[Proposal] Funding Mintscan

Change Log • 2023-09-04 Initial post submitted Summary The objective of this proposal is to seek community pool funding for the future integrations, enhancements, continued development, and maintenance of Mintscan. Mintscan is requesting funding of 320,000 ATOM for the provision of its advanced interchain portal and data analytics service for the Cosmos Hub and its replicated security chains. The ATOM will be sent to a 10 year vesting account with a 5 year lock, no cliff, followed by a 5 year linear unlock. This funding will allow the Mintscan team to sustainably provide further customizations and state-of-the-art user experience, catering to the technological advancements of the Cosmos Hub and evolving needs of the Cosmos Hub community. The proposal includes upcoming tasks and developments related to the Cosmos roadmap including the integration of all RS chains on Mintscan. Background Cosmos has been the bedrock of innovation where novel ideas are born and first experimented on, as can be seen by the proliferation of the ‘app chain’ thesis and many other experiments that originated from Cosmos and reiterated in external ecosystems. The Cosmos technology stack has…

Excerpt (1195 of 8590 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

this funding should be divided into multiple fundings from the chains you’ve already integrated.

maybe the hub CP should fund a bigger part than others, but it still doesn’t have to pay the whole imo, since the development is/will be benefiting the broader ecosystem.

beside that, could we get some numbers about the yearly earnings you make from the delegations you ask to the chains for them to be integrated?

While appreciating Mintscan explorer and recognizing its contribution to the ecosystem, I am quite sceptical of this proposal in its current form. Firstly, as far as I know, Mintscan should have a lot of funding from all the chains Cosmostation is validating, and it’s totally unclear how much tokens does the team earn from that. So the idea of getting more tokens while the amount earned from validators might cover the development and maintenance is questionable for me. Second, there’s no report in the current form of this proposal on how much Cosmostation is earning, how much is required for development, how much is the cost of any feature planned to be integrated later and where did this 320k ATOM number came from. There was a bash on Notional for not having the detailed numbers in proposal 104 (see this [Proposal ##][DRAFT] Cancel Proposal 104 ), so not providing any justification for this number would likely result in the similar outcome. Third, it’s not clear which period of development does this 320k ATOM sum cover. The proposal says it’s gonna be a vesting account for 10 years, but this doesn’t answer which period does the requested sum cover. We want to avoid the case…

Excerpt (1199 of 2332 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

The application amount for this proposal is really huge.

The best way for this case is to apply to ATOM Accelerator. An authoritative review agency will conduct a comprehensive review of the proposed amount.

Considering the fact that this has a 5 year lock, I think it is prudent to look at the request in terms of All-time high prices and % of supply.

At all time high prices this request is for $10+M and represents 0.08% of the total supply of Atom. This would be the #125 largest wallet on the network funded completely by investors and the investors would not receive any equity stake in your product. Perhaps you could do a private sale? I would be highly interested in buying private equity in your product if you need help fundraising and I am sure many other VCs would be interested as well.

Also it is my understanding that your team requests top delegation from every chain in order to be listed on Mintscan. This resulted in millions of dollars of profit for Mintscan during the bull run. Are you changing models where this top delegation would no longer be required and instead requesting funds?

Also as others pointed out. What exactly is received with this grant? 10 years of service agreement? With all chains without requiring top delegations?

I am inclined to support this proposal due to the long time horizon that it describes. For proposal 104, notional wanted to make sure that we ended some of the churn that we felt that the cosmos hub had experienced negatively. I see the same thing here. I would like to ask for just one change to the proposal only, which is that you add a cancellation clause so that hub governance can fire you at any time or you can quit at any time. Actually I think I have a solution which is that you could include the cancel ability only after the cliff is ended and you begin to receive tokens. So for 5 years, you are just supposed to deliver and you cannot spend any of the tokens. After that, if the community is dissatisfied with the first 5 years, it can be canceled. If you continue to do the excellent work that you have been doing, it can’t be canceled. Also since that mechanism could be kind of unfair, I think that it might make sense to discuss mechanisms for cancellability together. Nonetheless I wish to repeat that I think this is a really good proposal and that I am personally in support, as is notional, once concerns surrounding the product as a public good have been…

Excerpt (1194 of 1205 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

If Mintscan would be truly open to all public goods, this proposal would be more based. As of now, Mintscan is lacking multiple chains and it has looked outside that Mintscan is asking bribery delegations or funds from chains to get seat on the table. I cannot condone this kind of gatekeeping.

