RAIRprotocol x Akash Network Full Integration

[RAIReth]

Hi Akash community! My name is Garrett founder of RAIRprotocol , I'll give a short introduction on RAIRprotocol below:

We bring 4 years of GCP/GKE specific Web3 deployment knowledge to Akash! To date we have deployed all of our core microservices as an SDL to Akash dApp marketplace including SSL and secret management configurations (with the help of some amazing Akash community members!) and are seeking funding to:

-Fully migrate our open source deployment layer from GCP to Akash
-Promote Akash to our developer network
-Test and build new scaling tools into our Akash deployments (K8s, Terraform)

Overview

TL;DR RAIRprotocol is an open deployment layer that helps devs deploy dApps 10x faster. We want to fully integrate with Akash to offer a complete web3 native deployment flow where underlying cloud infra is also 10x faster and easier to deploy. We ultimately want new Web3 dApps deploying on a Web3 cloud instead of being reliant on trad clouds like AWS/GCP etc

RAIRprotocol provides open-source, prebuilt Web3 infrastructure for fast dApp deployment. Our fully open deployment layer ensures transparency and eliminates API risks in Web3.

• Product: RAIRprotocol helps devs build their own sovereign dApp infrastructure | 6 core microservices including our fully open source backend with 88+ APIs | 50+ Integrations | ERC2535 smart contracting | Account Abstraction | SDK (in progress)
• Deploy quickly with our pre-configured Docker containers! Simply rebuild them with new API keys and you have your own infra.
• Traction: Sony/Astar incubator graduate, Denarii tokenomics accelerator, Soneium Infrastructure partner, Alchemy platform partner. 2k Github followers, 1300+ stars. 900+ forks. HackIndia hackathon sponsor with Akash Network. 9K+ devs using Akash trial wallet accounts to deploy quickly using RAIRprotocol.

Benefits to Akash

• Expand vanilla compute offering. Help Web3 devs deploy new dApps faster using Akash native Web3 cloud.
• Take our learnings from GCP to Akash. Gnarly production grade issues like secrets management, Nginx routing, auto-scaling, etc.
• Most importantly onboard new devs to Akash who do not have access to traditional cloud resources due to lack of financial inclusion (credit cards) It's the most amazing part of Web3 that new Akash users can start with a few AKT tokens and never need to interface with trad fiat.

Existing Integration Milestones

To date we have performed the following work. See working SDL here. The 6 Microservices deploy automatically from the sample YAML provided in the awesome akash template.

https://console.akash.network/templates/akash-network-awesome-akash-RAIR-Dapp

Developers need to provide their own Docker hash to the rair-front microservice and change a few enviroment variables.

A high level explainer video from our Youtube channel also explains the deployment process for RAIRprotocol on Akash.

Initial Onboarding Tasks	Description	Status	Hours	Avg Rate	Total	Timeline
Basic SDL Deployment (Frontend)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol frontend	Completed	7	127.06	$889.42	Q3 2024
Basic SDL Deployment (Backend)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol backend	Completed	14	~127.06	$1778.84	Q3 2024
Basic SDL Deployment (Syncing)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol syncing	Completed	3	~127.06	$381.18	Q3 2024
Basic SDL Deployment (Media-service)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol media-service	Completed - partially working see secrets task	36	~127.06	$4574.16	Q3 2024
Basic SDL Deployment (MongoDB)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol mongodb	Completed	1	~127.06	$127.06	Q3 2024
Basic SDL Deployment (REDIS)	Operational env based deployment of default RAIRprotocol redis	Completed	5	~127.06	$635.3	Q3 2024
Trial wallet troubleshooting deployment	Investigate caching issues with trial wallet browser cookies	Completed	4	~127.06	$508.24	Q3 2024
Akash SSL Production Configuration	Reconfiguring cloudflare, dns, cname etc, to successfully route to target domain	Completed	20	~127.06	$2541.2	Q3 2024
Akash Hackathon Developer Support (4 Hackindia events)	In person dev at events, troubleshooting for students	Completed	32	127.06	$4065.92	Q3 2024
SDL Configuration/ Provider and troubleshooting	Learn SDL commands, verify best providers to deploy, pass GCP credentials	Completed	74	127.06	$9402.44	Q3 2024

Grant Proposal

We seek funding to more deeply integrate Akash Network with RAIRprotocol over the next 2 quarters and beyond.

