Blockops Network Grant Application

[haroldsphinx]

Project Abstract

Please replace these instructions with a brief description of your project summarising key points (1-2 paragraphs).

If your application is a follow-up to a previous grant, please mention which one in the first line of the abstract and include a link to previous pull requests if applicable.

Grant level

• Level 1: Up to $10,000, 2 approvals
• Level 2: Up to $30,000, 3 approvals
• Level 3: Unlimited, 5 approvals (for >$100k: Web3 Foundation Council approval)

Application Checklist

• The application template has been copied and aptly renamed (project_name.md).
• I have read the application guidelines.
• Payment details have been provided (bank details via email or BTC, Ethereum (USDC/DAI) or Polkadot/Kusama (USDT) address in the application).
• The software delivered for this grant will be released under an open-source license specified in the application.
• The initial PR contains only one commit (squash and force-push if needed).
• The grant will only be announced once the first milestone has been accepted (see the announcement guidelines).
• I prefer the discussion of this application to take place in a private Element/Matrix channel. My username is: @_______:matrix.org (change the homeserver if you use a different one)

[haroldsphinx]

Thank you for the updates, @haroldsphinx. I am somewhat skeptical that the committee is willing to spend 90k on a deployment tooling project in one fell swoop, but I am going to share it with the rest of the committee regardless.

Please can you advice on the best way to structure this? This is the reason why we break it down into Milestone 1 and 2 and I didn't want to be re-adjusting costs too often but I'm willing to adjust this to what will work because what is important to us right now is that the Project is accepted, so it gives us the confidence that we're spending effort building something that is really needed.

We are willing to adjust the pricing to what is feasible

[haroldsphinx]

Made the following updates:

• Added USDC Address
• Reduced the total pricing back to $60k
• Updated Development Deliverables to Include a Launcher as web believe this will be the best way to Achieve True Decentralization and Sovereignty by giving users the autonomy to use this tool on any platform to deploy to any environment
• Added the link to the open sourced codes to also showcase progress and continuous workdone even as we are waiting on the review process

Cc: @semuelle @keeganquigley @Noc2

[haroldsphinx]

I marked Old conversation resolved, to clean up the comments a bit and also as a way to nudge reviewers 🙏🏾

[takahser]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the adjustments and the price reduction. Usually we ask teams to start with a L1 or L2 grant and if the deliveries turn out to be of high quality we consider follow-up grants. For us, that's a way to mitigate the risk to spend a lot of money with little in return. Would you consider to strip M2 and apply for M1 only?

Apart from that, I've seen that your team members currently work for different companies, such as Dapper Labs, Exodus, BlockOps Network, Kora and Composable Finance. At the same time, you plan to allocate 6 FTE for 6 months. So I was wondering if they are all going to resign from their jobs to work full-time on that project. Because I can't imagine anybody to work 200% for extended periods of time (in this case, half a year).

[haroldsphinx]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the adjustments and the price reduction. Usually we ask teams to start with a L1 or L2 grant and if the deliveries turn out to be of high quality we consider follow-up grants. For us, that's a way to mitigate the risk to spend a lot of money with little in return. Would you consider to strip M2 and apply for M1 only?

Apart from that, I've seen that your team members currently work for different companies, such as Dapper Labs, Exodus, BlockOps Network, Kora and Composable Finance. At the same time, you plan to allocate 6 FTE for 6 months. So I was wondering if they are all going to resign from their jobs to work full-time on that project. Because I can't imagine anybody to work 200% for extended periods of time (in this case, half a year).

@haroldsphinx thanks for the adjustments and the price reduction. Usually we ask teams to start with a L1 or L2 grant and if the deliveries turn out to be of high quality we consider follow-up grants. For us, that's a way to mitigate the risk to spend a lot of money with little in return. Would you consider to strip M2 and apply for M1 only?

Apart from that, I've seen that your team members currently work for different companies, such as Dapper Labs, Exodus, BlockOps Network, Kora and Composable Finance. At the same time, you plan to allocate 6 FTE for 6 months. So I was wondering if they are all going to resign from their jobs to work full-time on that project. Because I can't imagine anybody to work 200% for extended periods of time (in this case, half a year).

Thank you for the feedback @takahser

Regarding M2 and Grant Phases:
In light of your suggestion, I have updated our application to focus solely on M1 for now. We’re optimistic that after the successful delivery of M1, we would be in a good position to apply for follow-up grants.

