Public RPCs bounty
Public RPCs for relay & system chains - 6-month review
This is an update for the Public RPCs bounties on Polkadot (#31) and Kusama (#25).
These bounties were proposed in December 2023 in response to growing token holder concerns regarding the number of RPC funding requests coming to the Treasury, as well as what was perceived as high costs (in 2022 the amount spent is estimated for both Kusama & Polkadot ecosystems to be in the region of $800,000 to $1,000,000). These bounties would allow for a “tender” system with a strict budget to ensure that ecosystem needs were met for the minimum possible cost.
A budget of $400,000 was proposed to cover both ecosystems - split as $265,542 for Polkadot & $132,457 for Kusama. This would cover service provision, curator stipends & monitoring costs.
Curators requested service providers to tender for the following services:
| Network | No. current providers | No. requested providers | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polkadot Relay | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| Polkadot AssetHub | 5 | 4 | -1 |
| Polkadot BridgeHub | 4 | 3 | -1 |
| Polkadot Collectives | 5 | 2 | -3 |
| Kusama Relay | 7 | 5 | -2 |
| Kusama AssetHub | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| Kusama BridgeHub | 3 | 2 | -1 |
| Encointer | 2 | 1 | -1 |
| Westend | 6 | 1 | -5 |
Using these tender requirements.
Services for the first tender were approved as below:
Polkadot monthly costs
| Supplier | Location | Relay Nodes | Exp. Req. (M per day) | Relay Chain | Asset Hub |
Bridge Hub |
Collec tives |
West end |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blockops | EU | 1 | 0.44 | $696 | - | - | - | |
| Dwellir | EU | 6 | 9.5 | $1295 | $251 | $186 | $221 | $246 |
| On Finality |
US, Asia | 4 | 30 | $2900 | $500 | $400 | - | - |
| Lucky Friday | US | 10 | 36 | $5000 | - | - | - | - |
| RockX | Asia | 3 | 3 | $1800 | - | - | - | - |
| Stake world |
EU | 5 | 12 | $3000 | $500 | - | - | - |
| Radium Block |
EU, Asia, US | 2 | < 150 | $2900 | $350 | $350 | $350 | - |
| Total | - | - | - | $17.6K | $1601 | $936 | $572 | $246 |
Curator stipend 5x $350pm = $1750pm on Polkadot bounty - total Polkadot monthly spend $22,128.57
Decimals are removed from costs due to markdown table restrictions on space.
Kusama monthly costs
| Supplier | Location | Relay Nodes | Relay Chain | Asset Hub |
Bridge Hub |
Encointer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blockops | EU | - | - | - | - | |
| Dwellir | EU | 6 | $1207 | $266 | $167 | $192 |
| On Finality |
US, Asia | 2 | $2340 | - | - | - |
| Lucky Friday | US | 4 | $2160 | - | - | - |
| RockX | Asia | 2 | $1170 | - | - | - |
| Stake world |
EU | - | - | - | - | - |
| Radium Block |
EU, Asia, US | 2 | $2160 | $350 | $350 | - |
| Total | - | - | $9037 | $616 | $517 | $192 |
Monitoring costs $450pm on Kusama bounty - total Kusama monthly spend $11,038.10
Decimals are removed from costs due to markdown table restrictions on space.
Bounty expenditure to date
| - | DOT/KSM | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Polkadot bounty | 23,798.76 | $132,685.58 |
| Kusama bounty | 2,751.05 | $63,975.85 |
| Total | - | $196,661.43 |
Payout amounts and child bounties can be found here.
Bounty funds remaining
| - | DOT/KSM | EMA7 | USD | Runway (months) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polkadot bounty | 21,284.92 | $4.36 | $92,802.26 | 4.09 |
| Kusama bounty | 2,311.52 | $20.64 | $47,709.77 | 4.41 |
| Total | - | - | $140,512.03 | - |
Monitoring
Monitoring for all RPC services is provided by Stakeworld as per this proposal - terms and endpoints can be found in the same document.
Changes to curator set
The original curator set was as follows:
- lolmcshizz (Hydration)
- Leemo (Nova Wallet)
- Eric Poh (DFG)
- Alex Dimitrijevic (Parity)
- Ivy Network (Collective)
They formed a 3/5 multisig with address: 14xpJ93SiwWHY4zpZbqrWuWvuQK1giMFWAc12i7NcPFKBErK (Polkadot) & GY8p88FVXFjrBokNfbuGi3nCNbbo5cHt3iGG5PyY6SHk7Xo (Kusama).
Due to member inactivity and desire for more technical expertise in the curator set, this was changed to the following:
- lolmcshizz (Hydration)
- Leemo (Nova Wallet)
- Eric Poh (DFG)
- Erin (DevOps Engineer @ Parity)
- Martin (Ex-Parity)
The current curator multisig with a 3/5 threshold is as follows: 14SXKP7Zi4aUUNa8DGfZPCnuGGuAZuS6Dm3oKzqUpdisXfQp (Polkadot) & G1qqNCNUeKvnVP42LRc91KkZFBkgGh8beA4ZN85kLur6Nry (Kusama).
Next steps
Curators will now request for existing service providers to supply evidence regarding the useage of their provisioned services over the previous 6 months. Curators will assess this useage data and prepare a tender requirements document, factoring in the additional Coretime & People system chains for both ecosystems, before opening up submissions for the 2nd Public RPCs & System Chains tender.
Depending on the performance of KSM & DOT over the coming weeks, curators will assess the viability of a top-up to the bounties in order to ensure continued provision of publicly available free-to use RPCs for Relay & System chains.