Lastic
- Team Name: Lastic
- Payment Address: bc1q0d6pkmsvncshyeqvzzlcfjc7lkf4fuku7nsen7 (BTC)
- Level: 1
❗ The combination of your GitHub account submitting the application and the payment address above will be your unique identifier during the program. Please keep them safe.
Project Overview 📄
Overview
- Lastic is a pioneering blockspace marketplace developed on Polkadot.
- Our mission with Lastic is to democratize Polkadot blockspace, offering cost-effective and accessible solutions. Our marketplace facilitates the purchase and sale of 'Coretime,' aiming to normalize pricing, present user-centric payment options, and possibly launch subscription or futures offerings. With Lastic, deploying or extending a Polkadot project becomes seamless.
- Our faith in the coretime model underscores Polkadot’s leadership in modular blockspace. To create a universal blockspace marketplace, we believe Polkadot’s advanced technology is unparalleled.
Project Details
The complete vision of Lastic is a broad and intensive endeavor that involves building on technology that is not yet complete nor wholly available. Our journey in this space reveals the risks of investing heavily in transient technologies. In alignment with the Web3 Foundation grant's objectives, our focus remains on forward-thinking strategies that offer tangible value. Thus, our proposal emphasizes developing a user interface (UI) tailored for the Coretime Parachain.
This grant's goal is to create a UI within the limitations of the broker pallet being still in development and not deployed as a testnet yet. Concurrently, we will devise a static mockup, with simulated data, illustrating user interactions with the future coretime chain.
Grant Objectives:
- Construct a UI mockup dedicated for future interactivity with the Coretime chain.
- Envision limited interactivity based on features presently available in the
broker pallet. This is contingent on the running the pallet as a substrate node locally.
Exclusions for this grant:
- Real-time data derived via indexers on cores acquired historically.
- Interaction beyond the limited functionality within the scope of this grant.
- Functionalities allowing Polkadot users to alter cores, such as fragmentation.
- The capability for buying or selling coretime on secondary markets, which remains Lastic's long-term vision.
Ecosystem Fit
-
Role in the Ecosystem: Lastic seamlessly integrates within the Polkadot ecosystem, offering users an intuitive interface to assess the real-time status of coretime. This includes insights into available cores, owned cores, sales prospects for coretime, task allocations, newly created regions, regions within the instantaneous coretime pool, and transactions related to instantaneous coretime.
-
Target Audience: Our primary user base encompasses:
- Parachain teams looking for blockspace to expand or optimize their projects.
- dApp developers aiming to ensure smooth and scalable operations.
- Smart contract developers seeking efficient blockspace management.
- Collators and validators striving for enhanced network optimization.
- Coretime providers looking for a transparent space to offer their services.
- Polkadot analysts and analytics providers in need of real-time coretime data.
- MEV actors aiming to maximize their strategies.
- DOT holders keen on understanding and optimizing their blockspace assets.
-
Addressing the Needs: The Lastic UI is meticulously designed to cater to users desiring a simplified yet comprehensive overview of the coretime landscape on Polkadot. In the broader vision, along with providing a better user experience for those looking to buy Bulk and Instantanious Coretime, Lastic plans to pioneer a robust secondary marketplace for Polkadot's blockspace. This platform will facilitate the buying and selling of blockspace, supporting projects that need expansion or those that have excess blockspace to offer.
-
Comparison to Existing Solutions: When evaluating the existing landscape within the Substrate/Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem, we found no projects that are currently in development with Lastic's vision or offerings, making our initiative unique and essential.
Team 👥
Team members
- Phil Lucsok (aka Asynchronous Phil)
- Aurora Makovac (aka Aurora Poppyseed)
Contact
- Contact Name: Phil Lucsok, Aurora Poppyseed
- Contact Email: plucsok@gmail.coml, aurora.makovac@gmail.com
- Website: lastic.xyz
Legal Structure
- Registered Address: Private
- Registered Legal Entity: In progress
Team's experience
Phil Lucsok:
Phil began his career in web3 as a marketing and communications manager for a Bitcoin startup in Berlin in 2013 called BitcoinsBerlin. There, he created marketing campaigns for multiple products including:
- All4BTC - a one-stop shop for purchasing anything on Amazon or eBay with bitcoin
- Bills4BTC (later Bitwala, Nuri) - a SEPA-compliant payment method for holders of Bitcoin for regular payments
- e4BTC - an electronics shop supporting purchases in Bitcoin
After this, he worked for 3.5 years at ResearchGate, a web2 social media platform for scientific researchers, where he learned skills in Product Management, Product Analytics, UX development and copywriting and design, and industry-standard growth practices.