• Phase 1: Includes low hanging fruit type work we can accomplish quickly to get to full integration
• Phase 2: Includes longer term tasks to scale our deployments on Akash. Terraform, automatic provisioning, testing new Akash features (Vercel-like auto deploy from Github).

Grant Goals

To date most web3 applications are still on Web2 cloud compute rails (GCP, AWS, etc) We want to change this by providing new developers with an Akash first dApp deployment solution. Minimal configuration of RAIRprotocol (6 microservices 1 cpu per service) can be run for ~1 month for less than the 10 usd trial amount.

Phase 1 Milestones

Phase 1 Tasks	Description
GCP Bucket Migration	Requires re-configuring secrets, usage of infiscal or similar secrets manager deployed to Akash. There is a security issue providing plaintext secrets in SDL as ENV
Akash domain simple configuration for new dApps	SSL/domain configuration requires specific devops knowledge and manual steps, task will be to automate this so new devs can show off attractive https:// domains. Or if unable to completely automate provide high quality clickflow based tutorial videos.
Make Akash default cloud deployment for RAIRprotocol	Readme docs, marketing, videos surrounding deploying RAIRprotocol on Akash. Will request a custom affliate URL to track new signups of trail wallets from Akash
IPFS Bucket configuration	Deploy native dApp storage using Akash hosted IPFS provider and see if it is performant enough to be practical. Introduce our Filebase partnership to Akash.
Media service video pathing issue with Nginx (413 error too large)	1mb video upload path is working. User profile photo, banner, other static image elements go to GCP bucket storage or Filebase. Need a new webserver configuration for Nginx to route to bucket storage from Akash.

Phase 2 Milestones

Phase 2 Tasks	Description
Automatic provider re-provisioning	How to take down and redploy to the same or new? provider while perserving domain routing. Re apportion more resources based on usage. This is a more simplistic non-Kubernetes technique to add resources to smaller deployments.
Terraform research into multi provider flows	How to perform provider switching through terraform. Switch between providers w/o downtime. Terraform enables cross trad cloud migration by writing infrastructure as code. Should be able to move deployments across multiple providers.
Ongoing Akash new features beta testing	K8 implementation, new features alpha testing and integration. Priority integration with new early access features. Automation testing, regression testing, and manual testing of relevant Akash features that can make RAIRprotocol deployments better
Alpha test, feedback, code review, Automatic Vercel-like deployment	Automatic CI/CD deployment testing directly from Github. Investigate how this compares to our current CI/CD flows. Bitbucket -> Jenkins (closed source flow) and Github -> Github actions open source flow https://console.akash.network/templates/akash-network-awesome-akash-automatic-deployment-CICD-template
Hashicorp Vault Integration research	Apply learnings for how to configure Hashicorp Vault to Akash. Investigate SDL based deployment of vault and provide findings.

Rate Schedule

Role	Rate	Phase 1 hours	Phase 2 hours	Phase 1 Subtotal	Phase 2 Subtotal
Senior DevOps Engineering	$185.64	47	117	$8,725.08	$21,719.88
Junior DevOps Engineering	$138.15	86	165	$11,880.90	$22,794.75
QA/QC Automation Testing	$94.06	42	71	$3,950.52	$6,678.26
QA/QC Regression Testing	$145.90	35	80	$5,106.50	$11,672.00
QA/QC Manual Testing	$54.30	68	117	$3,692.40	$6,353.10
Senior Frontend Development (REACT)	$180.76	58	68	$10,484.08	$12,291.68
Senior Backend Development	$235.46	82	177	$19,307.72	$41,676.42
Marketing/Social Comms	$42.47	81	81	$3,440.07	$3,440.07
Marketing/Video Comms	$66.78	110	110	$7,345.80	$7,345.80
Labor Subtotal	--	609	986	$73,933.07	$133,971.96

Overages

Operational Overage	Rate	Totals	Phase 1	Phase 2
Mgmt Oversight	10%	Subtotal	$73,933.07	$133,971.96
--	--	--	$7,393.31	$13,397.20
AKT Volatility	32%	Subtotal	$81,326.38	$147,369.16
--	--	--	$26,024.44	$47,158.13
US Federal Tax	23.50%	Subtotal	$107,350.82	$194,527.29
--	--	--	$25,227.44	$45,713.91
		Total	$132,578.26	$240,241.20

Limited Market Impact & Transparent Reporting

Limited Market Impact

RAIRprotocol DAO LLC will custody the requested funds in a new, distinct wallet so that funds from any other source are not commingled.

