Round 20 - GMC Call for Bounty Applications - Deadline is January 7

This thread is for applications for Rocket Pool’s December 7, 2024 - January 7, 2025 bounties. Please only post bounty applications in this thread. If you would like to discuss and/or ask questions about any applications you see in this thread, we ask that you do so in this separate forum thread which has been established for all community discussions related to this round of applications. Only those grant applications that are posted in this thread and timestamped by January 7, 2025 at 23:59 (11:59 PM) UTC will be considered. Any bounties posted after that deadline will be carried over to the next award period.

This is the expected schedule for round 20:

  • Application Period (December 7 - January 7)
  • Scoring Deadline (January 21)
  • Final Voting Amendments, Discussion and Finalization (January 22 - January 25)
  • Award Announcement (January 26)
Differences Between Grants and Bounties Grants are intended to be applied for by those who are wishing to carry out the work themselves. Bounties are open-ended goals that could be met by anyone, including those other than the proposing party. In other words, if I believed that Rocket Pool needed a fifty-foot paper mache orange rocket for publicity purposes and I wanted to be the one to built it, I would apply for a grant. If I instead thought Rocket Pool needed a fifty-foot paper mache orange rocket for publicity purposes but I wanted it to be open to whoever built it first to claim the reward (similar to a prize), then I’d apply for a bounty.

To guide you in your application, the GMC has established the following goals and the following scoring rubric:

GMC Goals

Grants, bounties, and retrospective awards should make it easier and/or more attractive to do one or more of the following:

  • become a node operator

  • operate a node, mint rETH

  • hold or use rETH

  • improve the quality of life for the protocol and its community.

Bounties Rubric

When evaluating grant applications, the GMC takes into account the following goals:

  • If the bounty is completed successfully, to what extent does it further the GMC goals?

  • To what extent is it likely that the bounty can be feasibly claimed/completed successfully?

  • If the bounty is successfully completed, how large is the benefit to the protocol relative to the size of the proposed costs?

Bounty Proposal Template

Guidelines

  • The goals of the Bounty Proposal are:
    • to communicate your bounty idea clearly, in general terms, such that the GMC can decide if it’s worth pursuing.
    • to estimate the benefits and costs attached to your proposal.
    • to disclose any relevant conflicts of interest.
  • Answers to the template questions do not need to be highly detailed. Estimates or ranges are acceptable. Brief answers are also fine.

Template

# Bounty Name

## General Information

### What is the nature of the proposed bounty?

### Why are you writing this bounty proposal?


## Benefit

<please enter N/A where appropriate>

| Group | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Potential rETH holders | If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help people looking to stake ETH for rETH? |
| rETH holders | If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help rETH holders? |
| Potential NOs |  If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help people looking to run a Rocket Pool node for the first time? |
| NOs | If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help people already running a Rocket Pool node? |
| Community |  If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help the Rocket Pool community? |
| RPL holders |  If the bounty is successfully completed, how does this help RPL holders? |

### Which other non-RPL protocols, DAOs, projects, or individuals would stand to benefit from the bounty being successfully completed?



## Work

### What steps would be entailed in completing the bounty? Do successful examples of such work exist elsewhere? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?

### What advice would you give a bounty hunter working on this bounty?

### Should the output of this bounty be available under an open source license?



## Costs

### How much do you think the completion of this bounty worth to Rocket Pool (in USD)?

### How much work will be needed to verify this bounty has been completed? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?


## Structure

### How would you structure this bounty, and why? 
* A single payout to single team on completion? 
* Divided into milestones? 
* Multiple payouts to multiple teams? 
* Should this be written up as multiple bounty definitions?
* Something else?

### Is this bounty repeatable?

### Are there any reasonable circumstances under which this bounty should be withdrawn? Should it expire?


## Conflicts of Interest

### Does the person or persons proposing the bounty have any conflicts of interest to disclose? (Please disclose here if you are a member of the GMC or if any member of the GMC would benefit directly financially from the successful completion of the bounty).

### Will the applicant, or any protocol or project in which the applicant has a vested interest (other than Rocket Pool), benefit financially if the bounty is successfully completed?

Bounty Definition Template

Guidelines

  • When a single proposal bounty proposal has parts that must be completed by different groups, it should become multiple definitions.
  • Where reasonably possible, bountiy definitions should limit the number of distinct skillsets required for completion of the bounty.
  • Bounties should be defined in terms of the smallest worthwhile unit of work. IE: $25 to add/update a single relevant FAQ question rather than $5,000 to update the FAQ.
  • Include any information or resources that might reasonably help a bounty hunter complete the bounty.
  • Think carefully about which tasks are required, and which can be optional.
  • Clearly list any dependencies, if the bounty cannot be completed in all circumstances.
  • Only include multiple milestones for large bounties with natural points of division.

