Development and Research June 2023 by reuben

Why?

This is the eight request to the CFC as we committed to do month to month requests instead of a lump sum request. Markets have taken a tumble in July but made a recovery.

Core team gets about ~16000 FIRO a month or around ~USD25,120. USD1.57/FIRO

Breakdown of Core Team Expenses

Developer Pay (covers 4 developers Peter, Levon, Gevorg, Narek and Sproxet) 30,000 USD/month

Research: 5,000 USD/month This is a combination of retainer and per hour basis consultation.

Admin/Support/Management (including Reuben) 9000 USD/month (covers Reuben, Anwar, Ajay)

Hosting Fees: 1,000 USD/month This covers Github, Continuous Integration, Matrix, chat bridges, seed nodes, explorers, light wallet servers, testnet and website hosting fees. The bulk of this is on explorers and the light wallet support which require beefier specs.

Sysadmin: 2,500 USD This is engaged from Cypher Stack and covers the running of all our infrastructure.

Market Making: We have ceased market making services and instead will rely on the Hummingbot Binance campaigns. until its expiry in August 4th and re-evaluate options. We will also start up our own bots and do self market making.

Total: USD 47,500.00/month

For core team to break even on this budget, the price of FIRO needs to be at USD2.97

Deficit: USD22,380 Do note that the deficit is only an estimate and is based on the current market price. This figure changes with the ebbs and flows of the market.

How much?

We are requesting USD22,500 worth of FIRO to cover the entirety of the shortfall. Our reserves are quite depleted so we would appreciate a full coverage for this month. This is slightly more than the deficit to cover any emergency requirements especially as we approach Lelantus Spark launch.

Total requested: ~USD22,500 in FIRO equivalent.

Breakdown:

Research: USD5,000

We are finalizing research on preparing existing Spark implementation for curve tree implementation which will give global anonymity sets. This will allow us to migrate

There are still some outstanding research tasks to do which involve finalizing an efficient vector commitment scheme using Bulletproofs+ that would work for curve trees. This will also be in collaboration with kayabanerve's wider efforts on curve tree implementation (which was designed for Monero but has applicability to us). Both projects would benefit from the vector commitment scheme.

Development: USD15,000

This covers the cost of one junior developer, one senior developer (on flexible hours) and one senior developer (full time). We are requesting additional assistance due to the low price.

Sysadmin: USD2,500

This covers the cost of a sysadmin to monitor and manage our infrastructure.

We won't be requesting volatility protection especially this will be on a month to month basis.

We are requesting for this proposal to be reviewed on a month to month basis by the Community Fund Committee so that in the event market conditions improved we can cease this and we can also adjust the amount requested.

The core team as a general principle does not want to make requests from the Community Fund unless absolutely necessary.