesting terms and amount

Summary

Who are we?

Vitwit is a technology company specialized in Blockchain and AI, with over 9 years of experience in building and scaling products. We are firm belivers and contributers to cosmos-sdk and ecosystem since 2018. We have a team of 25 engineers working on multiple projects and partners in cosmos ecosystem. We are securing 20+ cosmos based networks with our validator arm called Witval. We have built blockchain explorer called Aneka for the cosmos ecosystem.

What is Resolute?

Resolute is an (opensource)[GitHub - vitwit/resolute: Resolute], feature rich interchain interface for the Cosmos Ecosystem. The main objective of this project is to become a single place for interacting with any appchain that uses the cosmos stack. As the intro from the repo says in the tone of cosmos,

Resolute is an advanced spacecraft designed to travel through the multiverse, connecting all Cosmos sovereign chains.

What is the ask?

We are submitting this grant proposal to request funding for the development and support for Resolute. All the work we have been doing for Resolute is self funded so far since May, 2022. We believe we pushed these developments for a usable tool for the ecosystem and believe we are eligible for the community funding.

Details

What is already implemented:

Multisig Wallet interface

Inspired from cosmos-multisig-tool, we developed a full-fledged multisig interface for Cosmos. It currently supports the major message-types which exists on cosmos-sdk (v045). It is built keeping the Orgs/DAOs as the first priority which makes it easy for executing/creating multi-message transactions.

Account, Bank, Staking and Governance

Like any other staking interface, Resolute also has all the features related to Accounts, Bank and Staking. On top of all these features it also allows users to create multi-message transactions easily via a csv sheet or by adding (appending) messages on the interface directly.

Also, Resolute allows you to utilize authz for all these transactions.

Feegrant

We believe it is first interface to provide this feature in the ecosystem. With feegrant interface, anyone can grant, view and revoke feegrant permissions. Users can also easily set a fee payer account for all their transactions.

Authz

Users can manage and view all the grants they have given and received here. With single click on any of the authorization from the list, the interface changes to granter mode (authz mode) and users can perform transactions on behalf of the granter.

Groups

It is also the first interface available to interact with groups module. Users can create/manage groups and group-members on different cosmos chains with this feature. It also provides a clean way to track group proposals and votes on the group proposals.

What is planned for the next milestone:

  • UI/UX improvements
  • Feature Development: Support for ICA, IBC transactions, Wasm Contract Interactions and Interchain Swaps.
  • Performance Improvements
  • DeFi Management: Manage Liquid Staking, LPs, Perps, Lending/Borrowing all in a single place. It connects multiple DeFi apps from Osmosis, Neutron (scope), LS on Stride, Quicksilver.
  • Development & Maintainance support for a minimum of 3 years in total (1 year development + 2 years support). This includes fixing bugs, improving performance, adding new message types for existing features as they’re developed etc.

Milestone Tasks:

  • Framework upgrade: Migrate from JavaScript to TypeScript.
  • Allow users to add new custom chains
  • Allow updating existing chain configs (RPCs for example)
  • Wallets Integration: Integrate with Metamask via snaps. It already has support for Keplr, Leap and Cosmostation wallets.
  • Add support for more message types in multisig, authz and groups page.
  • New Features:
    • IBC transfers support
    • ICA support
    • Support for AEZ chains (staking, gov)
    • Integrate chain name services
    • Multi currency support (fiat)
    • Transaction builder for advanced users. It will allow users to build transaction by appending multiple messages, also allows users to upload csv sheet for building transactions.
    • Scheduled transactions. Allow users to schedule transactions (Subjected to security review from community builders).
    • Allow users to submit new governance proposal
    • Enhanced governance visibility for delegators
      • Show the effect of the proposal to respective delegator/user. Like in case of paramchange proposals.
      • Show what their validator voted on for respective proposals and show suggestion to override their vote if they don’t feel it appropriate.
    • WASM smart contract integration
    • NFTs integration (view, buy, sell)
    • Cross chain NFT trasfers
    • Cross chain swaps
    • Add more messages to multisig and groups module.
    • Feature page for suggesting new features on Resolute

Funding Request

The requested funding amount for the grant proposal is 44,000 ATOM, which is approximately equivalent to ~300,000 USD based on the 2 week average exchange rate (on 18th Oct). It includes expenses related to development resources, infrastructure and maintenance & support.