Template

# Bounty Name 

## Data
* Repeatable?
* Expiring?
* Skillsets for completion? (See existing bounties and reuse where possible, new skillsets are recommended if sufficiently distinct)
* Relevant tags? (See existing bounties and reuse where possible, new tags are recommended if sufficiently distinct)
* Min reward (USD)?
* Max reward (USD)?
* Any linked definitions? (e.g. if a single bounty proposal becomes multiple definitions.)
* Any dependencies? 

## Summary 
Short 1-3 sentences describing the bounty.

## Dependencies
Is there anything that must happen (outside of a bounty hunter's control) before it is possible to complete this bounty? This may be other bounties that must be completed first, an upcoming event or change or a regular occurance that triggers a valid bounty. This section is optional. May be later removed from the definition if the dependency becomes permanently met. 

## Required Milestones
What _must_ be completed for a bounty hunter to claim some amount of bounty. Described per milestone.

### Milestone A - <Name of Milestone>
**Payout: ** <payout amount>
Clear bulleted list or subheadings covering the items that must be completed and/or adhered to for this milestone to be valid.

### Milestone B - <Name of Milestone>
**Payout: ** <payout amount>
Clear bulleted list or subheadings covering the items that must be completed and/or adhered to for this milestone to be valid.

### Milestone C - <Name of Milestone>...

## Optional Milestones
What tasks _may_ be completed for a bounty hunter to earn extra bounty rewards. Described per milestone. This section is optional.

Optional milestones may be less strictly defined than required milestones. You may aggregate multiple minor considerations that would contribute to a payout. 

### Milestone D - <Name of Milestone>
**Maximum Payout: ** <maximum payout amount>
Clear bulleted list of the items that would contribute to payout for this milestone.

### Milestone E - <Name of Milestone>...


## Further Notes
Anything you think that would be beneficial for a bounty hunter to know when working on this bounty. Maybe be divided into subsections as needed.

## Resources
Links to repositories, web pages, forum discussions, etc. Anything that the bounty hunter may be able to use to do a better job on the bounty work. 

## Contacts
Individuals that have agreed to act as contacts for this bounty. Include usernames + contact details for any platform on which the contact is willing to respond to requests. Any contacts are expected to fully understand the bounty definition. This section is optional. 

Contacts:
* MAY be eligible for incentives.
* SHOULD NOT assist the bounty hunter directly with the bounty work.
* SHOULD assist bounty hunters via feedback, direction and oversight upon request.

## Verification
Who is expected to verify that the work delivered meets the relevant milestones? This person or group must have agreed to do this in advance of this definition being published. This person or group should have any relevant skillsets needed to properly verify the bounty work.


1 Like

Just Exit My Validators

General Information

What is the nature of the proposed bounty?

A project that allows node operators to exit their validators with just the mnemonic.

Why are you writing this bounty proposal?

Often, node operators appear in #support with some variant of the following question:

Hello, my node has spontaneously combusted. I cannot access it but would like to get my funds out. How can I do this?

Currently, the answer is often “uh, find some way to sign the voluntary exit message using ethdo and then broadcast it via beaconcha.in…”

This bounty would pay someone to develop (potentially just) a wrapper around ethdo and the beaconcha.in v1 message broadcast API which provides a UI that can be securely hosted, or downloaded and runs locally, and makes it easy to exit any validator from a mnemonic without having access to a node.

There isn’t a good alternative that I know of, and as RP uses the standard logic to derive the validator keys, this tool trivially can support the solo staking community as well.

This tool must support the standard wallet format as well as mnemonics, so it will work for AllNodes users.

The tool should support an optional beaconcha.in API key (to avoid ip-based rate limiting on their unauthenticated endpoints).

NB: beaconcha.in is in the process of upgrading to their v2 api which does not yet support broadcasting messages. A portion of this bounty will only be paid out once the tool supports their new API.

Benefit

Group Benefits
Potential rETH holders N/A
rETH holders N/A
Potential NOs Confidence that they can exit even if their node breaks
NOs They can exit even if their node breaks
Community N/A
RPL holders N/A

Which other non-RPL protocols, DAOs, projects, or individuals would stand to benefit from the bounty being successfully completed?

Solo stakers, or really any protocol whose validator keys are compatible.

Work

What steps would be entailed in completing the bounty? Do successful examples of such work exist elsewhere? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?

