SSV x Rated grant proposal [observability & API for Prater]

[eliasimos]

Tags

Pending

Useful resources

Website: rated.network
Documentation: rated.gitbook.io/rated-network-v0
Discord: discord.com/invite/GCUfk8ryJS
Github: github.com/rated-network
Twitter: twitter.com/ratedw3b
Mirror: mirror.xyz/ratedw3b.eth

About Rated

Rated is building reputation for machines.

Rated offers a solution to the poor contextualization of validator quality problem. This solution is centered around reputation scores for machines and their operators, starting with the Ethereum Beacon Chain. We seek to embed a large swathe of available information from all layers of a given network, and compress it in an easily legible and generalizable reputation score that can act as an input to human workflows but most importantly, machines (e.g. an API that acts as an input to insurance or derivatives Smart Contracts).

Among the design goals of Rated’s reputation scores are (i) to be maximally descriptive, (ii) maximally predictive and (iii) to capture the elements of human agency behind a validator’s (or a cluster of validators) performance. At the output level, we seek for the model we produce to be maximally (a) generalizable, (b) legible, (c) permanent, (d) live and (e) specific. We do this so that we minimize the downstream disruption on the integrators’ workflows and systems, even as the protocol evolves and the rules that underlie it change over time.

Rated’s mission is to offer and continuously evolve the best methodologies for validator operator ratings, with a community first approach. At its core, Rated operates as a good steward of the networks it gets involved with. We build with open source tools, we contribute to open source tooling, and we build alongside each of the communities we engage. At the methodology level we continuously seek to incorporate feedback from protocol researchers, validator operators, downstream integrators and the broader community that makes up each of the protocols we engage with.

Motivation

Validator and validator operator scoring is key to the operation of DVT. We see a large surface area upon which Rated and SSV can interoperate, that centers around the consumption of Rated’s “Effectiveness Rating“ in Operator Scoring, initially at the front-end level of the SSV block explorer and down the line at the client & smart contract level. We also see a surfacing for exposing SSV network specific information and context on the rated.network front end.

Proposal overview

Below we outline some of the avenues we could explore together–ranked by order of how feasible we think these work items are at present day.

1. Integrate the Rated effectiveness rating on explorer.ssv.network and in a dedicated section on the rated.network front-end, scoring (a) individual validators, and (b) operator entities (building on top of the existing implementation for grouping at the entity level). We would seek to implement the Ratedv0 methodology in scoring for indices and groups of indices (operators), as outlined in our documentation.
2. Build an SSV specific score (leveraging the Exporter Node) of clusters of SSV distributed validators that we in turn both expose on the rated.network front-end hosted SSV explorer (and optionally back to explorer.ssv.network. Further work to embed useful data (operator and SSV cluster scores) to app.prater.ssv.network, contingent on the stability of the implementation, and allowing for time for Rated to work with the community to improve the formalization of the score.
3. Explore work around the optimal format for Rated’s effectiveness ratings to become inputs to the SSV smart contract, and work together to design mechanisms that harden the performance and longevity of SSV clusters.

At the moment we view (1) as the immediately actionable item and the best starting point for a collaboration between Rated and SSV. Given that we are several months away from The Merge, the scope of work would involve us (i) building support for and deploying our methodologies on Prater, (ii) modifying our API to be interoperable with the explorer.ssv.network and (iii) ongoing monitoring, maintenance and improvement of the integration.

Mechanics & scope of work

In the table below, we outline the scope of work broken down by activity centers and deliverables.

Data we will expose on the front-end (and API):

• Prater: Practically replicate all the data and metrics we are currently exposing on rated.network for Beacon Chain Mainnet, in near-identical layout (with adjustments where necessary). We will expose this under prater.rated.network and the main navigation.
• SSV: Drawing from the data we collate from Prater, we will expose SSV specific explorer under the drill-down function we recently published on rated.network (e.g. grouping by SSV operator screen–commensurate to the existing “Entities” screens and flow for the Beacon Chain on rated.network).

Note: all metrics should translate 1:1 from our current data pipelines on the Beacon Chain to Prater and SSV, except for cases in which there are terminal bottlenecks that will blow the scope of work out of proportion.

The bid proposal

We propose a grant of total value equivalent to 70,000 USD to cover the scope of Phase 1–as outlined above. At Rated, we view the native tokens we receive as building agency and governance power within the organizations and protocols we work with. We feel this is an important mechanism for incentive alignment and ongoing engagement, with a long term view.

As such, we further propose that the grant is issued in ⅓ USDC and ⅔ SSV tokens to allow for a window through which we can cover running op-costs relating to the proposal.

Note: the current proposal relates to only Phase 1. Successful completion of Phase 1 is not meant to auto-trigger a Phase 2 & 3. We propose revisiting those with a renewed scope, firmed up delivery timelines and valuation once Phase 1 has been completed, and contingent upon parallel progress on both the SSV and Rated roadmaps, as well as the successful completion of the Ethereum Merge.

