RFP - Zcash Lightwalletd Infrastructure Development and Maintenance

Community Grants RFI - RFP Grants
61

Hi all,

I’m Jordan from Mlabs (mlabs.city). We are an AI & Blockchain software development team with experience in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and distributed systems, primarily known for our open-source contributions and infrastructure work in the Cardano ecosystem.

We’ve been following the Zcash ecosystem with interest and recently came across the RFP for lightwalletd infrastructure development and maintenance. In response, we’ve submitted a grant proposal to provide an automated monitoring and on-call response service for the Zcash network, specifically aiming to enhance the reliability and performance monitoring of crucial components like lightwalletd .

Our proposal focuses on providing a reliable, automated monitoring system with proactive daily maintenance and on-call support for critical incidents. Here’s a brief breakdown:

  • Goal: Establish robust, automated monitoring for Zcash network health, focusing on lightwalletd performance and availability.
  • Infrastructure: Deploy a geographically distributed Kubernetes (k3s) cluster on Hetzner Cloud (using nodes in EU, US, and Asia). Infrastructure will be managed via Terraform and Ansible for automation and reliability.
  • Monitoring: Utilize automated tools (like Prometheus/Grafana) for continuous monitoring of key metrics and alerting on critical issues.
  • Operations: Provide an on-call response service. The budget allows for approximately 1.27 hours of engineering time per day for proactive maintenance and incident response. This is not continuous 24/7 human monitoring.
  • Response Time: Aim to acknowledge critical alerts within 12 hours and begin active investigation within 24 hours. Non-critical issues addressed within 1-2 business days.
  • Budget: The total proposed budget is $75,000, split between infrastructure costs (~$33.2k buffered) and operations/maintenance (~$41.8k).

The full, detailed proposal has been submitted to the Zcash Community Grants platform (Issue #32 on the zcashcommunitygrants GitHub repository) and provides more specifics on the technical approach, budget justification, and deliverables.

We believe our expertise in building and maintaining robust, scalable infrastructure can benefit the Zcash network. We welcome feedback from the community on our proposal and look forward to the discussion!

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