Regarding Team Members’ Current Employment Status:

To provide clarity on our team’s dedication and commitment, here are the details of each member’s current work status:
Adedayo Akinpelu: Worked with Composable Finance followed by Dapperlabs. However, I left Dapperlabs in July this year, which has afforded me the time to concentrate fully on Blockops. FTE
Marcelo Mendoca: Worked with Dapperlabs but left recently, Partime
Franklin Okpako: He is presently employed at Exodus. Partime
Oluwatimilehin Adesoji: He is currently with Korapay. Partime
John Etokana: Works with Composable Finance but left recently…Partime
Calvin: Full-time with Blockops Network.

Also, the way I’m calculating the FTE is in terms of number of hours worked, Those team members who are engaged in other full-time job are wholeheartedly investing additional hours into this project to ensure its success.

[takahser]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the adjustments and the reply. Regarding the allocations, how large are the part-time allocations of the other team members? Can you list the allocations for this project for each of your team members?

To provide clarity on our team’s dedication and commitment, here are the details of each member’s current work status:
Adedayo Akinpelu: Worked with Composable Finance followed by Dapperlabs. However, I left Dapperlabs in July this year, which has afforded me the time to concentrate fully on Blockops. FTE
Marcelo Mendoca: Worked with Dapperlabs but left recently, Partime
Franklin Okpako: He is presently employed at Exodus. Partime
Oluwatimilehin Adesoji: He is currently with Korapay. Partime
John Etokana: Works with Composable Finance but left recently…Partime
Calvin: Full-time with Blockops Network.

[haroldsphinx]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the adjustments and the reply. Regarding the allocations, how large are the part-time allocations of the other team members? Can you list the allocations for this project for each of your team members?

To provide clarity on our team’s dedication and commitment, here are the details of each member’s current work status:
Adedayo Akinpelu: Worked with Composable Finance followed by Dapperlabs. However, I left Dapperlabs in July this year, which has afforded me the time to concentrate fully on Blockops. FTE
Marcelo Mendoca: Worked with Dapperlabs but left recently, Partime
Franklin Okpako: He is presently employed at Exodus. Partime
Oluwatimilehin Adesoji: He is currently with Korapay. Partime
John Etokana: Works with Composable Finance but left recently…Partime
Calvin: Full-time with Blockops Network.

Work Hours Allocation for Parttime Team Members
Franklin Okpako: 40hrs weekly (currently works equivalent of FTE, he's able to combine the two becuase of his company's timezone)
Marcelo Mendoca: 20hrs weekly including weekends
Oluwatimilehin Adesoji: 20hrs weekly including weekends
John Etokana: 20hrs weekly including weekends

Based on these, our FTE is actually 4.5FTE, and I have updated the application to reflect this

[takahser]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the update. It's a bit unfortunate, that you weren't able to deliver the correct FTE from the beginning. Also, I'm unclear on why you didn't update the amounts although the FTE were reduced dramatically. Combined with the complains of different parachains in earlier comments here and here this doesn't shed a very good light on the project - at least that's my personal opinion. To be honest, I'm not very much in favor of accepting this proposal and will withhold my vote for now. However, I'll ping the rest of the committee to have a look again in order to conclude this proposal soon.

[haroldsphinx]

@haroldsphinx thanks for the update. It's a bit unfortunate, that you weren't able to deliver the correct FTE from the beginning. Also, I'm unclear on why you didn't update the amounts although the FTE were reduced dramatically. Combined with the complains of different parachains in earlier comments here and here this doesn't shed a very good light on the project - at least that's my personal opinion. To be honest, I'm not very much in favor of accepting this proposal and will withhold my vote for now. However, I'll ping the rest of the committee to have a look again in order to conclude this proposal soon.

@haroldsphinx thanks for the update. It's a bit unfortunate, that you weren't able to deliver the correct FTE from the beginning. Also, I'm unclear on why you didn't update the amounts although the FTE were reduced dramatically. Combined with the complains of different parachains in earlier comments here and here this doesn't shed a very good light on the project - at least that's my personal opinion. To be honest, I'm not very much in favor of accepting this proposal and will withhold my vote for now. However, I'll ping the rest of the committee to have a look again in order to conclude this proposal soon.

• I updated the FTE details in the interest of accuracy and transparency. While each team member is involved in other full-time roles, they remain deeply committed to this project and are working on a Full-time capacity on Blockops at the same time. However, based on your previous comment, there seems to be skepticism regarding the feasibility of such a commitment alongside other full-time engagements which is why I updated to something more verifiable and trackable and each member of the team can be held accountable on.

• I opted not to adjust the price even with the FTE reduction because, frankly, $30k already significantly undervalues our efforts. Our primary aim isn't financial; we're passionate about ensuring this project reaches its potential. By any standard, $30k for 4.5 FTEs over three months is considerably below market rate. However, given the challenges we've been facing, we believe it's crucial to demonstrate our capabilities by successfully delivering on our milestones before considering financial aspects in depth. So much that in my mail to the foundation, I stated that my team and I are happy to not receive any form of funding until the Milestones are completed delivered as a show of good faith and our confidence in actually delivering this solution to the ecosystem.

