Grant Proposal: Indexing 101

[admin]

Grant ID: 8669dq6x4

Summary:

Ten free and open-source lessons, videos, and live workshops to foster a small learning community around indexer fundamentals.

Participants will be rewarded with a POAP NFT upon demonstrating their mastery of indexing fundamentals through session participation, quizzes, and assignments. (Asynchronous participants will also be able to earn these NFTs).

Tutorials will be released every other Indexer Office Hours throughout Q2 and Q3 of 2023.

Sample Syllabus
Unit Lesson Title Topics
1 1 Introduction to Linux Command line basics, git, user management, systemd, firewalls
1 2 Getting started with Ethereum clients Nethermind and Erigon on systemd, Hardware factors to consider
1 3 Lab 1: Sync a blockchain node Sync an RPC node with systemd: Gnosis, Nethermind on a Hetzner server
2 1 Intro to indexer operations Wallets (hot vs cold, indexer vs operator), Multisigs, Faucets, Network Registration
2 2 Getting started with containers Docker, docker-compose, Kubernetes (briefly), Helm (briefly)
2 3 Lab 2: Configure your indexing stack Deploy The Graph indexing stack and connect to your Gnosis RPC node
3 1 Intro to indexing strategy Basic overview of subgraphs and market conditions
3 2 Getting started with allocation management Opening and closing allocations, Troubeshooting
3 3 Lab 3: Index and allocate on a subgraph Index and allocate on a Gnosis subgraph
4 1 What’s next? Mainnet, Multiple subgraphs, Kubernetes, Multi-chain

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Education

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Indexers

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
10000

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:
$10000 for 10 lessons, each with:

a lesson-specific source code repository containing relevant commands and instructions on GitHub
a video walk-through shared on YouTube
a live virtual workshop hosted in The Graph’s Discord server as part of Indexer Office Hours
lesson maintenance and learner technical support via Github and Discord, respectively

Payment for time spent:

preparing written lesson materials
recording video demonstrations
hosting live workshops
providing lesson maintenance and support

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
No

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
Our long-term vision is to become a DevOps talent incubator for The Graph and broader web3 ecosystem. We hope to support aspiring and active indexers with on-going education and project-based learning opportunities to ensure best practices and protocol innovations are shared throughout the community. This project is one of our preliminary steps in building towards reaching these goals.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
IndexerDAO has been supporting the indexing community during MIPs with server setup guides (About | Server Setup) and QA testing (Launchpad, Graphcast, RPC node setup guides). We’ve held two community support workshops earlier in MIPs and are planning more.

DAO member Alex has prototyped relevant lesson content during January 2023’s Graph Advocates Technical Teacher role chat. See https://github.com/alex-pakalniskis/TechnicalTeacherRoleChat/blob/main/January2023_RoleChat.md for more.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
Our DAO is comprised of The Graph protocol contributors from a variety of backgrounds. We are passionate about decentralization, building a more diverse indexing talent pool, and fostering a community of collaboration and knowledge sharing. In applying for this grant we hope to accelerate our contributions to the protocol (and web3) by enabling our team to dedicate more time to developing educational content for the growing multi-chain indexing community.

Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?

• Yes
• No

Grant Committee Vote (Closes on Mar 9th)

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[doxe01.eth]

Yes, thank you very much for deciding to apply for the grant. I have a few questions.

Do I understand correctly that you plan to organize everything within 6 months?
Will it be done by 1 person or will it be a team effort?
Will the materials be available in the public domain after you record the last lesson? I mean, anytime you can come in and watch.
Do you plan to localize the materials? If it’s a video, do you plan to create a script and then add subtitles that can be localized?

Thank you!!!

[Lorena]

Hello. Thanks for applying.
In addition of Doxe questions, could you clarify:
1.- Present a breakdown of cost.
2.- Experience of the team.
3.- You mention IndexerDAO. Is the IndexerDAO part of this application?
4.- The lessons will be synchronicas or asynchronicas?
5.- The lessons will be open to the community?
6.- which platform are you plans to use?

[pakaliscious]

Hey @doxe01.eth and @Lorena ,

Thanks for the feedback and questions. Since there’s some overlap I’ve added my responses in a single reply.

We, IndexerDAO, are planning on releasing this educational content over quarter 2 and 3 of 2023 (April 1 through September 30). This is a team effort (as indicated in the grant application) and the project will be worked on by 2-4 IndexerDAO members. I submitted this application as a member of IndexerDAO.

All learning materials will be freely available to the community on GitHub and YouTube, with lessons released as they are completed so the community does not need to wait until we’ve finished everything. Anyone will be able to watch and follow along with tutorials as soon as they are published. We plan on holding synchronous workshops for interested community members but also leave open the option for asynchronous participation (especially since content may be translated later on and new community members will likely join).