Funding Terms

  • CosmosHub community is authorized to revoke the funding anytime if they feel we are not adding value to the ecosystem on this topic and can consider to clawback all the vesting tokens from the funded wallet/associated vesting account.
  • The following vesting schedule sounds fair for us and we believe it’s reasonable for the community too.
    • Cliff is 6 months from the date of funding and vesting schedule is 30 months (total 3 years vesting schedule)
    • 60% of the tokens are vested periodically over next 6 months (post cliff, every month) as we are forecasting to finish the major development work in the first year.
    • Remaining 40% tokens are vested periodically over other 24 months, which will be used for development support, infrastructure and maintanance.
      Note: We don’t have flexibility to create periodic vesting accounts currently on the Hub (latest sdk releases has this feature). So changing the vesting criteria to the following which will follow the same vesting schedule as previously described. We cannot enforce the cliff from protocol for continuous vesting accounts, so formally agreeing for 6 month cliff, the community can always verify it. Due to this, we are changing the vesting schedule into two accounts.
    • [UPDATE]
    • Account 1: 40% tokens, continuous vesting for 1 year
    • Account 2: 60% tokens, continuous vesting over 3 years.
    • It will come to the same 60% tokens being vested in 1st year as mentioned in the proposal and remaining 40% tokens will be vested continuously over next 2 years (2 and 3).
    • The support comes for 3 years in total, 1 year with development & support and 2 years with pure maintenance & support.

Recipient

cosmos1jk9syw0hetc63hw2ujt9nfvfz2p8tj999ru0rq

Amount

44,000 ATOM

Forum post link

Governance votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

  • YES: Approve the grant proposal
  • NO: Reject the grant proposal
  • NO WITH VETO - A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
  • ABSTAIN - You wish to contribute to quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.
8 Likes
2

Seems reasonable IMO. I think should elaborate more on where the funds are going directly and expense the costs out per product. But this is work outlined is important for UX.

2 Likes
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Hey @anilCSE yup, I’ve seen Vitwit team members all over Cosmos and I’ve got a favorable impression of your team for sure.

I would like to provide the items that would move me toward a really easy yes on this:

  • revocability - since this proposal requested years worth of funding, I think that it makes sense to make it revokable if folks don’t feel they’re getting value.

  • extension - once the proposal is revocable, I think that it might make sense to Make it for a longer time. This is feedback that I shared with informal and hypha too but due to the size of their request, I don’t think it was actionable feedback for them. What if this was a years worth of development and 3 years of hosting and maintenance?

  • liquidation schedule - I think that currently a lot of hub stakeholders are concerned about the value of ATOM, and that they would likely like to know if this is to be immediately liquidated into Fiat, or if there are other plans for it.

  • documented request for ICF funding or licensure to AEZ - in discussions about hypha/informal funding, it seems to have been concluded that the ICF should be funding products that serve all of Cosmos, and that the hub should be funding products that serve exclusively the hub. I’m not certain I agree with this stance but I think that it would be an interesting and valuable exercise for you to speak with ICF about funding this.

Over the next week or so, our governance team will attempt to use resolute extensively. We have really needed easier front end tooling for governance for a long time now and this is important.

In the event that the proposal fails, but the governance tooling works well, I’d suggest considering a retroactive prop to cover the work your team has already done.

Thank you for building the cosmos

1 Like
4

Great initiative! Only when the tech is accessible, it can unleach its potential.

As a long-time contributor to cosmos-multisig-ui I know how complex it is to build end user facing applications even for the most basic mutlisig coordination. The upcoming migration to Sign Mode Textual will make this flow significatly more complex. Adding Feegrant/ Authz/Groups into the mix is a big level up.

Happy to support this initiative from the CosmJS side of things.

My only question is about deployments and free use of the software. Do I understand correctly both frontend and server are Apache 2.0 licensed and allows custom deployments? This may become critical in case certain jurisdictions don’t like users to access defi products. Do you provide a default deployment under the vitval.com domain and how long?