Also the lack of chains creates bad user experience for community. Since the proposal funding is asked from the CP, I don’t see the that community is getting the value it deserves for that amount of funding.

Will the 320k ATOM be stakeable to the cosmostation validator during the 10 year vesting period?

If so, that’d result in an additional 64k ATOM in revenue per year on top of what Cosmostation gets from existing delegations on the hub (this includes substantial delegations from both the ICF and Stride, as well as presumably other contributing orgs). All of this while diluting staking revenues for other holders of ATOM.

Additionally, Cosmostation has expressed multiple times that its business model for mintscan is to ask for large delegations from foundations for integration, and use the staking revenues to maintain the explorer. AFAIK, you’ve already received such a delegation for the Cosmos Hub.

That business model is perfectly fine, but for an ask of this size I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask Cosmostation for an itemized list of its operating costs (specifically allocated to the Hub and not the other 50+ chains Cosmostation receives revenue from) and a statement of why those costs aren’t adequately covered by existing delegation revenues.

The only way you can justify the mintscan model of extorting top validator status was because you specifically didn’t ask for funding from chains.

Now you requesting $2-3M for developing an explorer is ridiculous and the fact that you come to the community is because AADAO already rejected this ridiculous ask.

Mintscan 2.0 has been a huge step back already and I think we should be focusing the ecosystem into funding more sustainable products like ping.pub and other explorers.

Isn’t Mintscan benefiting from this development? Since Mintscan is not a property of ATOM holders, why should we finance it entirely? If this is just a part of the cost estimation, I would like to see all of it, in full transparency together with Mintscan’s company (or DAO?) finances, at least regarding past development expenses until now and current & planned revenue sources.
This is a big amount, standards must be set high.

Point 1: I understand it’s important to fund public goods like Mintscan. I think the atom should be used for other funding methods such as applications and focusing on ICS. As someone who does traditional business valuations outside the space, it’s has to be viable for investment to see value back to the hub (company) spending capital for things like this are last on the boat, most viable spends should be toward core value which generates revenue for Atom. I have yet to see many that do, you can have the best tech in the world but if it isn’t profitable then why fund it?

Point 2: Mintscan already collects so much by having chains delegate to their validator this is a clear conflict of interest, I appreciate the ask but we can’t keep spending other people’s money for public goods that already have a business model. No free lunches anymore. Sorry, as Simon Cowell says, it’s a no from me!

Final Thought: This shouldn’t make it it governance. You’re a business figure out a way to generate revenue and quit asking for handouts.

ATOM spending should focus on the AEZ at this point. You can’t continue to spend like crazy for random things, especially during this bear market. First we have to focus on generating real yield/income.

There is simply no reason to consider a fixed 10 year funding deal in an industry as fast-paced and volatile as crypto.

Funding requests should be specific, transparent, acute, milestone-based, and justified by supporting analysis.

This funding request here is vague, ambiguous, lacks any supporting analysis, and is far too distant timewise. What will be done with the ATOM? Why was this amount chosen? Why 10 years? What are the concrete deliverables and schedule? What are the operating costs of Mintscan? Why are their validators and substantial delegations not sufficient for their business? And so on.

If Mintscan wishes to sell software development services to the Cosmos Hub community (to the tune of several million dollars), I would expect a much more professional funding proposal with specific concrete deliverables, milestones, milestone date estimates, milestone-based funding tranches, KPIs, team size and role details, etc. This is an industry standard expectation for software development projects.

Why should the Hub pick up the bill for this ? Mintscan is a ‘public good’. Shouldn’t the funding come from organizations like ICF ? Even if not the ICF, shouldn’t all other chains that get value from Mintscan foot the total bill ?

The Hub community pool should be focused on developing the AEZ. It can contribute partially to public good - but it should not be the Hub that alone funds public goods from now on.

Besides all of that, Mintscan already requires all chains it provides its services to delegate a significant amount to its validator. Isn’t that enough to maintain a block explorer ? They even removed Kujira from the explorer because they didn’t delegate to them.

Where are these numbers coming from ? Asking for funding without providing proof for expenses is silly. How much have they spent in the last 3 years to maintain Mintscan ?