• It's disheartening when it appears that applications can be criticized without the Web3 Foundation extending the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt to applicants or providing fair hearing and hence judging the applications by these innuendos. I have communicated our position and intentions in a detailed email to [[email protected]] and provided evidence to address all concerns. I did that both as a reply to the Issue Comments in question, but also as a detailed mail to the foundation itself. Unfortunately, I haven’t received a response acknowledging receipts or asking further clarifying questions to shed light on the matter. [See attached screenshot for evidence]

• Also, it is important to note that during the course of this application, 2 parachains has used our beta version, One is currently using our product for their testate phase, and the other is currently in a test phase (one of them even gave us a review and feedbacks on things to improve on ) which is part of the feedbacks we are working on and fixing bugs as well, as of which can be seen in our repository

In Conclusion
I appreciate all the efforts the reviewer has been putting into this application, and I will also like to request that the committee take this review on the focus on the Value Add to the Ecosystem and be a little lenient in Application related errors in our PR, and guide us into fixing this instead.

[takahser]

I updated the FTE details in the interest of accuracy and transparency. While each team member is involved in other full-time roles, they remain deeply committed to this project and are working on a Full-time capacity on Blockops at the same time. However, based on your previous comment, there seems to be skepticism regarding the feasibility of such a commitment alongside other full-time engagements which is why I updated to something more verifiable and trackable and each member of the team can be held accountable on.

Thanks, I appreciate the adjustments. However, I don't understand why you didn't state the correct FTE from the beginning.

my team and I are happy to not receive any form of funding until the Milestones are completed delivered as a show of good faith and our confidence in actually delivering this solution to the ecosystem.

A completed and approved delivery is actually the pre-condition for payment in our program, as you can read here.

Also, it is important to note that during the course of this application, 2 parachains has used our beta version, One is currently using our product for their testate phase, and the other is currently in a test phase (one of them even gave us a review and feedbacks on things to improve on ) which is part of the feedbacks we are working on and fixing bugs as well, as of which can be seen in our repository.

That's great, I'm happy for you! I wish you succeed with your project.

Regarding the email, we're recently receiving a lot of messages and although we try to reply to all of them, there are instances where this doesn't happen. In your case, I'd like to add that you didn't ask for any specific question or feedback, but nonetheless I agree that it'd have been better to confirm the receipt of that message.

[takahser]

@haroldsphinx I saw you've requested a review from me. However, I already commented recently on it and I don't see any changes or follow-up comments that were created ever since. Let me know if I'm missing something.

[haroldsphinx]

@haroldsphinx I saw you've requested a review from me. However, I already commented recently on it and I don't see any changes or follow-up comments that were created ever since. Let me know if I'm missing something.

Oh, My bad...In response to your comments

Thanks, I appreciate the adjustments. However, I don't understand why you didn't state the correct FTE from the beginning.

Since the course of our application, we have made several changes to this application based on feedbacks, for-example, we’ve changed the cost from $120k to $60k to $90k and back to $60k again and then to $30k, We adjusted our deliverables severally to follow inline with progress made and as well as added to our deliverables, all these are done mostly based on feedbacks gotten from reviewers to improve our application, when you brought up the “FTE and working 200%“, I went back to read other projects and realize that we needed to be more specific around the number of hours each member of the team is going to be putting into the project, and based on that I re-calculated and made adjustments accordingly

[haroldsphinx]

To the reviewers @takahser @semuelle @Noc2 @keeganquigley

I again urge the reviewers to consider our application on evaluating our application based on the intrinsic value of the project we’re creating and its potential benefits to the ecosystem. Any other concerns can be addressed and adjusted according to the guidelines set by the Web3 Foundation.

I'm aware that the team is handling lot of reviews and some are even OOO, Nonetheless, I would appreciate an update on when we can anticipate the team's final decision regarding the proposal since we've submitted since September 1st. This information is crucial for us to progress collectively 🙏🏾.

[semuelle]

Hi @haroldsphinx. Sorry for the late reply. Thanks again for the application and the fixes. After several rounds of discussion, it has become clear that the application will not receive sufficient support from the committee. Apart from the fact that some of the deliverables are still not well specified ("Bug Fixes"), most of the concerns were already raised in this PR, so I won't reiterate them.

Thanks again for the application, and I hope you will find a way to realize your project regardless. And don't hesitate to apply again in the future.