2 Likes
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Jacob said some main points

  1. How does this benefit the $ATOM/AEZ community EXCLUSIVELY?
  2. There is a lot of cool stuff but does it really bring REVENUE for AEZ more than using that amount to support Stride, Neutron…
  3. $Atom should/must be sold OTC if it passes. (Even $Juno can be sold via OTC)
    Please find clear answers to the questions above (only use/default $Atom as UI fee, focus on product development for AEZ…) or you should submit it to ICF.

Thank you for building tech on Cosmos, it’s even greater if building a real business

2 Likes
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I’m no longer in favor of Apache 2.0 for work funded by the cosmos hub due to the notion that the ICF should no longer support the hub’s research and development initiatives.

The ICF has a purpose of supporting public goods. The cosmosome has a purpose of doing cosmos hub stuff.

On the other hand, the foundation should be mandating Apache 2.0 and move to a much more transparent state of operation.

1 Like
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Thanks for your feedback. Yes, we will elaborate more on fund utilisation in subsequent response in this thread.

1 Like
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Thank you so much @simon_warta for you feedback.

Both the frontend and server code will be licensed under Apache 2.0. We might request that credit be given to Vitwit as the primary developer of the project, but this won’t be a mandatory requirement. We’ll host the default deployment on vitwit.com for at least 3 years (though we don’t intend to remove support in the foreseeable future, this serves as a formal commitment). Additionally, anyone is free to use it for custom deployments.

In the future, if our cosmos community introduces an exclusive license other than Apache 2.0, we would be open to adopting such a license as well. All we ask for is financial support and a bit of appreciation for our work

1 Like
9

Thank you @jacobgadikian for your response and feedback.

Sure, this really makes sense. We will update the proposal to include revocability. Thanks.

Over the past 3 months, we reached out to ICF for support on this project and other work we’ve been undertaking. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’, nor did we get any feedback from the team. We then wondered, should we seek support from the community?

2 Likes
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Who did you speak to?

Was there an application process?

I’ve been told that there is no application process.

Sorry that you share my experience, as in my opinion it is more harmful to waffle and be non-responsive than it is to simply reject a proposal.

Since you have either been rejected or ignored by the ICF, it makes perfect sense to make a funding proposal.

11

Thanks @jacobgadikian for your valuable feedback.

Here are the details we are looking to add to the proposal. Please feel free to share your views so we can update the original proposal with these details.

Funding Terms:

  • CosmosHub community is authorized to revoke the funding anytime if they feel we are not adding value to the ecosystem on this topic and can consider to clawback all the vesting tokens from the funded wallet/associated vesting account.
  • The following vesting schedule sounds fair for us and we believe it’s reasonable for the community too.
    • Cliff is 6 months from the date of funding and vesting schedule is 30 months (total 3 years vesting schedule)
    • 60% of the tokens are vested periodically over next 6 months (post cliff, every month) as we are forecasting to finish the major development work in the first year.
    • Remaining 40% tokens are vested periodically over other 24 months, which will be used for development support, infrastructure and maintanance.
    • The support comes for 3 years in total, 1 year with development & support and 2 years with pure maintenance & support.
1 Like
12

Thank you for your inputs @w3bqq ,

Agree that, the Resolute is not EXCLUSIVE for CosmosHub but we definitely believe that it adds great value for the hub in terms of taking core feature offerings to wider audience. All the CosmosHub features are prioritized over any other things on Resolute. We are committed to improve the UX for general users in Cosmos, and believe that, it in turn adds value to to hub.
3) Yes, we are not going to sell these tokens on regular markets and definitely chose some better solutions like OTC and/or market makers.

2 Likes
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Glad to hear about the OTC deal.
The BIG question is “How much”, sir? If you have been following, the Cosmos Hub community has complained countless times about this issue, so I think you should apply after the $ATOM Tokenomic change, otherwise, it will be a waste of time in dramas.

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The ATOM fund has passed the sustainable sacrifice stage to support many projects.
I really hope ICF will fund you guys, try pushing them harder.

14

CosmosHub doesn’t have support to create new periodic vesting accounts via a clients, though it is available in newer versions of cosmos-sdk. Due to this, we are changing the vesting schedule into two accounts.

  • Account 1: 40% tokens, continuous vesting for 1 year
  • Account 2: 60% tokens, continuous vesting over 3 years.

