LiquidNodes DAO - Grant Proposal

Name of Project / DAO / Company

LiquidNodes

Application type

DAO Formation

Proposal overview

Product Overview
LiquidNodes is a brand new Australian, for-profit start-up aimed at increasing the incentive for network validation processes. As the blockchain world increases in size, the amount of interconnecting networks increase with it. A major issue that is often overlooked within the blockchain ecosystem is the ability to sustain a stable validation system. The solution in my eyes is to remodel the often complex and high barrier of entry system to a more user friendly approach. This solution can be split into two primary categories; Proof of Work (POW) validation types, and Proof of Stake (POS) validation types.

POW validation types is currently the first category being worked on. LiquidNodes will be offering a direct share into one of the worlds highest yielding Proof-Of-Work crypto mining farms. As a result from being partnered with Australia’s largest crypto mining retailer, LiquidNodes is able to be supplied with a large volume of the most technologically advanced and efficient crypto mining rigs produced to date. By staking LiquidNodes NFT’s, you will receive a proportionate amount of revenue (presented in $ONE) from the mining farms.

Owning a LiquidNode is largely more benefiting than owning an individual mining rig. This is because there are a lot more additional costs from owning a traditional mining rig. This usually include: power costs, internet, insurance, and any further hardware required. Due to LiquidNodes having a multipurpose, industrial datacenter, power costs are significantly cheaper as we have a large solar farm and an exclusive deal with our energy provider. All other costs associated (such as internet, insurance and further hardware) are also bought in bulk. This results in having very minimal fees when it is divided by the amount of stakers. Costs are automatically deducted from the rewards when they are distributed to stakers. On average, the expenses are 60% cheaper owning a LiquidNode than it is owning an individual mining rig.

The setup process has been as simple as possible to lower the barrier of entry on becoming a validator. The LiquidNode setup process is as follows:

  1. Mint a LiquidNode within the ‘Mint’ section of the Dashboard.
  2. Stake the desired LiquidNodes in the ‘Stake’ section of the Dashboard.
  3. You are now earning rewards. To claim them, select ‘Claim’ within the ‘My Page’ section of the dashboard.

POS validation types is not currently being developed. It will work in a similar way to the POW mechanisms, but instead utilize leveraging protocols to increase the yield and tokens staked.

Product Stage
LiquidNodes is currently in the early development stage of its life. The POW development stage can be broken up into three different components. These components are:

  • Token Tunnels - The process of getting the reward tokens the mining farms to a smart-contract via various bridges.
  • Smart Contracts - The backend mechanics of LiquidNodes.
  • Frontend - The interface that the user views when interacting with LiquidNodes.

The Token Tunnels development is currently in its testing phase. Testing utilizes ‘Sandbox Mode’ on exchange SDK’s and blockchain test-nets.

Roughly ~35% of the smart contracts is currently deployed to the Rinkeby testnet. The remaing 65% of the smart contracts is still in the hard-development process.

Lastly, 50% of the Frontend has been completed. Which can be found here: LiquidNodes

Why LiquidNodes is going to be built on Harmony Chain
Building on Harmony has many beneficial traits compared to other networks. However, the three main reasons on why I want to build LiquidNodes on Harmony is:

  1. Harmony is an EVM network. I have been a solidity developer for roughly 2 years and have been developing decentralized related mechanisms for 1.5 years. My strongpoint in development is solidity so it would not make much sense in improving on another blockchain language (EG: Rust, PACT, etc).

  2. Transaction cost and speed. Harmony has historically been one of the best performing blockchains networks with its 2 second finality speed and its extremely low transaction cost. In order to have a seamless interface, LiquidNodes largely depends on low transaction costs and fast speeds to communicate with contracts. This makes Harmony a perfect match.

  3. The current development growth of Harmony. Harmony is actively awarding grants and incentives to build on there network. As a result, the volume of Harmony is expanding along with its community. With a grant or not, LiquidNodes is going to be a part of that community expansion.

Required Users
There are no amount of users required to keep the protocol sustainable. However, the mining rig supplier has roughly 51 rigs reserved for LiquidNodes. This equates to roughly 3825 shares that can be sold if all rigs are utilized. The datacentre can roughly fit 2000 rigs without needing to expand to other facilities, leaving plenty of room for expansion. Rigs take roughly 14 days from being ordered to being utilized within the datacentre (which is one of the fastest response times in the industry).