In late 2017, Phil joined Parity Technologies to lead technical communications on Ethereum and Polkadot. There he worked closely with developers to create promotional content for open-source products including Parity Ethereum, Parity Signer, Polkadot.js. It was between 2018 and 2020 where he represented Parity in Ethereum governance to help recover the stuck funds from the November 2017 multisig hack.
He led the communications team for the first two years, growing the team from 1 to 12, where they created and executed the launch strategies for Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. After that he joined the Ecosystem Success team to work with parachain teams to improve their communications and act as a liason between Substrate Builders Program teams and Parity.
Phil currently works as a freelancer but is focused on leading Missing Link's marketing, communications and governance strategies. He is also an active participant in Polkadot governance discussions on the Kusamarian and in ChaosDAO.
Note: Phil Lucsok has not previously applied for a grant at the Web3 Foundation.
Aurora Poppyseed:
Aurora's journey in the technological sphere stands out for her innovative approach and unwavering determination. With a foundation in Physics and Electrical Engineering, she transitioned into roles as varied as a Solutions Architect, focusing on electronics and low-level programming, to a Frontend Developer with a commitment to clean code and scalable frontend architectures.
At Instrumentation Technologies in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, she led the design of intuitive GUIs for advanced measurement devices in particle accelerators and streamlined future development with a standardized Vue CLI-based web GUI framework. Her contribution as a Frontend Developer at Block Analitica involved engineering the frontend framework for the Ajna project initiated by the MakerDAO team, ensuring clean coding practices and an organized project structure for future open-source contributions.
Aurora attended and graduated from the Polkadot Blockchain Academy at UC Berkeley (engineering track), learning about the fundamentals of blockchain from leaders in this domain. Further enhancing her mark in the blockchain domain, Aurora offered her expertise to KodaDot, a prominent multi-chain NFT marketplace, developing developer documentation and crafting both technical and non-technical articles to amplify the platform's presence.
In the realm of community engagement and organization, Aurora co-organized the Polkadot Bled mini-conference and more recently, orchestrated a breakfast as a side event at sub0 aimed at women in Polkadot in collaboration with H.E.R. Dao. This gathering aimed to empower and bring together women leaders and enthusiasts in the Polkadot ecosystem. Furthermore, she's a staunch supporter of SubWork, a tech-centric coworking hub in the scenic Bled region and one of the pioneer Polkadot hubs.
Now a freelance blockchain developer, Aurora champions women's representation in Polkadot and ardently supports community-driven blockchain initiatives.
Note: Aurora Poppyseed has not previously applied for a grant at the Web3 Foundation.
Team's Repository & Online Presence
Organization's GitHub Page:
Primary Repository for Grant Submission:
Team Member GitHub Profiles:
LinkedIn Profiles:
Development Status & Progress
The main hub of our grant-related development is the LasticUI Repository. The groundwork of this repository stems from the substrate frontend template, providing us with a robust starter code.
We're progressing by configuring our frontend development environment locally, leveraging the Substrate framework, and establishing a direct connection with it. Detailed setup and operational instructions can be accessed in the repository's README.md.
Our secondary Lastic Repository is currently private but will soon transition to public access. This space captures our internal deliberations framed as issues, preliminary whitepaper drafts, and an essential frontend for our main website, lastic.xyz, augmented with pertinent links.