All funds will be liquidated and managed in a manner that ensures minimal impact on the market. These funds will be managed with the same care and attention as all previous Community Funding Proposals with liquidations done in a fashion that will not adversely affect the market. In practice, the effort of this liquidation will add depth to the AKT market for buyers looking to enter.

Transparent Reporting

All costs and records will be made publicly available through reports to ensure maximum transparency and accountability.

[Zblocker64]

Hey @RAIReth

Love this proposal and product! This is a great testament to the power and affordability to using the Akash Network. I believe this integration will bring a lot of new network spend and activity to Akash, as well as bringing a new avenue of computing type to the network. I also think that the development of an automated way to update DNS records to a custom URL would be a big add to the whole network. I am in support of this proposal and will be voting YES if and when this hits chain.

Edit: I would like to see a response to all the concerns addressed in this discussion.

[cloud-j-luna]

Hello @RAIReth, thank you for your proposal.

I have several concerns regarding this proposal I'll try to summarise them here.

1. This proposal has very inflated rates. Around $9,000 for basic SDL? $138/hr for Junior DevOps and ~$230/hr for Senior Backend? I'm not sure these reflect the necessary work and effort related to these tasks.
2. A large portion of this proposal is already being worked on by several teams. Consider the Terraform Provider, there is one already available and I'll be working on further development for the SDK 47 upgrade. "Vercel-like" deployment experience is also very close from being released on Akash Console. DNS Configuration is on the roadmap and there are teams already researching. Secret Management is also in the pipeline together with Automatic Provider re-provisioning. If you'd like to tackle specific tasks I'd suggest smaller proposals.
3. Some tasks seem to be bug fixes.
4. "Learn SDL commands, verify best providers to deploy, pass GCP credentials", this is essentially following the documentation and learning how to use Akash Network. How does it justify a $9,000 commitment from the Community Pool? What kind of precedence does this open?

On a high level this proposal doesn't seem realistic. With +$370,000 I'd expect much more value added to the network than this proposal can grasp. Take a look at other proposals and the value they added and at what cost. I'd suggest that you take one unsolved feature you'd like to work on the network and start from there. This proposal as it currently stands clearly lacks insights into the Akash Network product development and is not aligned with ecosystem team efforts in my opinion. As for the integration tasks I would also make them separate from network features.

I might have missed or misinterpreted some points so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[vontario-taylor-1]

I'm interested in your proposal and I'll contribute my skills. Please inform me when the next phase would be placed.

[baktun14]

Hi guys, thanks for your proposal and interest in contributing to the Akash Network.

Haivng gone throught the process of creating a proposal to get funding through the community pool myself, I have several concerns as well on the current state of this proposal.

1. I agree with @cloud-j-luna comments on the rates. They're not realistic, especially since it's the first time we will work with you guys. Building an SDL shouldn't be a task that costs 9k and we've never had any other projects request any amount to do that. We're more than happy to help you guys build SDLs required to migrate from GCP to Akash as we've done that several times in the past few years.
2. From my perspective, this proposal seems too broad and bloated. You should focus on a single trackable feature that you will work on. Again, like Luna mentionned above, a lot of projects in there are conflicting with already ongoing or existing projects/solutions.
3. How big is the Rair protocol team? Why is there so many positions/rates like Eng/QA/Fe/Be/Marketing?
4. How many users do you guys have who actively use the Rair protocol?

This proposal as is generaly doesn't align with the current product developments and roadmap. Feel free to contact me about any questions you have related to my comments.

[RAIReth]

Hey Akash Community,

Replying back to your comments here - really looking forward to bringing our open deployment layer fully to Akash

1. Comments about learning SDL, attending Hackathons, etc. We’re not asking for funding for those items - that section (existing milestones) is preliminary work we did pro bono to get an MVP of our open-source cloud deployments up on Akash. We’re seeking funding to allocate our full internal resources over to Akash split between phase 1 (tightly scoped) and phase 2 (broader scaling). We’re pushing up against the limits our DAO will allow us to do for free which is the motivation behind the grant proposal.

