Please describe your proposed solution.
To resolve the issue of the lack of an advanced and original Open Source explorer for Cardano, as well as the long-term availability and usefulness of pool.pm, including on test networks, the chosen solution is to prepare the transition of pool.pm to a community project by rewriting it as an improved Open Source project based on past experience.
The aim is to:
- solve performance, scalability & robustness shortcomings
- support full redundancy to allow updates without any downtime
- make it possible for anyone to relaunch the project even if current funding or development comes to an end
- make it easier to identify problems and add new features, which should help keep the service accurate, reliable and up to date with new standards
- provide an open source & reusable way to delegate from any CIP30 wallet to any stake pool
- allow other internal parts to be reused in other projects
- make it easier to port the software to other related networks like Hydra channels (or maybe even eUTXO Ergo blockchain for example with more work)
In addition, the following new features are expected to be made possible with the new version:
- stake addresses transaction timelines, allowing to visually browse assets transfers between addresses and pools
- tokens display in stake pool pages, to show what a specific stake pool users are interested in
- asset policies pages with tokens, to display all the tokens of a specific policy
- rewards display in stake pool and stake address timelines
Lastly but importantly, the plan is to deploy sponsored features to work towards future sustainability and self-funding:
- Maintainers sponsorship
- Custom DEX & Marketplace detailed transactions and/or timelines
- Customized tokens whales and/or timelines
- Pools & stake address customization
Pool.pm is initially an SPO tool, and they will be the first to benefit from this new version thanks to the improved performance and functionality of stake pool pages.
One of the important aims of the reworked architecture and code is to facilitate the hosting of Preprod & Preview networks versions. Support for test networks has been requested several times since the first release of pool.pm and should meet some of the needs of SPOs, Cardano developers and creators who test on these networks.
But pool.pm is also unique is that it engages most Cardano users:
- New users from its visual and intuitive blockchain representation
- NFT users from its display of stake addresses contents & shareable URLs
- Cardano Foundation for the community delegation pages
- etc.
And all users will benefit from this new open source version:
- Stake Pool Operators will benefit from improved accuracy & performance, particularly the return of soft real-time updates and the removal of epoch boundaries lag.
- Users will benefit from an improved user experience thanks to performance, UI & UX improvements as well as new features
- SPOs, developers & testers will benefit from Preview & Preprod network versions.
The new version will also make a lot of other new features possible, even if they are not part of this proposal.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
The proposed solution addresses the challenge in several ways:
- It supports a tool built initially by an SPO, for SPOs, whose purpose was later expanded.
- It supports the SPO Ecosystem by improving SPOs experience on mainnet and test networks.
- It supports the update of an existing SPO tool.
- It supports a tool that was one of the first to implement several CIPs and would continue to do so, contributing to the spread of new Cardano standards.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The success of the project will be measured in terms of performance, implemented new features, user satisfaction, source code popularity and contributions as well as sustainability
Performance:
- Real-time minimum, maximum and average lag measurement
- Loading time
New features implemented:
- stake addresses timelines
- rewards added to stake pools & addresses timelines
- tokens added to stake pool timelines
- asset policies galleries
User satisfaction:
- Number of users
- Users feedback (including polls results and testimonials)
Source code popularity & activity:
- Number of GitHub repo stars
- Number of GitHub repo visits
- Number of GitHub repo forks
- Number of GitHub repo contributions (issues, feature requests & pull requests)
- Number of GitHub contributors (issues, feature requests & pull requests)
Sustainability:
- GitHub sponsorship deployed
- Sponsored features availability
- Overall sponsorship growth results
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
The source code for the completed version will be published on GitHub, and the service will be publicly available at https://pool.pm.
Alpha and beta versions will be available from sub-domains. Feedback from SPOs and involved users will be used to improve the service up to the final version.
Progress throughout development will also be shared on social networks, mainly Twitter and a new Discord server created around the pool.pm community.