Bottom line is that they already receive plenty of funding from the requirement of having to provide delegations to them and even if additional funding is necessary ( which I am very skeptical about ), the Hub community pool is not the place to get the funding from.

Any validator voting yes will lose my respect forever.

Why does every business in the cosmos want to run on community pool expenses? If you can’t make a sustainable business model, leave.

@waqarmmirza Well first of all I don’t want mintscan to leave. Understanding is that they are currently funded by delegations to their validator nodes across Cosmos. That’s quite acceptable to me actually, but I guess I do figure it’s better if they go open source. @Zed_Erazer Secondly, in order to qualify for funding, it would need to be open source. Proposal 93 dictates that. I have used mint scan more times than I can count. Yesterday I kicked off a conversation with @Mikey_Lee & cosmostarion’s CEO around open source. To my surprise, they’re in favor of it. PostTenebras: This funding request here is vague, ambiguous, lacks any supporting analysis, and is far too distant timewise. What will be done with the ATOM? Why was this amount chosen? Why 10 years? What are the concrete deliverables and schedule? What are the operating costs of Mintscan? Why are their validators and substantial delegations not sufficient for their business? And so on. These are good questions, I viewed the 10-year timeline as being willing to accept a great deal of risk before taking rewards. How do you see it? kopeboy: Isn’t Mintscan benefiting from this…

Excerpt (1197 of 2467 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

Props such as these just highlights how important it is to define the scope and criteria of the community pool funding better.

Whether it is open source or not makes very little difference as long as the amount we are spending is greater than the return for the Hub. From a pure investment perspective, funding this is a bad idea - high expense for very little return.

Again, why is the Hub expected to foot the bill for a public good. Is Hub the only chain using Mintscan ? Where is the funding request to all the other chains currently on Mintscan ?

I have a question:

Is it possible to delegate funds from the community pool to validator?

In this case, Community Pool will get reward from the Network for delegation, and validator will get commission, and spend this commission to develop tools!

It can be Win-Win solution!

This is a joke right? You removed appchains like Kuji from Mintscan and your proprietary wallet because they didn’t delegate to your validator and are now asking for community funding of your project.

I might be harsh with my earlier comment, but for many reasons;

• Hub shouldn’t pay for all the Appchains.
• Funding ask is huge and vague.
• Crypto market is too bearish to budget on a volatile asset. 230K Atom at ATH would be more than 10 Million USD

I will say no, voto no, campaign for no.

Fun fact, checked with 2 dev teams willing to do what mintscan has done and plans to do in 25% of the ask maintenance included for 10 years.

Lots of good comments. Was an application to receive funds from AADAO denied?

Like others have pointed out, why such a big ask from only the Hub and not other chains?

We agree with those who question whether or not Cosmostation validator is a public good.

We also agree with those who argue community pool funds should focus on the AEZ.

However, like @jacobgadikian I’ve used mintscan more times than I can count and it matters for the Cosmos.

Reasons Why This Funding Proposal Should Not be Approved I appreciate everyone who has contributed to this discussion. Each voice here carries weight, and it’s essential that our collective opinions are considered before the proposal moves forward. As engaged members of the Cosmos community, we have a duty to meticulously assess proposals that could fundamentally alter our ecosystem. After a thorough examination, I find myself aligned with the prevailing sentiment that the current funding proposal is critically flawed. Specifically, it fails in the following key areas: • Lack of Widespread Benefit : The proposal incorrectly assumes that the Hub should solely shoulder the financial responsibilities for a project that benefits multiple chains. This unilaterally imposed burden does not reflect the collaborative and decentralized spirit of the Cosmos ecosystem. • Absence of Governance and Oversight : The proposal’s glaring omission of any governance structure poses serious concerns about accountability and centralized control. This is seriously incongruent with the decentralized ideals that anchor our community. • Unjustified High Budget : The financial ask of 320,000…

Excerpt (1197 of 2854 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

ICF Delegations Program: Cycle 2 starts now

ICF Delegations Program: Cycle 2 starts now

Validator applications are now open for the second cycle of our Delegations Program.

Reading time: 2 min read

The document also shows that there are teams working on browser projects, which can apply for extra points and help them get high scores.