Frontend development experience is necessary. Potentially to the point where a website with only client-side code is capable of deriving keys, signing a voluntary exit message, and pushing it to the beaconcha.in api to broadcast it. Ideally, the code can also use the beaconcha.in API to check the derived keys for presence on the beaconchain.

What advice would you give a bounty hunter working on this bounty?

Security is genuinely important. Code quality is genuinely important. The tool needs to be verifiably trustworthy.

Should the output of this bounty be available under an open source license?

Absofuckinglutely

Costs

How much do you think the completion of this bounty worth to Rocket Pool (in USD)?

$5,000.00 for its creation and the creation of thorough documentation.
$1,000.00 bump after the beaconcha.in v2 api supports message broadcasts and the tool is updated to use it.

How much work will be needed to verify this bounty has been completed? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?

Auditing the code for security and trustworthiness (multiple people). Will require advanced software engineering knowledge (to look for underhanded exploits).

Structure

How would you structure this bounty, and why?

$5,000.00 for its creation and the creation of thorough documentation.
$1,000.00 bump after the beaconcha.in v2 api supports message broadcasts and the tool is updated to use it.

Is this bounty repeatable?

No.

Are there any reasonable circumstances under which this bounty should be withdrawn? Should it expire?

If a competing tool arises that fulfills its requirements.

Conflicts of Interest

Does the person or persons proposing the bounty have any conflicts of interest to disclose? (Please disclose here if you are a member of the GMC or if any member of the GMC would benefit directly financially from the successful completion of the bounty).

I am a investor in nodeset, beaconcha.in, and sit on the board of directors of ethstaker.

Will the applicant, or any protocol or project in which the applicant has a vested interest (other than Rocket Pool), benefit financially if the bounty is successfully completed?

Solo stakers will benefit, as will anyone with validators through any protocol who needs an easy escape hatch.

1 Like

RPL Fee Switch Preview Calculator

General Information

What is the nature of the proposed bounty?

An online tool (and/or Discord bot) that previews the value of staking RPL after Saturn under different input parameters and assumptions.

Why are you writing this bounty proposal?

I want this thing to exist for my own use. And I think it could get more people excited about the value of staking RPL. Also it would probably help people understand Saturn - I think it’s currently not very well understood.

Benefit

Group Benefits
Potential rETH holders N/A
rETH holders N/A
Potential NOs Help understand the opportunity for extra rewards by staking with RP with RPL
NOs similar to above
Community Community lives and dies by RPL price
RPL holders If the projections look good, RPL might get some positive attention. And it helps holders know whether to stake.

Which other non-RPL protocols, DAOs, projects, or individuals would stand to benefit from the bounty being successfully completed?

None.

Work

What steps would be entailed in completing the bounty? Do successful examples of such work exist elsewhere? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?

Figure out how Saturn works. Use that information to figure out what inputs/assumptions a calculator of projected earnings from staked RPL would need. Then build the calculator and give it a nice-looking and easy-to-use interface.

What advice would you give a bounty hunter working on this bounty?

Iterate mock-ups with community members like me for feedback early.

Should the output of this bounty be available under an open source license?

Yes.

Costs

How much do you think the completion of this bounty worth to Rocket Pool (in USD)?

Probably something like $5000.

How much work will be needed to verify this bounty has been completed? What skillsets or knowledge will be required?

Knowledge of Saturn or ability to understand it deeply from the specs. And ability to create good UX for a calculator (e.g. know how to use web technologies well).

Structure

How would you structure this bounty, and why?

A single payout to single team on completion
because this is a simple enough thing to get done in one “milestone”.

Is this bounty repeatable?

No. Although if there’s a version with a much better UX maybe it should also get a prize even after the first is paid out.

Are there any reasonable circumstances under which this bounty should be withdrawn? Should it expire?

If Saturn is well underway (already launched) this becomes less relevant as a “preview”. It could still be useful for prospective stakers though.

Conflicts of Interest

Does the person or persons proposing the bounty have any conflicts of interest to disclose? (Please disclose here if you are a member of the GMC or if any member of the GMC would benefit directly financially from the successful completion of the bounty).

I am a member of the GMC.

Will the applicant, or any protocol or project in which the applicant has a vested interest (other than Rocket Pool), benefit financially if the bounty is successfully completed?

No. I hold RPL but that’s it.

Notice: This message marks the closing of the twentieth (20) round of Rocket Pool bounty applications. Any applications submitted after this will not be considered for this round. The GMC will announce the award recipients in a new thread here on the forums around January 26th. The community will then have two weeks to issue any challenges before funds are disbursed. Thank you to all who applied and thank you to everyone who has followed along. Anyone who would like to comment on existing applications is encouraged to do so in this thread.