Insightful Blogs:
Development Roadmap 🔩
Overview
- Estimated duration: 1 month
- FTE: 2
- Total Costs: 10000 USD
Milestone 1 - Creating a Frontend with basic functionality for the coretime chain
- Estimated duration: 1 month
- FTE: 2
- Costs: 10000 USD
❗ The default deliverables 0a-0d below are mandatory for all milestones, and deliverable 0e at least for the last one.
| Number | Deliverable | Specification |
|---|---|---|
| 0a. | License | Licensed under GPLv3 |
| 0b. | Documentation | Comprehensive documentation will include inline code comments and a detailed wiki. The wiki will clarify core terms such as “coretime” and “assignments” for user understanding. This will be a one-stop resource for insights into coretime's intricacies and functionalities. |
| 0c. | Testing and Testing Guide | Core functions will be fully covered by comprehensive UI testing framework to ensure functionality and robustness. UI Testing involves making sure all functionality works as intended, and from different browsers, OSs and platforms. On MacOS, Linux, and Windows, we will test browsers including, but not limited to: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Brave and Safari for iOS and Chrome on Android. We will test for consistency across platforms and browsers, ensuring all navigational elements work, all graphics are rendered correctly, all data is updated in a timely fashion, for mobile responsiveness, and that there are no unintended results. |
| 0d. | Error logging | In the event of an error, we will ensure the UI writes the error details to an event viewer or log file for later review. |
| 0e. | Article Publishing | Five articles will be published covering topics from Polkadot 2.0 insights to the Lastic long-term vision. 1. The Genesis of a Coretime Marketplace for Polkadot 2. Polkadot 2.0 - A new era of decentralization 3) How Agile Coretime works and what it provides 4.) Further Coretime developments based on Gavin's talk at Protocol Berg (Corejam, Coreplay) 5. The Lastic Roadmap, including our future long-term vision of Lastic |
| 1. | Whitepaper creation | Comprehensive Lastic whitepaper creation. |
| 2a. | User Flow Diagram Design | A user-centric flow diagram will be designed to showcase the interaction journey on the platform. This design will be in line with the principles highlighted in the RFC for coretime chain and broker pallet. It will primarily cover the instantaneous coretime sales and primary market sales, leaving out the secondary market. The finalized user flow diagram will be accessible via a link in the LasticUI repository's README.md file. |
| 2b. | UI Figma Design | We will craft a Figma-based UI design for the coretime chain, with the focus on instantaneous coretime sales and primary market sales (excluding the secondary market). This task will be undertaken without the aid of a professional designer. Preliminary mockups for this stage have been initiated and further details can be gleaned from the expansion of section 3.b. The complete design will be shared through a link in the LasticUI repository's README.md file. |
| 3a. | Frontend Development - Broker Pallet Integration | This phase will integrate basic interactions available in the broker pallet into the frontend. Detailed insights into the interactable features can be found in the expanded section of 3.a. Key deliverables will encompass the inclusion of all listed UI extrinsic functions, relevant UI constants, and selected UI storage queries limited to the fuctionality that can be implemented locally. More details are available in the expansion of 3.a section. |
| 3b. | Mockup-based Frontend Development | We will bring to life the mockups for both Instantaneous Coretime sales and the primary market for Bulk Coretime sales as visualized in the UI designs under section 2.b. These mockups will due to limitations of time restirictions only feature "fake data" and not the actual data from the coretime chain. To get an in-depth view of these, refer to the expanded details in section 3.b. |
Expansion of 3.a - Basic Interaction Creation
UI extrinsic functions:
Note: Functions with system admin privilege are not included here and will not be included in the UI.
| Function Name | Description |
|---|---|
| renew | Renew Bulk Coretime in the ongoing Sale or its prior Interlude Period. |
| transfer | Transfer a Bulk Coretime Region to a new owner. |
| partition | Split a Bulk Coretime Region into two non-overlapping Regions at a particular time into the region. |
| interlace | Split a Bulk Coretime Region into two wholly-overlapping Regions with complementary interlace masks which together make up the original Region's interlace mask. |
| assign | Assign a Bulk Coretime Region to a task. |
| pool | Place a Bulk Coretime Region into the Instantaneous Coretime Pool. |
| claim_revenue | Claim the revenue owed from inclusion in the Instantaneous Coretime Pool. |
| purchase_credit | Purchase credit for use in the Instantaneous Coretime Pool. |
| drop_region | Drop an expired Region from the chain. |
| drop_contribution | Drop an expired Instantaneous Pool Contribution record from the chain. |
| drop_history | Drop an expired Instantaneous Pool History record from the chain. |
| drop_renewal | Drop an expired Allowed Renewal record from the chain. |
| request_core_count | Request a change to the number of cores available for scheduling work. |
UI constants:
| Constant Name | Description |
|---|---|
| PalletId | Identifier from which the internal Pot is generated. |
| TimeslicePeriod | Number of Relay-chain blocks per timeslice. |
| MaxLeasedCores | Maximum number of legacy leases. |
| MaxReservedCores | Maximum number of system cores. |
UI storage to query:
Note: Not all storage to query listed here will be implented in the scope of this grant.
