Accelerator-Z NoM Multichain Technology application

Development ╰ Funding | Submissions
1

Early 2022 me and some of my team members were working on a safer alternative that would enable the creation of multisig addresses compatible with any cryptography for blockchain networks.

Most of them were using ECDSA at that time and still are, but others chose the newer and more efficient EdDSA. I won’t be getting into which one is better (EdDSA :wink:), since this isn’t the purpose of this post.

After researching potential solutions, we stumbled across threshold signature scheme public repos on Github, which at the time was being maintained by Binance (binance-tss) and it seemed like the best solution, but the EdDSA implementation was still under development. We needed to deliver a solution, so we picked up and finished the TSS EdDSA implementation.

By the time it was done, we were already quite knowledgeable on this matter and decided to use this knowledge in practice. We’ve searched for several use-cases and started contacting communities to see if there was demand for a potential use-case. Zenon wasn’t among them, but luckily, one community member noticed us and reached out.

We’ve been skeptical at first, but we decided to give it a go (the Hyperspace program was ongoing) and see if we can build a prototype. What started as a prototype, became a long journey to develop a full-stack interoperability solution that we call “The Multiverse”, a multi-chain technology for NoM.

As a result, we enrolled into the Hyperspace Program with the purpose of developing a native, end-to-end interoperability solution for NoM.

After diving deep into the technical particularities of NoM and an initial research phase, we’ve started to develop and deliver milestones with the end goal of deploying a fully functional multi-chain solution.

After learning about the Protocol Level Liquidity and the liquidity embedded contract, we’ve decided to finish the implementation as it perfectly complements the decentralized bridge and it constitutes a pillar of long-term sustainability for the entire ecosystem.

Along this journey we’ve faced countless obstacles and challenges, but we’ve managed to overcome them and the merging of our codebase into the official Zenon repositories represents a culmination of months of hardcore development.

That being said, we want to continue our participation as full-time members of a Hypercore development team, dedicated to push forward this ecosystem and create solutions that are aligned with the founding principles of NoM.

Seeing the reluctance other contenders have received when they showcased their ideas, we took upon ourselves the risk of putting in the work upfront. And as you have noticed, we did our very best to deliver the highest quality work and state-of-the-art solutions.

As the team stated from the beginning, the Hyperspace fund has 120k ZNN and 1.2M QSR for the teams involved in developing and deploying interoperability solutions for NoM.

Our NoM team consists of several developers:

  • 2 Go devs
  • 1 Solidity dev
  • 1 full-stack dev
  • 1 tech lead

Beside the “raw” development, there were other parts such as:

  • onboarding the team on this project
  • getting familiar with the custom NoM cryptography (EdDSA, address derivation, etc.)
  • getting familiar with the undocumented embedded contracts architecture (send-receive, account block model, etc)
  • researching the architecture and go-zenon source code
  • creating a project plan
  • defining the infrastructure architecture
  • prototyping an initial MVP
  • creating the documentation
  • countless code reviews
  • regular internal security audits
  • researching attack vectors
  • brainstorming test-cases
  • implementing unit-tests
  • manual testing
  • Q&A
  • devops
  • deployment
  • costs with VPSs for public testnet
  • costs with dedicated server for internal testing and benchmarks
  • costs with deployment of solidity contracts
  • opportunity cost

What we ask for?

A total of 95k ZNN and 950k QSR out of the 120k ZNN and 1.2M QSR from the Hyperspace fund for the interop solutions that will enable us to:

  • deploy at least 1 Pillar for on-chain voting rights and enabling us to be a bridge participant so we can actually debug things in realtime on the mainnet
  • deploy Sentinel nodes
  • stake ZNN to generate QSR
  • cover past expenses by liquidating small amounts generated from the rewards of pillar/sentinels/staking without impacting the ZNN/QSR markets

However you’ll do the math, the 10+ months of intensive work on such a complex piece of software (over 20k lines of code) will end up costing more than that.

As we’ve already stated before, an important part of the funds that we will receive from A-Z will be used to establish a permanent presence in the community with the goal to become self-sustainable and even expand the team once the price rises enough to cover ongoing expenses.

