Polkassembly - Validator Resource Center and Ranking Website for Kusama (Phase 2)

Phase 2 of the Validator Resource Center and Ranking Website (VRC) further improves upon the ranking method from Phase 1, by making the scoring model more customizable and thereby better representing the user’s preferences. Also, the VRC score is now a major metric in the manual selection process. Additionally, we include several new metrics (e.g. performance based on historic era data) and thereby reduce the load of information on nominators. A new filtering technique helps to reduce the overall set of validators based on their quantitative properties and make it easier for nominators to make an appropriate selection. We also introduce a staking dashboard, which gives important visual and numerical information about the network.

This proposal covers the development of milestones 2, 3, 4, 5 and includes a report for milestone 1.

Report for M1 - delivered

Phase I tasks:

Ryabina feedback improvements
Kusama network website integration
Dependency upgrades
Renting of a dedicated development server for 3 months of development:
46.41€ Heztner setup fee + 3 x 46.41€ = 185,64 €

Completed tasks:

Ryabina improvements for V1 was implemented: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center
Lot of dependency upgrades for V1, mainly polkadot-js/api.
Integration with Kusama network website was complete including: Klaro integration for cookie management, same header as Kusama network website, footer with privacy policy, terms of use and cookie settings.
Small bugfixes and improvements for V1
Renting of the Heztner dedicated server for V2 development

Report for M2 - completed

Project kick-off:

Create and configure project repository: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2
Backend and frontend will use the same repo using yarn workspaces:
Backend: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2/tree/develop/backend
Frontend: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2/tree/develop/frontend
Development server (VPS) setup.

Report for M3 - completed

Backend:

Define backend db schema, with the goal of extracting interesting extrinsics and events to separate tables for faster further analysis: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2/blob/develop/backend/docker/backend/sql/backend.sql
Develop crawler based on PolkaStats backend: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2/tree/develop/backend
Implement new metrics
Thousand validators program data integration

The backend has been developed and tested using the Kusama chain. It successfully crawled the entire chain storing blocks, events and extrinsics in the database. That allows us to query long term information like address creation without the need to use an external API. Also the crawler that consolidates the ranking data is live and storing the info in the database, calculating all major and minor metrics and also including Thousand validators program API information.

Report for M4 - completed

UI/UX design:

Design pages, components and user interactions
Receive feedback from Iggy/team
Discuss before implementation to speed up development.

About the new UI, we discussed extensively about main flows and user interaction in the proposal elaboration, so we chose to directly implement into the project as mockups to have a clear idea about them. Some elements are functional like exclude and search filter and some others not like auto-filter and custom weighted score (its logic will be implemented in the following milestones).

Report for M5 - completed

User interface implementation I:

Implement new user interface: https://github.com/Colm3na/kusama-validator-resource-center-v2/tree/develop/frontend
Migrate logic from polkadot-js to graphQL
New performance metrics

The UI logic has already been migrated from polkadot-js/api to GraphQL queries to leverage the new backend and the ranking data is live and fully functional. Some charts have been added to the validator single page like era points, commission and payouts charts. Also we mocked the charts and general layout of the dashboard page, the import page is pretty functional showing extension accounts and their validators sets. The connect to wallet button is also implemented, showing the extension addresses and letting you connect to any of them to use it in the nominate page.

Scope of work for this proposal

The majority of the work for these milestones has been completed: the team is at the moment finalising details on M5 to continue further development. In Phase 2, we extended previous work and incorporate three upgrades:

A new manual selection for validators set taking into account custom scoring and a filtering technique to remove quantitatively dominated (undesired) validators from the overall lists.
A dashboard, which makes it easier to cope with the ever changing nature of the network, where today’s selection might not be the right one for a nominator in the future. It shows general information (like number of validators, number of nominators, current era, minimum stake) and graphs with metrics over time: a. Graphs (across time) for: average commission, average self-stake, average performance, average era-points; b. Plot the current selection of validators in the VRC as points (averaged) in the graphs of a); c. Indicate the on-chain nominations (when connected to the polkadot extension) in the graphs of a). Here we can potentially plot two points. One where the nomination was made in the past and another where the current nomination compares to the current state of the network.
A process for nominators to cultivate their on-chain nominations. To do so, we can compare the nominations made in the past to the most recent era and flagging critical events (e.g., commission increases by validators or slashing events) that happened between the time of the validators set election and present time. We can further offer nominators to remove validators who caused critical events from their set and make a renomination of the rest.

Milestones to be covered by this allocation request:

Milestone 2: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00 / 4.76 KSM

Project kick-off:

Create and configure project repository.
Backend and frontend will use the same repo using yarn workspaces
Development server (VPS) setup

Milestone 3: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00 / 4.76 KSM

Backend:

Define backend db schema, with the goal of extracting interesting extrinsics and events to separate tables for faster further analysis.
Develop crawler based on PolkaStats backend
Implement new metrics
Thousand validators program data integration

Milestone 4: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00 / 4.76 KSM

UI/UX design:

Design pages, components and user interactions
Receive feedback from Iggy/team
Discuss before implementation to speed up development.

Milestone 5: (1 week) - EUR 1000.00 / 4.76 KSM