Code:
Name: PIVX Labs Expansion v2
Term: 4 Cycles
Cycle Amnt: 7,500 PIV
Total Amnt: 30,000 PIV
Author: JSKitty
Receiver: PIVX Labs
Address: DLabsktzGMnsK5K9uRTMCF6NoYNY6ET4Bb
Created: 2022-10-10
Status: Pre-Proposal
Vote Hash: ~
Hello curious Pivian or Labsian!
While the markets have been down, PIVX Labs has been quietly building away in the background;
expanding our flagship web-app My PIVX Wallet with massive revamps, rewrites, optimisations, feature additions
and decentralisation + privacy improvements, building PIVX Rust libraries & wallet components, rewriting BitListen.
and planning many more things outlined in this document...
This document may be treated as both a progress report and a budget proposal.
Let's dive in!
My PIVX Wallet
MPW has received love from all angles, focusing on usability and stability improvements primarily, to make on-boarding as easy as possible
in preparation for a marketing push to get PIV and MPW into the hands of all phones, desktops and smart devices.
MPW Cold Staking is now Stable
After many months passed since the implementation of our web-based Cold Staking controller, it's safe to say this feature is now considered stable.
MPW Cold Staking is special: it uses a smart automated Coin Control to delegate/un-delegate arbitrary 'Staking' funds with
minimal impact on staking performance, all without any manual Coin Control.
Cold Staking has never been easier: unlock wallet, receive coins, input Cold Staking address and hit Stake.
MPW is now Blockbook-agnostic
In short: this means MPW no longer relies on a Labs-provided index server, the client now operates fully against ANY public Blockbook instance.
One explorer too slow? Switch to another.
One explorer went offline? Switch to another!
New cool explorer? Add it in a single config line!
MPW is now... Privately Analytical?
A custom Labs-built analytics engine, namely Labs Analytics, was implemented for MPW: allowing a completely user-customizable, DNT-honouring
analytics system for Labs to analyse the usage, growth and growing pains of MPW during it's upcoming marketing push.
Users have total control over the engine, and although the system is opt-out, it initially will honour any Do Not Track request and completely disable,
if tracking is allowed: it will allow the user to optionally downgrade, or even totally disable any analytics contributions.
This is essentially a full "WYSIWYG" editor (What You See Is What You Get), with Transparency Reports for precise defined data being sent to Labs.
MPW is being ported to Rust!
In the journey for maximum safety (there are funds at risk, after all) and performance;
Rust and WASM are now being utilised to power an upcoming MPW Rust client: initially in CLI form,
it is able to generate key-pairs roughly 6.5x faster, offering Standard or Vanity methods with blazing speed, with guranteed cryptographic memory safety .
Threadripper? Let it rip! You can generate awesome Vanity addresses in mere seconds.
PIVX Merchant Adoption: Cryptwerk.com
The initial launch of the Cryptwerk.com Merchant initiative listed 105 merchants,
all of which signal their acceptance of PIVX via the CoinPayments plugin.
Since then, PIVX Labs has engaged directly with numerous merchants and stores, giving hands-on
integration advice, plugins and listing them onto our Cryptwerk.com merchant directory.
Since the initiative started, PIVX has gained:
+48 Merchants
As indicated by CoinPayments and CryptocurrencyCheckout integration numbers, aggregated by Cryptwerk.com
PIVX BitListen
BitListen received a ton of code-base refactoring and modernisation recently, allowing for easier feature additions and explorer hot-swapping.
With thanks to @zkbitcoin implementing a custom mempool API for us, for a bounty, BitListen is back to full operation, better than ever.
Now: blocks are scanned more accurately, Labs donations are highlighted with a special message,
the site loads faster (reduced code-size), and the theme was refined deeper.
PIVX Labs: Future Plans
Labs so far has been building projects that fit it's team size at the time; however, we've been growing, bridges
were built, projects became easier to maintain due to code-base de-fragmenting,
and we've re-organised our community to make room for an expansion of projects.
Let's outline a few ideas...
1: Tango (as a viable, useful platform)
An old favorite of many PIVX Labs members: in memory of SnappySnap and Table/Caffeine's fruitful past efforts to make Tango a reality.
