[Proposal: XX] Payment request for UnitedBlock RPC services

Governance Treasury Proposals
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Treasury Proposal: UnitedBloc - Payment for services rendered

Proponent:

  • Name: Stake Plus
  • Address: 0x3EFc795C754C9D7c89a4A36Ae6BdDeA610f49a23

Date: April 06, 2023

Requested allocation: $23,400 in MOVR

Short Description:
This treasury proposal aims to secure funding for UnitedBloc, a group of 13 members, to operate and maintain two RPC endpoints, one for Moonriver and one for Moonbeam, for the period from December 23, 2022, to March 23, 2023. As a concerned member of the Moonriver community, I believe that the network should not rely on charity for the provision of reliable and essential RPC endpoints. Therefore, I am requesting a total of $23,400 in MOVR from the Moonriver treasury reserves to support UnitedBloc’s ongoing efforts and expenses.

Context

UnitedBloc is a dedicated and decentralized group of 13 members with a proven track record in the Moonriver ecosystem. They have been actively participating in the network, contributing to its stability and growth. The decentralized nature of UnitedBloc is advantageous compared to competing platforms, as it aligns with the core values of the blockchain ecosystem and reduces the risks associated with centralization. It is crucial to support the efforts of groups like UnitedBloc, who are committed to maintaining reliable and performant RPC endpoints for the Moonriver and Moonbeam communities.

Advantages of Supporting UnitedBloc:

  1. Decentralization: As a group of 13 members, UnitedBloc offers a decentralized approach to maintaining RPC endpoints, reducing the risks associated with centralized platforms and ensuring better alignment with the core principles of the Moonriver and Moonbeam ecosystems.
  2. Experience and track record: UnitedBloc has a proven track record in the Moonriver ecosystem, demonstrating their commitment and ability to provide valuable services to the community.
  3. Reliability and performance: By supporting UnitedBloc, the Moonriver community ensures access to high-quality RPC endpoints that are reliable and performant, without relying on charity or a single provider.

Proposal

The main objective of this proposal is to cover the costs associated with operating and maintaining two RPC endpoints for a three-month period, ensuring stability and high performance for the Moonriver and Moonbeam networks.

Budget Breakdown

The payment structure for UnitedBloc is as follows:

  1. Each member will receive $300 per month for each RPC endpoint they maintain, resulting in $600 per month per member.
  2. Over the three-month period, each member will receive a total of $1,800.
  3. For the entire group, the total payment requested is $23,400.

TrueStaking - 0x0E72A8362D28650dA72864b1cf00F6A5270cD585 - $1,800
CertHum - 0x17Aab7C41e2130203c7A3F3258B63FdD74553274 - $1,800
Blockshard - 0xdd16C266534C6729112B8AA501F797Ec33c122f7 - $1,800
BloClick - 0xADDR - $1,800
BrightlyStake - 0xBD7562319F1f0fd658E0cC4Af5970eA45946b08f - $1,800
GPValidator - 0xADDR - $1,800
Hetavalidation - 0x7d71Ea17D73f32e055BC84651e711eafCADb86d0 - $1,800
Legend - 0xADDR - $1,800
PathrockNetwork - 0x37006DD9D226425C901c5d7F9434C2FB8aC3f533 - $1,800
Polkadotters - 0xADDR - $1,800
Crifferent - 0x693aB260de2a31c1B5D7DC9cb253B87eD9b1f385 - $1,800
StakeBaby - 0x1980E75f1b1cdAAe3b2f79664C7cb83b86A3D404 - $1,800
StakeSquid - 0x55D1f6118dB6Fe98868eeB27002D3d8A054316F0 - $1,800

Conclusion

By approving this proposal, the Moonriver community will support the growth and success of both the Moonriver and Moonbeam networks, ensuring that reliable and essential RPC endpoints are available to developers and users without relying on charity. Moreover, the community will benefit from UnitedBloc’s decentralized approach, which is more resilient and better aligned with the core values of the blockchain ecosystem. I appreciate the community’s consideration and hope that we can come together to support the efforts of UnitedBloc in providing these important services.

Notes:

I still need to collect the member’s payment addresses where they will receive payments. I will update this proposal as I collect the necessary information. Thanks!

We are not a member of UnitedBloc and will not receive any funds from this request.

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I think this call would be better suited as a batch request on OpenGov. I would need to submit 13 treasury proposals to fund every account with the amount listed. If there is consensus around the proposal, would it be possible to get purestake or foundation support in the decision deposit and proceed with a batched treasury.spend() call on the OpenGov root track?

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Thanks a lot for the proposal but, as I said in the DD channel, it is our way to give the community something back to further improve adoption.

We do not need, for the time being, any payment.

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Thank you for taking the time to write this proposal. As mentioned by @ivandiazperez, UB is not currently seeking funding, as the main purpose of providing this service is not to generate income.

However, I want to highlight that UB is in the process of transitioning to a DAO and had we supported your proposal, we would have provided a DAO multi-sig address for the funds.

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As @ivandiazperez mentioned, on behalf of UB, we currently do not require any funding. From the beginning, we did this with the good intention of helping the community. Thank you for trying to help, but I think at the moment we are happy with the current work we are doing and offering at UB.

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Hi Tom,

First, I’m just speaking on behalf of CertHum as a member and not for UnitedBloc as a group - we also maintain our individual identities.

It’s generous of you to think of us, but there’s a key aspect of this that I think should be clarified.

As all but 1 of UnitedBlock members are collators on either Moonbeam and Moonriver, we see it as our responsibility to provide more to the community than just making sure we upgrade our collator clients on time.

In fact, many other members not even in UB already do this – like EarnX providing their Telegram notification bot, or Iceberg Nodes providing focused interaction with delegators. Even before UB and our community RPC service, Brightlystake and StakeBaby provided their a analytics websites, TrueStaking provided security best practice documentation, and even us at CertHum provided database snapshots. We love the network, but we also know we have to earn our delegations, too, and for most of us, receiving community delegations so that we can stay in the active set is tip enough. This also leaves more tokens in the treasury for other projects that will help the networks grow.

Maybe at some point in the future UnitedBloc may request funding to support our community RPC services on Moonbeam, but if and when we would want to propose that, I’m sure we will not be shy in doing it.

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Hey, Tom. i would like to thank you for your proposal and for taking the time and effort to write it.

to clarify, what is your association with UnitedBlock and why are you putting forward this proposal on their behalf?

based on the comments made by members of UnitedBlock, it appears that they currently do not require funding from the treasury

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This is essentially a tip request in the form of a reasonable payment for the services that they provide. I’m the proponent of the Infrastructure Builders Program on the relay chains which is substantially equivalent to what UnitedBloc is/does here on Moonbeam/Moonriver.

I know first hand exactly what the UB is doing, what level of costs, and time they’re putting into this. If the treasury is funding other providers, they should be strongly in support of this community led initiative which is better in almost every way.

I have been involved in Moonbeam/Moonriver communities going back to 2021. I’ve worked with these guys on various other projects including the initial Moonbeam launch (for which I was a selected initial collator that lost their slot to a whale), and as a Moonriver collator.

While they may justify costs and say they’re getting paid from the collators, the revenue there is relatively insignificant. I see this payment as a way to show them support in what they have done, what they are doing and if they don’t want the money, they can re-invest it and put it back into what they have been doing including all the other non-rpc related work from the members of this group.

I would like for this to go forward over the UB member objections.

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Thank you for the clarification. i’ve great respect for your efforts in taking care of collators / builders. it’s incredibly valuable, and I am grateful to have people like you in our community who genuinely care about the hard work of others. Thank you again! :pray:

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Thank you for the proposal.

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I would like for this to go forward over the UB member objections.

Why though? If we’d required funding at this point, we surely would be able to write our own proposal. No need to force this on us.

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Hi @senselost, thanks for submitting the proposal. Given the feedback provided by the UnitedBlock spokespeople and given that the treasury has a finite budget, I cannot support this proposal at this point in time. We seek to support key infrastructure to the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks which would not be economically feasible without treasury funds.

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Agreed. The limited funds to grow the ecosystem are a key issue for us. I agree with much of what @senselost is written, and I greatly appreciate his engagement with the community and desire to support UB community services. However, we consider the RPC services our community contribution and it doesn’t make sense to remove funds from the treasury only to return those same funds. It introduces tax concerns and overhead.

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We seek to support key infrastructure to the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks which would not be economically feasible without treasury funds.

Can you please describe the differences between “key infrastructure” and the UB? What makes the UB not key infrastructure?

Why though? If we’d required funding at this point, we surely would be able to write our own proposal. No need to force this on us.

That’s the way tips work. If OpenGov were implemented with lower decision deposit on a treasury track, I could just vote it in myself as long as purestake and foundation didn’t disagree with it.

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Hey sir @senselost , I think it’s a very good initiative as a show of support, perhaps
If UnitedBloc , for now, does not intend to go through a Proposal for their services with metrics, data, etc, perhaps their decision can be respected

The fact that they have not done so up to now does not mean that they will not request a Treasury payment in the future.

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Hi @senselost

Can you please describe the differences between “key infrastructure” and the UB? What makes the UB not key infrastructure?

UB definitely qualifies as key infrastructure, however, as they do not need treasury funds at this point in time, they cannot be qualified as economically unfeasible.

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