2. Tasks as bug fixes. Getting Akash on par with the big cloud providers like GCP we need to solve Nginx issues, other routing and communication problems that the whole community will benefit from when solved. We want full feature parity with our GCP setups, so items in Phase 1 are all about ironing out deployment issues and making the process straightforward for new devs entering Akash through RAIRprotocol. We also publish all of our config maps, manifests, etc open source on our Github and no knowledge gained through this proposal will stay proprietary in any way.

3. Our rates being high. We’re primarily US and Europe based, those rates are in line with other proposals for full all-in costs with benefits etc. Core team size sits at 1-2 devs per position. We can scale as needed through our dev network.

4. Terraform, Vercel, etc tasks overlapping with other community tasks. Those items are all in Phase 2. We’re not seeking funding for those now, we want to prove in Phase 1 we can deliver a full integration with Akash features as they sit today. Phase 2 we want to leverage the new features coming to Akash and integrate those into the open deployment layer. Let dApp developers deploy simple configs first, then scale up with Akash through K8s, Terraform, etc. We don't want them to deploy the toy version on Akash, then have to go back to the big clouds for prod. The language for Phase 2 is written more broadly than Phase 1 as we’ll need to Alpha test these scaling features and integrate them in. We're very in tune with Akash network roadmap and want to be there to help close the gap with the big centralized clouds as Akash scaling features roll out. Phase 1 is scoped to specific deliverables (buckets, nginx, easy ssl, etc) that will solve for the full MVP path to get new devs deploying their dApps onto Akash through RAIRprotocol.

Hope that helps clarify and myself and my co-founder Ed will both be on the community call here this Thursday to present and answer any other questions the community has on our proposal.

[cloud-j-luna]

1. SDLs

Comments about learning SDL, attending Hackathons, etc. We’re not asking for funding for those items - that section (existing milestones) is preliminary work we did pro bono to get an MVP of our open-source cloud deployments up on Akash.

I see, I think that section adds confusion as the rates are unrealistic and add no value to the remaining proposal IMO.

2. Bug Fixes

Understood. Makes sense to me.

3. Rates

those rates are in line with other proposals for full all-in costs with benefits etc.

Could you provide sources for such proposals? There are proposals available on-chain for US based developments as well as Europe and I can assure you these are way too high for what we've seen.

4. Overlapping tasks

Those items are all in Phase 2. We’re not seeking funding for those now

Your proposal clearly outlines the funding for each phase. $132,578.26 and $240,241.20 respectively. I propose you consider smaller, more detailed proposals for individual deliverables to reduce the risk of overcommitment and accountability.

Community Call

For now I'll wait for your presentation in the community call before diving further into your proposal. I would like to know more about the metrics regarding RAIRprotocol users that can be verified and back the value of this proposal. Looking forward to Thursday. 👍🏻

[baktun14]

1. We’re pushing up against the limits our DAO will allow us to do for free which is the motivation behind the grant proposal.

While what you guys are building is great and adds value to the Akash Network, Akash is permissionless and your work shouldn't be considered as a pro bono favor. There are many teams working to integrate with Akash right now who never asked for anything and just made it work because it added value to their product.

2. Getting Akash on par with the big cloud providers like GCP we need to solve Nginx issues, other routing and communication problems that the whole community will benefit from when solved.

This is great and yes we have a lot of work to do to obtain cloud parity with GCP/AWS/Azure etc. Your proposal should be focused on this as this is something we're actively working towards and adds value to the Akash Network/community.

3. Our rates being high. We’re primarily US and Europe based, those rates are in line with other proposals for full all-in costs with benefits etc. Core team size sits at 1-2 devs per position. We can scale as needed through our dev network.

Take a look at the rates on a recent proposal done by Overclock to fund the development of Console 2.0, which is the main deploy tool that everyone uses to deploy on Akash. I don't think just the fact that you're based in US/EU justifies such rates.
https://github.com/orgs/akash-network/discussions/688

4. We’re not seeking funding for those now, we want to prove in Phase 1 we can deliver a full integration with Akash features as they sit today.

I think you should make this clearer in the proposal or just entirely remove the estimations for phase 2 and reformulate that you intend to make a new proposal to continue the work after the first prososal if it gets approved.

Thanks for your answers, I look forward to your presentation at the steering committee.

