Code:
Name: LRP - JSKitty
Term: 3 Cycles
Cycle Amount: 25,000
Total Amount: 75,000
Author: JSKitty
Receiver: JSKitty
Address: D6RRBmfr5okpVXuqvKYjdpa7t7cBchti8r
Created: 09-12-2023
Status: Active
Vote Hash: 633a352679f307c1249ae40dfb8a7b3329ebf442e6e838518536b44d5f1ddec8Hello curious PIVian or Labsian!
I'm JSKitty
Who is this? Click to get up-to-date on my last proposal.
This is my sixth proposal, in the form of an LRP (Labs Recurring Proposal) to renew my perpetual position in continuing to push PIVX to the next level.
I am the Project Lead of PIVX Labs, as well as a full-time developer for MyPIVXWallet.org and now PIVCards - I manage the networking of Labs, assist in marketing efforts with both the PIVX Core marketing team and the growing Labs independent marketing team, as well as cultivating the Community Development sector of PIVX to assist small aspiring leaders or developers to build their PIVX projects to their full potential.
This proposal has been lowered by 5k PIV to adjust to PIVX's market conditions, I will continue to adjust as PIVX moves over the next few months!
What have I done in these last cycles?
To kick it off, I'll explain what the last two months have primarily been, as it has vastly affected my usual workflow and speed in MPW development.
Firstly, came the preparation and coordination to launch PIVCards Platform v1.0, this consisted of a team of four (Myself, Luke, @YuurinBee and @BreadJS), we spent a full month working solidly on PIVCards with two goals in mind: Full Autonomy, and a Web Platform, both goals had a target of 1 month, and thanks to full coordination between everyone, we accomplished this goal better than I had predicted - after the launch, I handled all polishing of the platform solo, particularly the backend's logistics, failover systems and scaling, this took quite a few weeks to improve PIVCard's success rate, and I'd say that it's now at a very comfortable stage in stability terms - I will continue polishing the existing system with time, adding more failovers, adding more backups, improving cost and logistics, before finally adding new flashy features.
Secondly, came the DevOps crisis: MyPIVXWallet.org was under a large DDoS attack, this took the platform offline for a few hours, and added some intermittency the following days afterwards, I spent those days massively bulking up the Labs infrastructure with much larger, high-capacity servers, and these were enough to swallow the attacks like they were nothing - and then, the servers were confiscated, this ordeal was documented in the Labs Infra Proposal here, so I will not digress too much here: point is, this ate a LOT of time, and thus, I have hit burnout in multiple stages of the past 2 months, so I am currently looking to delegate Labs management to new members, while moving Labs Infrastructure to a much more reliable and trustworthy provider that we have direct communication lines with; finally, getting back to what I do best, developing MyPIVXWallet and PIVCards, without disruption.
- MyPIVXWallet Development
Important Pull Requests (with notable features or fixes):
- Improve Governance Consensus Rules: Fixes a bunch of Governance related rules from PIVX Core that were missed in MPW, aligning the Governance system to act 1:1 with PIVX Core.
- Improved Cold Staking: Users can now set Owner Addresses when Cold Staking, and both Mainnet and Testnet staking keys are saved seperately for each network.
Less Important Pull Requests (with less noticeable features or fixes):
- Improved Governance Sanity Checks: Inputs for new Governance Proposals are now checked deeper to ensure they're valid before attempting to Create and Submit.
- Fix MasterKey Conflict: Fixes a wallet-related code conflict after some wallet changes.
- Fix 'View in Explorer' functionality: This fixes a bug that harmed the ability to open Proposal Addresses with MPW's 'View in Explorer' functionality.
- Fix Masternode setup error: This small fix corrects a DOM-UI related typo that caused errors that stalled the Masternode UI.
- Release v1.3.0: This PR was the release of v1.3.0, with the Changelog updated and internal Version bumped.
- Add custom Base58Check implementation: This improves the robustness of Address Validation in MPW, checking for typos or malformed addresses via address checksums.
- Fix Dashboard Activity for German users: Fixed a small issue in the Activity Descriptors for German users.
- Fix 'Max' button on Send modals: Fixes the 'Max' button, which previously entered the user's balance in Sats instead of full PIV (COIN) values.
- Fixed i18n modal issues: This fixes some issues with i18n translations in Popup Modals, adding better fallbacks.
- Release v1.4.0: This PR was the release of v1.4.0, with the Changelog updated and internal Version bumped.
- Fix 'Refresh Address' button: This fixes the Refresh Address button, which even for HD Wallets, was never visible.
- Add Polish and Montenegrin: This PR adds full support for two new languages.
Aside from my own work, I've spent hours dedicated to reviewing, testing and providing feedback to dozens of other developer Pull Requests; this is necessary to catch bugs early, prevent accidental (or even purposeful!) exploits or backdoors, and apply general Quality Control to the codebase.