We would like to attempt it again, this time with bigger goals and a real mini-budget backed 1:1 by the Labs Treasury.
We plan on implementing Tango for PIVX with a series of side-loaded daemons that track and compute the rewards (tickets) of all addresses, allowing them
to vote on a per-cycle basis, as according to the original Tango specification, with transparent tweaks if-and-when necessary for a healthy implementation.
2: Private Exchanging & Shopping via My PIVX Wallet
A good currency needs a good list of merchants: and while Labs works hard at
on-boarding direct PIVX-accepting merchants, we have a stop-gap:
Integrating Private Exchanges into MPW, via means of Flyp.me or similar account-less liquidity APIs
opens the door not only to 'smoothly' buy/sell PIVX directly to wallet, but it also opens the door to
direct purchases with PIVX to ALL Bitcoin-accepting merchants.
With some work, MPW could allow it's users to directly purchase items, gift-cards, goods and services without any accounts, by intelligently
routing PIV either directly to a merchant, or exchanging it into a currency they already accept, opening the immediate use of
PIVX to potentially hundreds of thousands of small-and-large businesses globally, especially in the digital scene.
* Note: this was already attempted in collaboration with pivx2bitcoin, but their service unfortunately closed down.
3: Grass Roots + Guerrilla marketing powered by MPW & Labs Analytics
Labs is known for it's yin-yang blend of Formal and Informal, along with it's in-house tech,
and we're going to apply this concept to our marketing efforts, too.
We are wanting to expand beyond the PIVX community; grabbing ambassadors in the areas we need,
shipping them goods, papers, banners, paper-wallets, MPW-leveraged giveaways and tips, and other
event costs to get PIVX in front of all the eyes it needs, for the people that need it the most.
My PIVX Wallet: will be utilised to easily airdrop (in safe proportions) to areas of the globe, via trusted ambassadors on-the-ground.
Labs Analytics: will be used to measure the success of these operations: knowing roughly how many users are gained, maintained and lost, with other important technical details.
These operations will need to be picked carefully and with good thought, and won't be done hastily, but our eyes are focused on the end goal: make PIVX memorable.
The Cake Slice (Budget Proposal)
PIVX Labs has been extremely careful, frugal and critical with it's spending, as shown by the 13 months we've made since our last proposal of 4,500 PIV total.
As of writing, our budget is currently 1689.46 PIV, meaning a treasury spend of merely 2,810.54 PIV in 13 months (excluding rewards from calc).
A stretch? For sure, now we need an upgrade.
We have been maximizing rewards via 24/7 Cold Staking, and all transactions are completely transparent on the PIVX Explorer.
We would like to take this opportunity, given our established history, our projects and their evolution, our team and community's growth, as well as our future plans, to request the following budget:
30,000 PIV split into a four-month budget cycle of 7,500 PIV each.
Due to the way PIVX Labs operates, with an internal treasury and a non-deterministic spending schedule: it is very difficult
to give spend predictions or reasons for this exact amount, however, given the spread cycle duration, we'll make use of it
to provide future reports on spending reliably, on a per-operation basis, this gives us enough future leg-room
to expand comfortably without harming the DAO budget, and without starving, nor overflowing the Labs treasury.
However, we can give this information:
- The Labs board (6 members) will NOT receive any PIV outside of regular Development Bounty payments, we are a completely voluntary Core team.
- Labs does NOT have any server costs or overhead, and future costs will be minimal, due to our decentralised development approach, low infra.
- Upon the release of Tango, a portion of the Labs Treasury will likely be multi-sig locked & allocated with pure intent on fulfilling Tango proposals.
- Any member of the PIVX community may request for funding help from Labs, and by our discretion, we may fulfil these requests to benefit PIVX.
We believe such a proposal is necessary, and in these times of low development progress all-round, we will take this opportunity
to rebuild an active community, engage and onboard, and develop kickass software and apps that bring back the UPF PIVX once had.
Any questions?
Ask ahead in the Forum replies, PIVX Discord, or Labs Discord.
See you again soon!
- Love, Labz Lead, TS/JS.
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