[vontario-taylor-1]

Hello, Thank you for the detailed response and for addressing the community's comments. I appreciate the clarification on the various points, including the funding allocation, task priorities, and the scope of Phases 1 and 2. It's great to hear about your commitment to open-source contributions and the alignment with Akash's roadmap. I look forward to the community call on Thursday and am eager to discuss further and gain more insights into your proposal. Best regards, Vontario Taylor ***@***.***

…

On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 12:59 PM gm ***@***.***> wrote: Hey Akash Community, Replying back to your comments here - really looking forward to bringing our open deployment layer fully to Akash 1. Comments about learning SDL, attending Hackathons, etc. We’re not asking for funding for those items - that section (existing milestones) is preliminary work we did pro bono to get an MVP of our open-source cloud deployments up on Akash. We’re seeking funding to allocate our full internal resources over to Akash split between phase 1 (tightly scoped) and phase 2 (broader scaling). We’re pushing up against the limits our DAO will allow us to do for free which is the motivation behind the grant proposal. 2. Tasks as bug fixes. Getting Akash on par with the big cloud providers like GCP we need to solve Nginx issues, other routing and communication problems that the whole community will benefit from when solved. We want full feature parity with our GCP setups, so items in Phase 1 are all about ironing out deployment issues and making the process straightforward for new devs entering Akash through RAIRprotocol. We also publish all of our config maps, manifests, etc open source on our Github and no knowledge gained through this proposal will stay proprietary in any way. 3. Our rates being high. We’re primarily US and Europe based, those rates are in line with other proposals for full all-in costs with benefits etc. Core team size sits at 1-2 devs per position. We can scale as needed through our dev network. 4. Terraform, Vercel, etc tasks overlapping with other community tasks. Those items are all in Phase 2. We’re not seeking funding for those now, we want to prove in Phase 1 we can deliver a full integration with Akash features as they sit today. Phase 2 we want to leverage the new features coming to Akash and integrate those into the open deployment layer. Let dApp developers deploy simple configs first, then scale up with Akash through K8s, Terraform, etc. We don't want them to deploy the toy version on Akash, then have to go back to the big clouds for prod. The language for Phase 2 is written more broadly than Phase 1 as we’ll need to Alpha test these scaling features and integrate them in. We're very in tune with Akash network roadmap and want to be there to help close the gap with the big centralized clouds as Akash scaling features roll out. Phase 1 is scoped to specific deliverables (buckets, nginx, easy ssl, etc) that will solve for the full MVP path to get new devs deploying their dApps onto Akash through RAIRprotocol. Hope that helps clarify and myself and my co-founder Ed will both be on the community call here this Thursday to present and answer any other questions the community has on our proposal. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#709 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BLZKKESBMENSXT7IW2PQTQTZ5ZUQBAVCNFSM6AAAAABQTRY2QGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTCMBXG42DMNQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.*** com>

[31trainman]

I'm happy to help answer any questions that I can. My discord is 31trainman.

[vontario-taylor-1]

Hi, my discord is boo_8710. I sent you friend req. Please accept.

[RAIReth]

Sure thing just sent to your boo_8710

[RAIReth]

Hey everyone following up from the call today really enjoyed seeing the monthly review process first hand.

There was a question about MongoDB persistence I wasn't able to get to in the call.

Wanted to mention in our config we support external MongoDB Cloud Atlas by pasting the connection to the external db into the env at build time.

It is a good point though that for Akash hosted MongoDB we need to keep that instance up to not lose the state of the DB. For testing the local MongoDB should work fine, and for prod I think supporting a Cloud Atlas type version of MongoDB that can scale would be a really cool project to take on.

If anyone would like to poke into our infra further the dev branch is usually the latest place to look.

https://github.com/rairprotocol/rair-dapp/tree/dev/rair-infra

This prod docker compose file here also has how to setup both MongoDB Cloud Atlas and our Hashicorp secret sharing.

https://github.com/rairprotocol/rair-dapp/blob/main/docker-compose-prod.yaml

[edpra2]

I too enjoyed our call yesterday and am excited to work with your team. I wanted to reiterate, that as an open-source platform, we rely on grants to fund our integrations instead of charging subscription fees to our user base, in return all the code produced is open and available to expand usage of Akash Network. Our goal is to position AKASH as the default cloud deployment solution within our community, thereby expanding your vanilla compute usage and generating additional fees for AKASH.