Team

Development Team
Mac Sweeny - I am currently the only developer working on LiquidNodes. I have been in the Decentralized Finance space for roughly 3 years and have been in actively development for 1.5 years. Currently I am clocking on ~90-100 hours a week for the last 3 weeks. This has resulted in completing a relatively large portion of the DAO (~50%). I will provide all of my development and business experience upon the KYC.

I am actively seeking x2 assistant blockchain engineers (fluent in solidity) and x1 web developer (fluent in react.js and web3.js).

Proposal ask

$80,000 Total

Justification

$50,000 funds the recruitment of x3 fulltime experienced developers for approximately 1 month. This includes x2 experienced fullstack/solidity developers, which will be primarily responsible for the smart-contracts and connecting them to the UI. The funds will also be used to hire a fulltime web developer and designer who’s primary goal is to develop and deploy the LiquidNodes dashboard.

$10,000 is used to hire professional artists which will be responsible for: creating specific images for the website, NFT artwork and a video trailer.

The remaining $20,000 will be used to secure deposits on the specific mining rigs so that the protocol launch is seamless (with no payout delays).

Metrics for success

The metrics which will be used are:

  • Total NFT’s sold - As that is the product LiquidNodes is selling.
  • Net-Revenue - As LiquidNodes is a ‘for-profit’ registered company. Sustainable net-revenue results in a sustainable protocol. (Will go in depth about business models when requested).

External links

Draft of website: LiquidNodes
My discord: mac.eth#0001
Gitbook: Introduction - LiquidNodes (is in very early development).

P.S All feedback is welcome, I have dyslexia so my editing skills is quite poor :confused:

18 Likes

I love the concept of this project.

3 Likes

Thank you, its quite ‘basic’ from a development standpoint. However, there are lots of possible growth avenues (EG: APR boosting nft’s, NFT marketplaces, Lootboxes, Liquidity borrowing mechanisms, etc).

5 Likes

I love the idea. Keep us updated.

2 Likes

This is a great concept! I love the concept of owning a Mining Rig in a managed data centre with everything managed for me :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I would love to see this become reality!

2 Likes

Sounds promising. I would be interested in putting some of my ONE in.

2 Likes

After several extensive conversations with @mac-eth about this project, it’s revenue streams and monetisation strategy, I have no doubt about its commercial viability. Unlike many of the DAOs and node projects out there, this one is not a ponzi. All payments to participants are derived from sales of the crypto token created through the large scale mining operation, after the realworld OpEx deductions, such as for electricity, hardware maintenance & depreciation, Op/tech support and the Australian based datacenter.

Many of the finer details for the operation have not yet been publicly disclosed, so I will have to keep this relatively short, however I can vouch for the above because I built part the pipeline for the sales of the mined token and subsequent distribution of the proceeds.

A project is only as successful as its CEO and I am delighted to share that @mac-eth is a pleasure to work with and displays excellent leadership & professionalism. He is more than capable of pulling this off.

2 Likes

Appreciate it mate :+1:

1 Like

Love the idea! Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

2 Likes

A concrete and well-written plan. Will definitely recommend it.

2 Likes

This is a great idea! Love the concept of combing POW and POS in a same project.

2 Likes

This is an interesting concept. I like the idea of expanding the POW/POS mining scene. Good luck with the project!

3 Likes

Great looking project, cant wait to see more!

2 Likes

This project sounds very interesting to me very willing to share with my community

2 Likes

Good idea. I like This :grinning:

1 Like

Hey !! Who ate my sushi’s ?!

1 Like

I’m a crypto noob so i’ll make an ecologic critic for now, but I don’t really like the idea behind solar farming. I mean, those aren’t sustainable and the lithium in the battery isn’t good either for the planet. But it’s still a nice partnership you’ve made, seems quite a big one ! And the association with the nft’s could be endless possibility’s as well, even if I understand that the rewards will be lesser than what’s the retailer is producing. Anyway i’ll definitely have concern on this project, good luck mac.eth !

1 Like

Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund. We are in the process of reviewing your proposal and will assign a representative on behalf of the Grants Ops team.

We would also love :blue_heart: to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.

Assigning to @jbeltran @cheualx

If you have more details to add, please do so by replying to this thread.

1 Like

Hey, thank you for the reply. Looking forward to hearing from you guys :slight_smile: