Decentralized Futures: Subconnect – Data-Driven Collaboration

Hi everyone,

My name is Jimmy Garcia, and I am a co-founder of Cyber Jungle. I wanted to share a project we have been discussing internally for some time and began developing earlier this year, called Subconnect.

Subconnect is the culmination of our experience operating worker pools on Phala, managing our treasury, and researching parachains over the last few years. It offers a versatile no-code platform that bridges the gap between complex on-chain data analysis and user-friendly visualizations. Designed to accommodate both those with technical and non-technical expertise, Subconnect empowers users to create personalized data visualizations and tooling to promote broader engagement and a deeper understanding of on-chain data, off-chain data, and their own personal activity.

Opportunity

The Polkadot ecosystem is vast, with a large number of different parachains, each focusing on specific functionalities. This diversity creates a rich environment but also presents a challenge: how to effectively leverage the specialized capabilities of these various parachains. It would be highly beneficial to have a platform that allows individuals to create micro-apps and develop ideas that, while perhaps not substantial enough to stand alone, can be combined to form useful products. Subconnect aims to empower those who have the know-how to create small but impactful products by integrating different parachain functionalities. This approach supports individuals who may not wish to establish an entire company or platform but have innovative ideas worth bringing to life.

Product

Subconnect will offer a versatile platform that enables users, regardless of their technical expertise, to effortlessly create and personalize data pages, complete with collaboration and management tools. This is achieved through a component editor and data library that simplify the process of handling data, allowing users to focus more on insights and less on the underlying complexities that hinder productivity. The product’s permissionless ability to add custom queries and data types highlights its capacity to quickly evolve, while its future social features and ranking systems will provide the community with self-governed quality assurance.

Key Features

  • Multi-Data Compatibility - Support for various data sources, including on-chain data, real-time sensors, and external APIs, providing a robust environment for comprehensive data analysis and tooling.
  • Storage - Decentralized low-latency storage solution that utilizes Phat Contracts for control mechanisms and a monetary incentive structure.
  • Social Profiles - Community-driven with component integrated for social protocols to communicate, interact and share, empowering organizations and individuals to increase collaboration.
  • Stake-for-Service - An alternative payment method using staking rewards to compensate builders, similar to traditional subscriptions. Products will have a required staking amount that users will need to delegate. This would work very similarly to Astar dApp staking and InVarch DAO staking. The primary difference is that the service provider would set the staking amount in exchange for the service. We will initially implement this system using PHA and the Vault system on Phala/Khala. We can envision a similar system eventually working with the DOT token across the ecosystem to compensate builders.
  • Library - Curated data, visualizations, tools, and templates provided by the Cyber Jungle team and eventually by the developer community.
  • Node Marketplace - Monetize node infrastructure by joining node pools or starting your own, lowering the cost of indexing data, providing exposure to small providers, and expanding access to less popular or new chains.

Use Case

DAOs

Establish a public page designed to market the functions and accomplishments of the DAO, with real-time data, connecting active and completed initiatives. Members of the DAO could access page collections for different projects, discussions, and general activities. For example, a project page could have components equipped with Gantt charts, active project discussions, unofficial voting, and budget expenditures. Another page could be built around general operations, with statuses of different projects, treasury spending, discussions, announcements, and more.

Traditional Companies

Integrate blockchain data with existing enterprise systems to create comprehensive dashboards for financial reporting, compliance, and operational insights. For example, an organization could publish and track KPIs from established data systems while combining internal communication, controlling personal data, and reducing operational costs.

Active Ecosystem Participants

A single platform to customize pages to each specific user’s preference. A page could be customized for DeFi activities with information from different exchanges across the ecosystem. Another page could be a public user profile with an NFT trophy case, embedded videos, and governance referendums they support. A third page could display work they are doing with a DAO, including discussions, project statuses, and to-do lists.

Current Status

We have recently completed a proof of concept of our visualization and page editor, as well as a proof of concept for a low-latency decentralized storage solution utilizing Phala’s Phat Contracts. In addition, we have active nodes for Phala, Khala, Polkadot, Kusama, and Astar, with squids indexing Phala and Khala. Our next steps focus on enhancing our product capabilities, scaling our infrastructure, and adding additional data sources.

Below are screenshots of the current proof of concept. The first image is of the tile editor. The tile editor allows users to select a type, as well as combine different types. For instance, by clicking 'add line,' a chart can be combined with a basic data line, or a text line can be added below a video to provide a description. It currently only allows for rows to be added, but it will also allow for additional columns to create more complex components in the future.

The next image is the dashboard editor. Users can currently drag and drop components, add components to rows, expand and shrink components, and add additional rows. We will continue to add features like alignment to customize at the dashboard level as well.

The final image is the completed dashboard.

Future Vision

The vision for Subconnect is to create an interactive social platform that provides individuals and organizations with an opportunity to be noticed and compensated for their work. We would like to implement our own version of Soulbound NFTs, similar to the Phala World Spirit NFT concept. This would facilitate the implementation of things like job boards and marketplaces to provide some credibility and performance history. A component (app) marketplace paired with our page editor could allow individuals and small teams an opportunity to test new ideas utilizing and combining existing infrastructure. The stake-for-service payment method will provide a unique blockchain-specific method for compensating great ideas while using inflation to help grow the ecosystem. We firmly believe the strength of the ecosystem is the diversity of ideas, and future adoption will be driven by showcasing some of the unique capabilities made possible by Polkadot.

Roadmap

Q2

  • Run squids for Phala, Phat Contracts, and Astar
  • Finish MVP: Phala/Khala data, Dashboard Templates, W3Storage Standalone, Public Dashboards, Stakepool Research Templates, Vault Research Templates
  • Create user tutorials
  • Finish draft of storage whitepaper

Q3

  • Begin closed beta and welcome the first outside users
  • Offer node services
  • Develop additional chart and component types with a strong emphasis on social features
  • Enable external data
  • Continue adding support for parachains

Q4

  • Develop additional chart and component types with an emphasis on DeFi tooling
  • Continue adding support for parachains

Cyber Jungle

Cyber Jungle is an experienced team with a diverse set of skills. We operated two stake pools on Khala from 2021 until recently and now operate Khala Vault #5294. We currently have roughly 100 servers across two data centers in the East and South San Francisco Bay Area, with potential to expand as necessary. We plan to utilize those servers to run nodes for different ecosystem chains as well as services associated with Subconnect.

Team

Jim Garcia - Jim has been in the Silicon Valley technology industry for over 38 years. He has been an early-stage CTO in a broad range of industries, including Media Entertainment, Healthcare, Energy, and E-Commerce. He specializes in building and operating robust, highly scalable data systems.

Jimmy Garcia - Jimmy earned a degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the University of Nevada, Reno. While in college, he interned at a tech startup aiming to help those underserved with diabetes. Post-graduation, he managed an agricultural company for five years, establishing a retail market for their product while growing the brand. He has a strong interest in integrating blockchain technology into agriculture to lower costs, increase transparency, and fortify supply chains.

Tyler Garcia - Tyler earned an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC Davis. For his M.S., he worked on a research team for a startup funded by UC Davis, where he led a team that created a wireless sensor network currently being used in the agriculture industry. The year following his graduation, he continued this work to advance the system. His interests include hardware development, software development, and computer networking.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, we have been working on various parts of the Subconnect concept for some time. We have been completely self-funded to this point, including physical infrastructure. To increase the pace of production, we are seeking Decentralized Futures funding to allow us to work on Subconnect full-time. This will enable us to bring our product to market and into the hands of the community much quicker. While we have a specific vision for what Subconnect can be, it will ultimately be the features that users find valuable that will help guide our focus and ultimate vision.

We would greatly value any feedback and welcome all questions.

Thank you for your interest,

Jimmy Garcia and the Cyber Jungle Team

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