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As a frame of reference, I hired a team to build an ERP for me in 2012. It was a team of 5 devs (similar to the team above) working full time for about 6 months. It cost well in excess of $500K USD to do that work 10 years ago. The team was out of Poland and that was a fraction of what it would have cost had I done that project in the US.

I hope everyone gives this proposal the time and care it deserves.

6 Likes
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Do you need to sell any ZNN / QSR at current price levels to cover costs?

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Really appreciate everything you guys have done, and I’m excited for your future plans in Zenon as well.

I think you guys delivered amazing value for money because:

  1. You guys are actually asking for less than the total allocated amount for the hyperspace fund, which the core team did set aside for interoperability tech which is what you guys have delivered.
  2. There’s 5 of you, that’s 20k ZNN and 200k QSR each if it were divided equally, and there’s an opportunity cost for choosing to build in Zenon rather than a typical job.
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Right now no, but we’ll sell some on Uniswap once the campaign ends. Probably under 5k znn.

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Happy to hear your team is motivated to build a long term relationship with the community, the work so far is certainly appreciated.

Though i do have a hard to wrapping my head around the scope of an idea like youve proposed. Do you have some big ticket items/deliverables that you could give to help explain the scale of the application?

Does it start with more network bridges as mentionned in past discussion or a focus on BTC network interop? Is there a specific end goal or is it mainly focusing on development for the new tech and then building new applications? Its a massive sounding idea looking forward to learning more. Thanks.

1 Like
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Nobody cares about your CV.

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I’m all for you and your team being reimbursed, and it should definitely be noted that you operated at risk to deliver before asking for funds. The amounts mentioned (although large without context) seem fair noting the outcomes delivered imo

My only ask would be can we get a clearer indication on what the total amount actually covers, for example does this cover the cross chain bridge efforts? As well as the potential SC layer you’re discussing? Will re read the post in detail when I get home in case I missed these details

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Noted.

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Thanks for sharing that with us!
And thank you all for being so supportive now and in the past months!

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So we’ve developed multiple components and used them to create a bridge between NoM and Ethereum.

These components can do more than that (oracles, offchain computation, multisig) and we’ll see how we can use them in future applications, for example: Layer 2s, Extension chains, Offchain contracts, BTC Interop.

So this amount covers:

  • bridge embedded contract
  • bridge solidity contracts
  • bridge wrapped assets
  • orchestrator
  • documentation
  • deployments
  • maintenance
  • support

We’ll cover this part when it’s ready. Fortunately, it builds on top of the efforts we’ve already made, so any costs will be highly optimized.

7 Likes
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Assuming the community accepts, how would this logistically be carried out? With a 5K ZNN + 50K QSR cap on A-Z proposals, that would require 19 separate proposals, is that the plan?

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Hyperspace was created for cross chain solutions. https://www.zenon.org/funding/programs/hyperspace#fund

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Yes, that seems to be the only way.

That’s the one.

Orbital sponsored cross-chain solutions by transferring the funds to Accelerator-Z, which can be seen in this momentum we found onchain:

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So that means we’ll only have 25k ZNN and 250k ZNN left for other interoperability solutions (including btc interop) ?

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No, we’ll still have the rest of the A-Z:

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I feel less bad for suggesting the gambling bet with A-Z as an escrow. It was just a warm-up for pillars of what’s to come :joy:

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Couple high level qqs:

  1. Hyperspace has already paid out a considerable amount for SDKs and other community projects so references to hyperspace funds are irrelevant. There are 837k znn in AZ and this comes from those 837k is the bottom line correct?
  2. This will not be a phased delivery as it is essentially for work that has been completed to enable the bridge (and other future functionality that will need to be funded separately). So expectation is these are submitted for and paid out immediately correct?
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Just to make sure, does the community have the needed tools to kick-start and run the bridge right now entirely without your (@sumamu) team?

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Technically, yes. They also have all the tools needed to create another bridge.

However, the network is still missing a governance module before the community can really manage the entire bridge without an admin.

1 Like