Bounty Proposal: KHALA SNAPSHOT SERVICE for Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2023 - treasury proposal #93

Proponent: 3zxNczAUyD9GbJPCgA8AyvwKCjEsnLN5D3Wuxw34QjDYzoPV
RadiumBlock (RealWeb, LLC) (registered in the United States with EIN 87-2225143)

Date: April 09, 2024

Requested allocation: $12,000 USD / 44,977.51 PHA

Short description: RadiumBlock requests reimbursement for Khala snapshot services for Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2023.

A copy of the full proposal can be found here.

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1. Context of the bounty:
RadiumBlock has been maintaining Khala snapshots, using a cluster of two instances, for the benefit of the Khala/Phala ecosystem at the behest of «Arno8446».

2. Problem statement:
dApp developers and Workers will need to invest several days in syncing and activating the Khala node.

3. Proposal Objective/solution/s to point 2:
Developing a public snapshot service that provides the daily updated version of Khala DB snapshot (ParityDB) to expedite the initial setup for new validator nodes. The proposal’s success is reducing node sync time from several days to a few hours upon using this DB snapshot.

Service Description:

• Snapshots are compressed copies of the latest state of a blockchain, allowing a new node to synchronise with the network in an instant instead of downloading all the blocks.
• A functioning infrastructure for providing blockchain database snapshots that are both usable and beneficial to node operators and validators.
• There will be two new snapshots per week.
• Radiumblock offers full archival snapshots in parityDB for the benefit of the community.
• RadiumBlock snapshots are always up-to-date with relevant metadata and download links.
• RadiumBlock's security systems are state of the art, with an emergency response team on standby 24/7.
• RadiumBlock's incident and problem management system with continuous monitoring and quick response time ensures optimum node performance.
• RadiumBlock’s redundant implementation setup allows for continuity, seamless upgrades and basic disaster recovery & and contingency management.
• Node operators can quickly download and install nodes from RadiumBlock snapshots which reduces recovery times after failures.

How does this proposal change the current logic in Khala?
The snapshot solution runs off top-tier VMs with SSD-NVME storage, has high-network capabilities and is located for minimal latency drastically reducing initial set-up times and quickening sync-time for dApp developers and Workers. This greatly enhances Khala’s current operational framework.

Who does this solution help?
The publicly accessible snapshot service, updated frequently, significantly aids participating validator nodes when setting up new nodes or performing system re-installs. Beyond its utility for validators, this solution offers substantial advantages to Workers within the Phala ecosystem and cross-chain integration networks. The availability of the latest blockchain snapshots facilitates swift onboarding processes, accelerating development initiatives and potentially creating ways for active participation and innovation within Khala's community.

Milestones and tasks to include:

*https://khala-archive.radiumblock.com/providers-khala-archive.php?name=khala_rocksdb_archive

4. Development Prospects:
Based on an upgrade update posted on the Phala forum in December 2023, the main DB format will now be ParityDB. Radiumblock now offers all snapshots in this format.
Computing was deployed on the Phala network when Phat contract was launched on the mainnet. RadiumBlock will offer archives for both Phala and Khala blockchains.

5. Payment conditions:

(5a) Total requested amount:

• $12,000 USD / 44,977.51 PHA

5(b) Breakdown of Costs Incurred

• Cost of running the server (including data transfer)
• Labour charge (Set-up, maintenance and support)
• 20% markup
• Operational Expenses **

5(c) Overall Budget for Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2023

** We have a portion of our 24/7 team’s hours used for snapshot service. We estimate the effort to be equivalent to one engineer who works 5 hours per month to support our snapshot services. The labour cost for a month will be $700 at an hourly rate of $70. We also incurred a one-time cost worth 15 hours in migrating and setting up the validator and archive snapshot on our servers - i.e. an additional one-time labour cost of $1050.
*** The PHA conversion rate was retrieved from Subscan using the EMA7d day-time weighted average price on April 9, 2024).

5(d)What is the address of the fund recipient?
3zxNczAUyD9GbJPCgA8AyvwKCjEsnLN5D3Wuxw34QjDYzoPV

5(e) How can we contact the manager of the funds?
Please contact us at [email protected] or
on Telegram: @RadiumBlock (https://t.me/radiumblock)

6. Company Background
RadiumBlock is wholly owned by RealWeb LLC. RealWeb has been in business since 2004. Every year, our team manages millions of dollars in AWS infrastructure, making us one of the industry's most dependable and trustworthy web hosting companies. In addition, our engineers have extensive experience managing data centres and business infrastructure.

We are a high-performance RPC provider in the Polkadot ecosystem (as measured by compare nodes (https://bit.ly/RBvsOF) and continue to harness our expertise and experience in building reliable infrastructure services for the future of WEB3.

RadiumBlock’s On-Prem Private Cloud
Our on-prem aka private cloud infrastructure uses a combination of dedicated servers and a platform called “Scale Computing Platform”, similar to VMware. Presently, we have scale computing clusters deployed on the private racks we rent out from major data centres in 20 locations across 6 continents. The scale clusters we deploy comprise 3-6 node servers and a standby server for redundancy. The scale clusters are capable of self-healing - auto-migrating instances within the cluster should one of the servers fail. We use enterprise hardware on these nodes with Intel Gold/Silver CPUs or similar, NVMe SSDs and high-speed networking.

7. Ecosystem Background
RadiumBlock is an active and known participant in the Polkadot/Kusama community. We participate in the Polkadot and Kusama Thousand Validator Program, offering validator service to several other chains. We are active infrastructure providers in the DotSama ecosystem. Some of the services we provide are:

• High-performance RPC endpoints including high-demand endpoints such as Kusama, Polkadot, Astar, Statemine, Statemint, etc.
  White Label validators (Node-as-a-Service)
  Snapshot Service snapshot services (validator and active snapshots)

8. RadiumBlock’s Team
RadiumBlock is led by industry veterans with over 15 years of experience in Server/Cloud Management. They manage the company’s Blockchain and cryptocurrency DEV-OPS-AS-A-Service and infrastructure.

• Vinu Joseph | primo radium
  A computer engineer turned entrepreneur Vinu founded Vtrio in India, co-founded Real Web LLC in Texas, USA, and Web2Market Inc in the USA. He owns eight hosting companies catering to different demographics. His passion for decentralised computing and cryptocurrencies led him to be an early investor in several Polkadot projects, including Polkadex.

• Mr. Curie | chief architect & technology advisor
  In true web3 spirit, Mr Curie prefers to use a pseudonym in public documents. A technology enthusiast with advanced experience in high-performance computing and data centre hardware technology, Mr Curie is passionate about decentralised computing and channels that enthusiasm into RadiumBlock.

• Sindhu R | cloud and on-prem systems
  With 16 years of experience in infrastructure and systems management, she's RadiumBlock's Chief Tech Manager. Her expertise spans over a decade in AWS, GPC, and Cloudstack, having designed infrastructure for numerous billion-dollar corporations.

• Veena John | web3 infrastucture
  Veena is a computer engineer with 20+ years of experience in infrastructure and system management - AWS, GPC and Cloudstack. Energised and passionate about web3 infrastructure, she has architected infra on AWS for many corporations.

• Sunshine Autentico | coordination and outreach
  Sunshine recently started at RadiumBlock and is in charge of coordinating various projects and helping with customer outreach and engagement.

We also employ a 24/7 support team of 20 computer engineers who monitor, update, audit, test system performance and address alert notifications.