Thank you for your responses.
The Treasury Council has been discussing and deliberating on various options and scenarios. Given there are many factors to consider, it’s been difficult to reach a consensus. Moreover, one of the treasury council members is a member of UnitedBloc and has therefore recused themselves from the discussions. These are just a few of the reasons why this discussion has been dragging and the council apologizes for the delay.
Funding for Q3 Services Provided and Moving to a Pre-Paid Model
Given that we are now starting Q4, the Treasury Council proposes that service providers interested in treasury funding to pay for services provided in Q3 should create a postpaid (ie. paying for services already provided) style treasury proposal as has been the convention previously.
Then, going forward, the Council suggests moving to a pre-paid model where RPC service providers are paid in advance on a quarterly basis so that they know with certainty the services they provide will be funded.
At this point, the Treasury Council would then select RPC service providers and commit to funding (as treasury reserves allow) them for Q4 2023 and Q1 2024.
However, paying for both Q3 (post-paid) and Q4 (pre-paid) services in Q4 will put a large strain on the Q4 treasury budget. Thus, the upcoming Treasury Program renewal proposal will propose that the left over Q3 budget be carried forward to help cover these costs.
Even with a carry forward, the amount of funds available for services provided in Q3 is limited so service providers should take this and general market conditions into consideration when submitting their Q3 funding proposals.
Next steps
Any RPC service providers seeking Treasury funds to cover costs incurred for services provided in Q3 should create an independent Treasury Proposal forum post in the standard format formally requesting funding.
RPC Service Providers Selected for Q4 2023 and Q1 2023 Funding
Given market conditions, it is the Treasury Council’s recommendation to fund at most two RPC service providers and keep RPC spend to 35% of the overall treasury budget.
After extensive deliberations, the Treasury Council has selected the following service providers for this period:
- UnitedBloc
- Bware Labs
UnitedBloc
Several factors contributed to the selection of UnitedBloc, including:
- Price Point - UnitedBloc is providing a very high quality of service and has proposed a very reasonable monthly service fee given the traffic they currently handle.
- Decentralization - UnitedBloc is a decentralized service providing a public good - this is a model that should be encouraged.
- Community Engagement - UnitedBloc is composed of many long time community members. The fact that they were able to very quickly gain RPC market share is a testament to both their community engagement and the trust the community places in UnitedBloc
- Boot Nodes - UnitedBloc is willing to provide Boot Nodes at no extra cost
Bware Labs
Here are some of the reasons Bware Labs was selected:
- Proven and Professional team - Bware Labs was an early supporter of the Moonbeam ecosystem. Over this time, they have demonstrated that they are a solid and reliable team.
- Paid Option - The Treasury Council feels it’s important to support at least one service provider that provides a Paid Option for projects that have a need for dedicated endpoints.
- Decentralization - Bware’s Platform is such that independent operators are able to sign up and participate increasing the diversity of participants.
- Price - Bware Labs reduced their funding considerably to align with market conditions and the limited Treasury budget.
Next steps
UnitedBloc and BwareLabs should create an independent Treasury Proposal forum post in the standard format formally requesting funding for Q4 RPC services.
RPC Providers that were NOT Selected Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 Funding
OnFinality
OnFinality shares a lot of the same qualities as Bware:
- Early supporter of the Moonbeam Ecosystem
- Proven and Professional Team
- Has a Paid Option
- Has a large share of the ecosystem RPC traffic
However, the Bware Labs service is 40% less expensive.
The Treasury Council is appreciative of the high quality of service that has been provided to the Moonbeam ecosystem over the last several years and hopes that OnFinality can find a path forward to continue to provide services in some capacity throughout the bear market until more favorable conditions allow for a larger treasury budget.
OnFinality currently handles a large amount of the public RPC requests in the Moonbeam ecosystem and also manages boot nodes for both Moonbeam and Moonriver. Should OnFinality choose to reduce service levels for the Moonbeam ecosystem, some level of disruption may be experienced by both end users and developers.
In this case, the Treasury Council would invite OnFinality to propose a “transition plan” treasury request to allow for a smooth transition for end users, projects, etc that may be hard coded to OnFinality RPC endpoints. Perhaps this would be in the form of funding for services over a 1 month period. This would take the form of a typical treasury proposal where it is proposed in the forum for consideration by the community and the treasury council. Feedback would be provided in the form of comments and once support is achieved by at least 3 council members, it could proceed to an on-chain proposal.
Dwellir
Dwellir is a reputable team with a proven and professional team with a paid option. Moreover, Dwellir quoted the lowest costs of all 4 proposals.
However, Dwellir was a relatively late comer to the Moonbeam ecosystem which has led to them having a small share of overall public RPC traffic to this point. Any attempt to steer a large proportion of public RPC traffic away from two or more of the main RPC providers over to Dwellir would no doubt be even more disrupting.
That being said, the Treasury Council hopes that Dwellir can find a path forward to continue to provide services in some capacity. Moreover, as market conditions allow, the Council will look for future opportunities to collaborate.