- PIVCards Platform v1.0
PIVCards Platform v1.0 released precisely on the date I had set on behalf of Labs, a beautiful testament to our coordination and efficiency!
- Yet, the journey ends not here, PIVCards although finally at a stable and released state, will slowly evolve over time as I continue maintaining and building the platform myself, to make PIVCards as fast, stable and feature-packed as I can get.After the initial release, I have worked on, and will continue to work on:
- Improving the Proxy Network: PIVCards is now available in USA, Canada, United Kingdom and Europe, with more regions being added on a case-by-case basis.
- Improving fallbacks: On launch day, PIVCards didn't really have any fallbacks: we had to cut those corners to launch on time, so now, I'm working on adding failsafes, fallbacks, and backups for all different logistical and challenging scenarios.
- Improving card delivery: With 3,800 cards to choose from, we couldn't possibly make every card deliver perfectly - over time, I will be improving the delivery of individual card cases that PIVCards currently struggles with, until these cases disappear.
- Gamifying and Feature-proofing: PIVCards as a platform has tons of potential, why not whitelabel it, and create PIVPizza.io? Why not add a rewards programme? Promo codes? There's endless ideas to make spending PIV fun and incentivised.
PIVCards originally launched purely as an experiment - now, it's no longer in that status, PIVCards sits right next to MyPIVXWallet as our second largest project ever built, and we'll continue building it, as such.
- Other Labs Stuff
After these last 3 months of running The Superblock Report, and all Labs proposals, and all Reporting, Socials, Management, etc by myself, while also juggling MyPIVXWallet coding and reviews, PIVCards development, Labs DevOps and Infra, I've realised burnout is a serious bitch this last month, and still I am nowhere as productive as I usually would be.
As such, I am going to loosen up my responsibilities on the Content, Reporting and Management side of Labs, delegating to trustworthy individuals that exceed at such operations, such as Mirela Abazović (Proposal), on her trial she will take over various Labs non-developer tasks from my shoulders, hopefully giving me the breathing room necessary to cool off a bit, and get back to coding, as the last three weeks I have barely written any code at all, it has purely been writing, coordination work, server management and migration work - a total headache, if she succeeds and finds a comfortable home at Labs, she'll be here to stay, helping the PIVX Labs Team operate in a lean and efficient manner.
I encourage you, dear reader, to support anyone who helps with the operation of Labs, as we are growing beyond a novice team of amateurs running experiments, we are now running global instruments of freedom-powered Currency and Trade, we can't slack here, and I alone cannot bear the weight of such projects.
What will I continue to do for the next three cycles?
Continue what I've done for the last 12 months, of course!
Shield, as with before, was delayed due to lacking developers to polish and finalise the implementation, this month; Duddino and Rezzi should be available again, and if so, we can easily finish the Shield integration with all three working together, along with a feature freeze to prevent Shield conflicting with parallel MPW developments.
To be specific, in these next cycles, my points of interest are:
- Completing and releasing My PIVX Wallet v2.0 (again™): the second generation of MPW; with full, 1:1 feature parity to PIVX Core, such as full SHIELD integration, and more; detailed below.
- Improving, scaling, and building upon PIVCards to improve the experience as far as possible, adding new features when stability allows us to.
- A full MPW implementation of Coin Control, allowing users in 'Advanced Mode' to exercise fine-grained control over their UTXOs, addresses, Cold Staking outputs, owner addresses (complete), proposal receivers (complete), and more.
- R&D on implementing PIVCards or external Swap Sites in to MPW, depending on if PIVCards continues as a service or not, to balance priorities accordingly.
- Continued efforts to revamp MPW's design, focusing on UX, colour schemes and MPW's ease on the eyes, we want the app to be as beautifully simple to install, setup and use, as possible.
- A R&D on tools and methods of using analytics for MPW development in a non-intrusive way.
- Continue implementing user-suggested features and fixes in to MPW and PIVCards, these vary in size and complexity, so cannot be predicted in advance, I will balance priorities accordingly between New Developments and Feature Requests.
- Cultivating the PIVX Labs team & community: PIVX Labs is the primary community besides "Main", we'll continue growing with independent values.
- ... various other Labs projects & MPW improvements that I cannot predict ahead of time: goals change, priorities shift, but work will always happen.
... want to add your own ideas for us to build?
Join and let's get it done!
Join and let's get it done!
I, and the entire Labs team + community, thank everyone who have supported our work thus far, and allowed us to prove that we can get shit done without too much messing around - we have some fun, it's what keeps us sane and grounded, down-to-earth, but we keep our direction the same: build, and do it right.
Thanks for reviewing my proposal, now's your choice:
Purple Pill (Vote Yes) | Red Pill (Vote No)
- JSKitty
Thanks for reviewing my proposal, now's your choice:
Purple Pill (Vote Yes) | Red Pill (Vote No)
- JSKitty
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