| Storage Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Configuration | The current configuration of this pallet. |
| Reservations | The Polkadot Core reservations (generally tasked with the maintenance of System Chains). |
| Leases | The Polkadot Core legacy leases. |
| Status | The current status of miscellaneous subsystems of this pallet. |
| SaleInfo | The details of the current sale, including its properties and status. |
| AllowedRenewals | Records of allowed renewals. |
| Regions | The current (unassigned) Regions. |
| Workplan | The work we plan on having each core do at a particular time in the future. |
| Workload | The current workload of each core. This gets updated with workplan as timeslices pass. |
| InstaPoolContribution | Record of a single contribution to the Instantaneous Coretime Pool. |
| InstaPoolIo | Record of Coretime entering or leaving the Instantaneous Coretime Pool. |
| InstaPoolHistory | InstaPool rewards for each Timeslice and the number of core parts which contributed. |
Expansion of 3.b - Basic Interaction Creation
Note: All designs featured here are just quick design mockups and will be prone to change during the duration of this grant.
This mockup/UI design features the design of the page Instantanious Coretime sales.
This mockup/UI design features the design of the page primary market for the Bulk sales.
**** We will create a frontend allowing users to see the current state of Coretime on Polkadot, including, but not limited to: Number of cores available, Number of cores assigned, Number of legacy cores assigned, Number of blocks in the Instantaneous Pool, Number of Cores parititioned, etc. Note: this will be made using dummy data. |
Future Plans
- Lastic aims to become a secondary marketplace for blockspace on Polkadot using its new Agile Coretime model
- We intend to first build out a UI for the community to gather, assess, and analyze the state of Coretime including its availability and sales
- After Agile Coretime is enabled on Rococo, we will plug in our UI so that it can become useful to the community right away
- Lastic will support Rococo, Kusama and Polkadot
- Users will be able to purchase coretime in the 'default' methods of bulk and instantaneous via Lastic
- Users will be able to use Lastic as a way to view, paritition, resell, purchase, and trade coretime in various ways
- The long-term vision for Lastic is that it will be the one place for ANY user to buy and sell blockspace on Polkadot, regardless of the state machine or smart contract or application they have.
- Lastic aims to support features for the upcoming roadmap laid out in the RFCs, for example Coreplay and Corejam
On the Horizon: Frontend Development with Blockchain Integration:
Initiation Timeline: Post the release of W3F's branch on the Rococo testnet, followed by data availability for real-time functionality testing. Estimated commencement: 4 months post-Rococo testnet launch, with the mainnet integration slated 3-6 months thereafter.
Developmental Milestones:
- Integration with Subquery to facilitate efficient storage querying.
- Design and implement a dynamic pricing simulation tool.
- Facilitate smooth synchronization with testnet, subsequently followed by devnet.
- Establish a robust secondary marketplace, ensuring it undergoes rigorous testing phases.
- Pave the way for feature enablement on major platforms such as Polkadot and Kusama's mainnets.
- Dedicated efforts towards crafting a user-centric interface for the secondary marketplace. For a preliminary glimpse of our vision, refer to the mockup showcased below:
Additional Information ➕
How did you hear about the Grants Program?
- Phil's experience working at Parity informed him of the Web3 Grants program.
- Aurora has learned about the Web3 Grants program during her time working at KodaDot.
Additional information:
- We have received no financial contributions to Lastic, nor have applied for any other grants