It will come to the same 60% tokens being vested in 1st year as mentioned in the proposal and remaining 40% tokens will be vested continuously over next 2 years (2 and 3). We are still formally agreeing to the terms of vesting Cliff for selling tokens and community can verify it.

1 Like
15

Proposal seems reasonable.
Nice app so far.

Question:
Is keeping track of milestones and progress via the README from GitHub - vitwit/resolute: Resolute or is there another place?

1 Like
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Yes all the tracking regards to milestone progress and regular release updates will be available on our Github repo. We’ll also push release updates on twitter.

18

Glad to hear that we’re adding more emphasis on tooling and UX here. But at this time, I’m leaning towards VOTING NO. Here’s why.

The plan is elaborate, but lacked specificity and accountablility. We could use the SMART approach (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound). The scope is massive, utterly difficult to measure success, has dependencies that aren’t Attainable, it’s so widespread whether or not it is even Relevant, and there are no Time-bound milestones.

Questions:

  • Are all of the above scoped work attainable? Can we break this down to one set of work over 6 months at a time? Can we have milestones, amount funded for each milestone, rather than over time and cliff (sounds like big tech RSUs) will be a better measurement for success.
  • Is this more of a retroactive funding combined with future work? I know of several projects that have been running even prior to May 2022, some dating back to 2018, and they’ve not even asked for funding yet.
  • who would hold the Vitwit team to be accountable for quality of work? I believe no one’s assessing the quality of work and holding Vitwit team to a high bar @jacobgadikian asked really good questions on accountability earlier.
  • I didn’t see any UX mockups, what does the new UX flow look like? I just tried connecting a Keplr wallet to it, and the experience was lackluster with repeated pop-ups per chain :frowning:
  • What are the timelines for the milestones? There isn’t one, and it’ll be a moving goalpost. The scope is huge and it doesn’t seem attainable.
  • Sorry but items like “Feature page for suggesting new features on Resolute” doesn’t make any sense. Twitter DM can do the job
  • Who’s using vitwit and and how often are people using Resolute … any Google Analytics chart to show utility? So if it didn’t exist anymore, what’s the impact to Cosmos Hub.
  • How about marketing? Projects / DApps often lack adoption due to lackluster marketing. Any plans here?

We have to ask the hard question, do we want to support anyone willing to build on Cosmos, or should we be more selective. And if this funding don’t go through, and the Vitwit team decides to take Resolute offline, what is the impact for Cosmos Hub? Can we live without it? What’s the alternative?

7 Likes
19

I’ve had a similar experience interacting with the site. Very shoddy work. Not a good look if you’re asking for large sums of money

1 Like
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Strongly against the proposal:

  • The current website is not looking very useable and more clunky
  • There are already better free tools available in cosmos
  • The ask size is oversized.
  • Public Goods should be funded via AADAO
  • No value capture for Cosmos Hub → looks like value extraction
4 Likes
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Hello @jacksteroo

Thank you for detailed feedback and these are really valuable questions. I will try to answer them clearly below.

  • There is a mentioned timeline of 1 year for entire development. But we can may be split into multiple small milestones for better visibility and tracking. Open for ideas. We are planning to create WGs as soon as the proposal goes through so we will have feedback sessions around priorities and UX flow.
  • No, this ASK if for the future work only. We understood the greater value that Resolute can provide to the community when building current solution. This proposal added all the features that can be built and offer better UX. Switching between 10 different tools for different tasks will definitely kill the UX.
  • As mentioned, we are considering to have WGs for feedbacks & improvements
  • It doesn;t weight anything in the proposed budget. It was requested by the community members before so just added here to the list
  • We didn’t add Google Analytics thinking to do-not-track users. But we will definitely add that if only those kind of numbers speak
  • We work with multiple projects and help them with onboarding, development and advisory. We see this kind of tool is clearly lagging in the ecosystem. When we are working with protocols, it directly reaching its audience. But that’s more about why we landed here. We don’t have marketing plans yet but seemsless experience would be our marketing line when it is achieved.

The last question is very important. I don’t think I can solely answer that as its more for the entire community. Personally I would check the team strength, vision and the impacts it can bring to the community.