Zcash Metrics and Analytics Dashboard (Version 1.0)

Community Grants Applications
1

Hi Zcashers,

Here is my grant request for a Zcash Metrics and Analytics Dashboard. It is very
similar to my proposed minor grant that fell two votes short (Zcash Metrics and Analytics Dashboard). The two major differences are that there are now grant payment milestones (minor grants do not have such milestones), and that this V1 dashboard will now have all the statistics and graphs on the https://electriccoin.co/zcash-metrics/ webpage, updated continuously.

Please let me know what you think! :slight_smile:

Here are the grant details:

Title
Zcash Metrics and Analytics Dashboard

Applicant name

Aristarchus

Pitch: A one-liner elevator pitch version of your proposal

This grant is intended to fund the launch of a Version 1.0 Zcash real time data and analytics webpage.

Total Request (USD):

$30,000.00 USD

Have you previously received a grant from Zcash Community Grants (formerly called ZOMG) or ZF?

No

Are you seeking or have you received funding from other sources for this proposed project?

No

Applicant background:

One-man team: Aristarchus. I am a long time Zcasher and a big believer in the Zcash goal to empower everyone with sound, private money they can fully control. I have many years of programming and ‘data science’ experience, and have previously created Zcash metric plots that were well- received by Zcashers on Twitter:

Description of Problem or Opportunity:

This grant is intended to fund the launch of a Version 1.0 Zcash real time data and analytics webpage. Currently, many important Zcash metrics are available from Messari and Coinmetrics, but they are behind paywalls. This Minor Grant will fund an open data website freely providing some metrics that are currently only available from Messari and Coinmetrics, and it will feature some metrics that are not available anywhere at all to my knowledge.

I think that the Zcash community should not depend on 3rd parties for data about our network. The data should be freely, easily accessible and the code to produce the relevant graphs should be open source.

Proposed Solution: Describe the solution at a high level.

I will build a basic, freely available and open source Zcash Metrics and Analytics Dashboard. The plan is to build this Version 1.0 and then get community feedback. Then, if there is demand for a Version 2.0, I would be happy to submit another grant to build a Version 2.0 with new features and improvements.

Solution Format: What is the exact form of the final deliverable you’re creating?

  1. A webpage with various Zcash metrics.
  2. A GitHub with the code (both for backend and the webpage).

Technical Approach: Dive into the how of your project. Describe your approaches, components, workflows, methodology, etc. Bullet points and diagrams are appreciated!

Backend: Python interacting with a Zcashd Fullnode to calculate the real- time statistics and produce graphs.

Webpage: A very simple webpage intended to load quickly unlike, e.g. many block explorers.

Dependencies: What external entities is your project dependent on? What involvement is required from ZF, ECC, and/or other external organizations? Who would have to incorporate your work in order for it to be usable?

Thisprojectonlydependsonthecontinuedsupportofthezcashdnode. Integration of a Zebra node in the future is possible, and I would be happy to do this in a future version. For now zcashd seems like the best approach since it is currently more full-featured than zebra.

Execution risks: What obstacles do you expect? What is most likely to go wrong? Which unknown factors could jeopardize success? Who would have to incorporate your work in order for it to be usable?

No known execution risks. A significant amount of code already exists and has been used to create Zcash metrics plots.

Unintended Consequences: What are the negative ramifications if your project is successful? Consider usability, stability, privacy, integrity, availability, decentralization, interoperability, maintainability, technical debt, requisite education, etc.

None.

Evaluation plan: What metrics for success will you share with the community once you’re done? In addition to quantitative metrics, what qualitative metrics will you commit to report?

Quantitatively if the website displays accurate statistics and graphs, that is success. :slight_smile: Full support will be provided for 1 year. There will be no trackers of any kind on the website, so there will be no specific user data to report.

Qualitatively, I will gather feedback from Zcashers and in order to plan to make improvements (e.g. aesthetics, layout, adding more metrics etc.) in response to Zcasher demand.

Hardware/Software total budget:

$0.00 USD

Services total budget (cloud, hosting, etc.):

$2,000 USD

Please provide justification for the total services budget:

Cloud costs for the webpage and the backend with a zcashd node.

Compensation total budget:

$28,000 USD

Milestone 1 - estimated completion date:

12/15/2023

Milestone 1 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:

$13,000

Deliverable 1.1

The first milestone includes the ‘zero to one’ work of producing a functional dashboard. This will be a live dashboard with Shielded Pool Size charts as a function of time/block number, for several time ranges (e.g all time, last year, month, day etc.). There will be charts of both aggregate shielded ZEC across all pools, as well as individual pools.