Fulfillment

We propose the following terms for fulfillment of the grant proposal:

• 33% of the total grant size (23,300 USD) in SSV tokens is fulfilled upon acceptance of the proposal from the SSV governance body.
  • The SSV/USD exchange rate should be computed as the 14-day moving average of SSV/USD closings, dating backwards from the date of approval, referenced from Coingecko.
• 33% of the total grant size (23,300 USD) in USDC is fulfilled upon delivery of the final item of Phase 1 (SSV explorer hosted on the rated.network front-end).
  • The SSV/USD exchange rate should be computed as the 14-day moving average of SSV/USD closings, dating backwards from the date of delivery of the final item, referenced from Coingecko.
• 33% of the total grant size (23,300 USD) in SSV tokens is fulfilled upon completion of the review of Phase 1 from the grants committee (no more than 20-days post initial delivery).
  • We propose allowing for a 30-day period between initial delivery and close of Phase 1 for review by the SSV leadership team, and amendments where necessary.

Endnote

We hope that this proposal will mark the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership between two platforms that have the potential to drive value and knowledge to one another and help propel each other forward perpetually.

Let’s Rate!

[shadi]

Thank you for your submission @eliasimos.

The Grant Committee has been notified of you application (@fod )

Few questions/Ideas:

• What would be ‘awesome’ is if we were able to leverage Rated as a growth magnet to lure developers into the SSV ecosystem. When exposing SSV-based metrics on the front-end, would it be possible to ‘host’ it in a quasi white-labeled way?

• Are there any hard challenges you must overcome to execute on the above scope?

• What more could we do as a DAO to add value to your goals and aims?

[eliasimos]

Thank you @shadi! Addressing the questions 1:1 below:

1. Would you mind expanding on “quasi white-labeled”? How do you envision this taking shape?

2. Most of the hard challenges are bucketed under what we’d call “unknown unknowns”. For Phase 1, these could lurk in adapting chaind (indexer) to Prater and state management, as well as the data science around SSV clusters. In Phase 2, given where we stand today, we foresee that there’s a lot more of those around the Exporter integration, potential forays into the networking layer of SSV (mapping the network, state management in the exponent of the on-chain state etc), and equivalently to ever get to a point where a Phase 3 is viable, we’d need to design and implement a trust-minimized, fault tolerant pipeline for the data to flow through–which is a totally non-trivial.

3. For the moment, your consideration and open & transparent communication will be more than enough–and in turn very much appreciated!

[shadi]

Thank you for your replies:

1. Essentially, a repurposed skin of the UI on rated.network, only we would add more qualitative details in sections such as the below
   

   
   
   Whereby when we take deeper looks into entities, we may have contact details, derivatives of their tokens, and so on.

2. Clear, thank you for elaborating on this. If you need any support on the unknown unknowns, as they appear, please do reach out and we will try to source knowledge resources from our community.

3. Perfect!

Overall I’m very very ‘for’ this grant. I would love to use this type of tooling to improve the experience of the ecosystem and build more authority in the 2.0 space for ssv.

Moreover, I think this scope and budget is both reasonable n’ fair, especially since they’ll be taking such a large proportion in ssv tokens.

I hope this passes!

[eliasimos]

Thank you @shadi!

re: (1) above, our mission with Rated is to build it into a credibly neutral source of high quality contextual data. Were we to steer it in the direction you suggest, I fear it would be a step in the opposite direction and at the moment we want to be very careful and considerate about the steps we take.

We very much appreciate both your intent and support.

[Taiga]

This proposal has now been accepted . I’ll be driving the communication between SSV and Rated.

I can confirm I’ve verified the identity of @eliasimos and Rated. I’ve confirmed ownership over rated.network’s domain via DNS record and ownership of ratedw3b.eth via signed message, please see below:

Ethereum Verified Signed Message

https://www.nslookup.io/domains/ssv.rated.network/dns-records/

Initial payment will be sent soon.

[eliasimos]

Thank you @Taiga and team! You were all very considerate and thoughtful throughout the process and we’re looking forward to furthering and deepening this budding partnership

[eliasimos]

hi everybody!

as we’re nearing the end of wk5 since the grant was approved, we thought it’s an opportune time to give you an update with our progress. see point by point below:

1. we have now fully synced and indexed Prater
2. we have mapped our contextual data pipeline on all keys live on Prater
3. we have a linked (but not yet announced) version of the Prater explorer on our FE, under https://prater.rated.network/
4. we have exposed a series of APIs for Prater under Rated API - Swagger UI
5. we have mapped the v2 SSV contracts and have scripts in place to grab cluster keys

and what comes next:

6. once SSV v2 is deployed on Goerli, it will appear in the pool drill-down form on prater.rated.network, along with cluster scores
7. QA on everything

super excited for v2, we’re ready to Rate!

[eliasimos]

hi everybody!

back at it again to give you an update of progress here. at a high level we’ve been ready for a couple weeks now and the majority of the grant’s scope has been completed. see the table below (or here) for a point by point review:

we have a couple of CTAs for the grants committee here, namely:

1. review, confirm and comment (where necessary) on the status of the five deliverables
2. advise on how we should move fwd with the Rated API x SSV explorer integration (assuming that this is still something that the DAO thinks is of value)

thanks all!!

[Taiga]

Cheers, we’ll get back to you soon.

[Taiga]

The grants team has accepted phase 1 and payment will be processed. Phase 2 will be designed in the coming weeks.