Currently we do not have plans to localize this content but are very open to/interested in collaborations with Advocate Text Translators once our English content is produced. We can certainly add subtitles/captions to our video recordings to help facilitate localization by other Advocates too. We are investigating GitBook as the platform to share our educational content: https://docs.gitbook.com/. This is the same platform utilized by the Graph Advocates (https://docs.graphadvocates.com/) and StreamingFast (https://substreams.streamingfast.io/). See GitBook Internationalization for more on how this platform may be helpful for localization efforts too: Internationalization - GitBook Documentation, Collection publishing - GitBook Documentation

Cost Breakdown: $10000 USD for 10 lessons, with each requiring

• Research content (3-4 hours)
• Write scripts, code, and text explanations (4-5 hours)
• Host a live workshop (1-2 hours)
• Record a video and add captions (2-3 hours)
• Maintain lesson and video content + code repositories to reflect changes to The Graph protocol (1-2 hours)

11-16 hours of work per guide → 110-160 hours for 10 guides @ 10000 USD = $62.5/hr to $90/hr

Team experience:

• 2 senior Indexers who have been running mainnet Indexers for several years
  • They are also running validators across multiple networks
• 2 junior Indexers with web2 and web3 engineering experience
• 4 other members with engineering experience across system administration, application development, technical writing, web3, and workshop hosting

Thanks and let me know if you have any other questions.

[doxe01.eth]

Thank you! If this grant gets the support of the DAO and further funding, I and I think other members of Language Support would like to be someone who can help you to localize materials into different languages, because I think it would be helpful. Both for advocates and for ordinary people who want to get to know The Graph.

[Colson]

Hi @pakaliscious, gm.

I feel slightly uncomfortable with this grant proposal, as I consider myself good friends with most IndexerDAO members. I will therefore refrain from voting on this grant, and will follow the judgement of the grant-committee if this grant comes to a on-chain vote.

I have a few questions, and I am looking forward to your response.

1. With MIPs ongoing, and many aspiring indexers already having done the groundwork, how many individuals/teams do you think would benefit from these lessons?

2. Why did you apply for a community grant instead of the Indexer All-in-One Video Tutorial Series RFP?

3. Do you think there is a conflict of interest between this grant proposal and the community support score metric for the MIPs program?

Thank you for your answers!

[Channon]

Hi Colson,

Thank you for your great questions!

This is our team response:

Question 1:
With MIPs ongoing, and many aspiring indexers already having done the groundwork, how many individuals/teams do you think would benefit from these lessons?

Response:
Our overall goal is to expand the indexing community for all levels. Our team provides a unique perspective and background into indexing: ranging from seasoned indexers, to indexers (like myself) who tried it on their own and walked away. We believe there is a lot of untapped talent (individuals and teams) who want to fill-in the blanks with a comprehensive guide provided by a multi-talented and dedicated team.

Question 2:
Why did you apply for a community grant instead of the Indexer All-in-One Video Tutorial Series 4 RFP?

Response:
The community grant aligns with our purpose and overall goal of providing a comprehensive indexing experience for all levels. Instead of a one-time series, we seek to provide an ongoing inclusive community connection point.

Question 3:
Do you think there is a conflict of interest between this grant proposal and the community support 2 score metric for the MIPs program?

Response:
If the committee sees a conflict of interest, we are open for discussion. We would like to note that our purpose extends beyond fellow indexers and core devs into providing a path for new indexers, clarifying best practices, and strengthening the indexing community as a whole.

Let us know if you would like to discuss further or if you have additional questions. Thank you!

[Colson]

Thank you for your response!

I will ping the members of the grant-committee today so we can (hopefully) get some votes on this proposal!

[doxe01.eth]

Greetings!

The presentation of the project will be in the public-voice-chat channel on the Graph AdvocatesDAO Discord server on February 28 at 18:00 UTC. Entrance is open and everyone is welcome to come in and ask their questions during the presentation!

Thank everyone for your attention!

[juliannaMLN]

Thank you for the presentation today! It was very concise and well prepared, and I believe that your proposal tackles very important aspect of the decentralization of the Graph ecosystem, I support it and of course vote YES. Good luck!

[pdiomede]

This is definitely a great grant that is going exactly in the direction to onboard more people to the ecosystem by providing content that is actually missing and it is so much needed. Knowing also how much you are passionate and talented, I have no doubt this project will become so important to educate more and more people that will become members of the ecosystem. Best of luck and thanks for this proposal. Will vote a big YES

[doxe01.eth]

The Graph AdvocatesDAO has approved initial funding of this grant proposal! Thanks to all community members that have been engaged throughout this process and providing feedback.

To the grant recipient:

The DAO is looking forward to hearing about your success! Following completion of your grant, please write a confirmation post as a response to this thread. The more details you provide, the easier it will be for the DAO to initiate the final funding amount in a future on-chain proposal. Providing links, docs and images of your completed grant will also help the DAO determine how to best promote the labors of your hard work. Good luck!

For more information on how to withdraw your grant, please review the following documentation here.

Please note, that the total amount of the grant shall be set forth in the Grant and is stated in U.S. Dollars and are payable in GRT. The USD-GRT conversion rate (the “Conversion Rate”) provided to Grant Recipient will be the monthly Conversion Rate determined by the AdvocatesDAO.

For further information, please refer to the Grant Agreement, here.

[doxe01.eth]

Greetings!

After contacting the grantee, the Grantee has refused to continue working on the grant for several reasons that have been discussed individually. For this reason, the previously drawn up grant agreement is cancelled and no longer valid.

In the process of working with grants, difficulties arise and in any case we are happy to support grantees on their way. For its part, the Grant Committee and DAO will be happy to see you @pakaliscious in the future with new grant proposals, which are likely to be of the same high and interesting level. Thank you for your work! And good luck!

Best regards,
Graph AdvocatesDAO