Milestone 2 - estimated completion date:

12/31/2023

Milestone 2 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:

$5,000.00

Deliverable 2.1

Add Various Shielded Transaction Metrics: Totals over time of each tx version/type, tx sizes in bytes. Will include privacy set size graphics, similar to what is shown on https://electriccoin.co/zcash-metrics/, but continuously updated.

Milestone 3 - estimated completion date:

1/15/2023

Milestone 3 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:

$5,000.00

Deliverable 3.1

Add mining difficulty as a function of time/block number, for several time ranges (e.g all time, last year, month, day etc.). Will also include the cost to launch a successful 51% attack as a function of time.

Milestone 4 - estimated completion date:

1/31/2023

Milestone 4 - USD value of payout upon completion of deliverables:

$5,000.00

Deliverable 4.1

Add block time spacing charts and analytics (useful for identifying possible irregular miner behaviors such as ‘selfish mining’/delayed block propagation.). These will include both raw data and statistics to identify anomalous miner behavior. Anomalous miner behaviors include things such as incorrect block time stamps and broadcasting mined blocks with a delay or only to select peers.

Please provide justification for the total compensation budget:

This is compensation for the full completed project. This total corresponds to an estimated $150 hourly rate.

Total proposed USD value of grant:

$30,000 USD

How was the project timeline determined?

This is an approximate timeline based on my experience writing code to display these metrics.

Application submission date:

11/5/2023

3 Likes
2

What do you expect users of this webpage to do/use the data for? Keep in mind the zcash community in general is very very small.

3

We need a clear, accurate, real-time view of these metrics for multiple reasons. One reason is that you are right the community is small, and we need to communicate effectively to newcomers.

Newcomers do not immediately understand the strength of the Zcash privacy protocol. A picture or graph is better than words for this. The graph of the anonymity set always goes up and to the right with each shielded transaction. This needs to be made super clear because it is exactly why Zcash works and other protocols only offer weak privacy.

Of course this is not just about marketing, we also need to know exactly what is happening in real-time. It may help identify areas for improvement for wallets, for example. If we see patterns suggesting users doing things that bad for their privacy, then wallets can adapt.

There are many more reasons. In general you don’t know what you don’t know until you look at the data clearly.

1 Like
4

A year ago, there were ~7 million shielded notes. Now, we have 70 million of them. A graph would show a massive increase in the anonymity set.

Well, >60 million are the result of the spam.

Personally, I don’t support these charts because they paint an incomplete and often misleading picture.

5

It’s possible to make versions of these charts both including and not including the ‘spam’ notes. Of course the goal is to clarify and not to mislead. It’s odd to say you don’t support these charts because it’s possible they could be made in a misleading way. Maybe you are just trying to say you do support clarifying charts and you don’t support misleading charts?

6

That’s not really what I’m saying. It is not only a possibility that they are misleading. According to their description in the proposal, I think they are. I can only give my opinion on what is proposed here. Clearly, I am not against all charts.

To be honest, I don’t understand the value of anonymity set. It could be very easily manipulated. In fact, I have never met a person who was impressed by it.

1 Like
7

@hanh Just to be clear, your opinion is that charts of the Zcash anonymity set, like the static ones on the ECC webpage pasted below, don’t have value?

zcashprivacyset
zcashprivacyset1700×1080 58.8 KB

If so, then I strongly disagree. I think they nicely illustrate why Zcash is superior to Monero with an anonymity set of only ~10.

8

That’s right. I think these charts are designed to show the superiority of Zcash over Monero by emphasizing the notion of anonymity set in a simple yet misleading infographic. Context is key in understanding the privacy offered by these coins, and it is missing here.

It may have value as a marketing tool, but in any case, I don’t see why we would need to have it refreshed in real-time.
If it’s 1.10 million vs 10 now, what difference does it make that tomorrow it is 1.11 million vs 10?

1 Like
9

+1. Simply not enough useful metrics to justify building a dedicated page for it (and paying someone $150 an hour!).

10

Wouldn’t it be easy to address your concerns about the graphics being misleading by simply adjusting the definition of anonymity set to exclude ‘spam’ transactions, for example? I think being able to toggle between graphics with different definitions of anonymity set would actually be informative.

No single statistic can replace a full understating of how different protocols work, but I do believe these charts provide useful intuition.

11

I agree, this should have been funded with the last minor grants. I support this grant :person_gesturing_no:

1 Like
12

Someone will ask why these transactions are excluded. Are they in some way less anonymous than others? It opens a huge can of worms…

1 Like
13

Honesty and transparency is always the best policy. The goal is to provide info, not marketing. But I do think many Zcash metrics will look good because it is a good privacy protocol :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
14

I’ve withdrawn this grant proposal with the intention to resubmit when the ZEC price is higher. I may build something small just for fun in the meantime. :slight_smile:

5 Likes