First of all, we sincerely appreciate all the support and criticism. Feedback from the community is of utmost importance to us and through this we will do our best to build a better Mintscan. We want to clarify something before answering all of the questions we have gotten so far. The purpose of this proposal is not to request compensation for the chains we have been supporting until today. This proposal is our pledge to unconditionally support RS chains that will exponentially increase in number (including chains transitioning from standalone zones to replicated security chains), forming the AEZ with the Cosmos Hub at the center. Q&A #1 Should Mintscan receive funding from the ICF instead? Through Mintscan, we have been striving to provide the best user experience for various members in our ecosystem while also putting in significant effort to convey how attractive and valuable the interchain is to ecosystems outside of Cosmos. We feel that our commitment has allowed many new projects entering the Cosmos ecosystem to choose Mintscan as their partner, and we take pride in this. This funding for the support of RS chains on Mintscan will bring more benefits to the Cosmos…

Excerpt (1197 of 3695 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

Mintscan:

Based on this, the funding requested in this proposal is comparable to ~10 years worth of operating expenses for just having 21 replicated security chains

what if in 5 years there are only 8 RS’d chains and 1 Atom is worth 120 dollars?

They’re also accepting the risk that atom could be $.1 in 5 years or is eaten by a rogue ai.

I found the lock in bullish

weird they ask when ~ATL then. why not when AEZ project was emerging?

that’s why grants should be $ or stable denominated.
it’s going to be possible soon, why this proposal some months before?

and frankly 0.1… weak probability.

they seem to be a bit more confident

This vesting structure also speaks to our belief that the interchain ecosystem is underestimated. Replicated security is still in its infancy, and it will gradually stabilize to attract more market participants and become more widely adopted. We have strong conviction that cosmos will only continue to grow and succeed with RS and the AEZ

anyway the proposal clearly lacks of precise operating costs estimates. it lacks of what they would bring to AEZ, “support all RS chains” is not enough when you ask $2.5M.
also “maybe we will open source someday” said to you in a private discussion is not enough.

and i believe everyone here would love to get infos about their earnings from the chains delegations.

Mintscan is currently supporting 58 chains and spends approximately 50k monthly solely on operating expenses including infrastructure, servers, database, and data transmission costs. Based on this, the funding requested in this proposal is comparable to ~10 years worth of operating expenses for just having 21 replicated security chains integrated. As we commit to an unconditional support for RS chains, we do not believe the funding requested is excessive.

To be quite frank, your current business model has already paid for these chains for 5+ years in the bull run. This is why you do not need operational funding for 5 years. You could always wait 3-4 years and then request in USD terms. Any blockchain would have to be financially illiterate to enter a 10 year service contract in crypto when there are wild fluctuations and appearing at a low point in the cycle. This is a great deal for mintscan but a terrible deal for investors as they would essentially saying to be short in their position of Atom for next 10 years. There isn’t even equity in this deal, its just a freebie for something that has already been monetized.

Nobody has answered the question as to whether this funding will be delegated to the Cosmostation validator and what the disposition of those staking rewards will be.

I feel this is critical to fully understanding and making a decision on the scope of the ask here.

To Mintscan Representative, I hope this message finds you well. First, thank you for sharing details about your funding proposal and its significance in advancing the Mintscan needs. Your commitment to the community does not go unnoticed. However, some fundamental elements require further explanation to fully understand Mintscan’s core purpose and value proposition. Help me understand what Mintscan is intended to be. Let’s delve into the real substance: What is Mintscan in its most fundamental sense? Beyond being a Cosmos Explorer, which you’ve crafted quite expertly, What core business purpose and value does Mintscan aim to provide? What are the foundational business imperatives that drive its existence? My observations suggest that while Mintscan offers a polished interface and dashboard, it may lack some fundamental elements typical of a robust going-concern enterprise. Foundational Elements • What is the core mission and vision of Mintscan? • Could you elaborate on the long-term goals and objectives of your initiative? • What value does Mintscan bring to the Cosmos ecosystem specifically? • What problem or gap does your business address that isn’t currently being…

Excerpt (1198 of 3325 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

Seriously? Do you really imagine that with just 8 RS’d chains, 1 atom could get worth $120? This kind of criticism even makes folks like me, who aren’t exactly cheering for this proposal, cringe a bit.

how many RS chain were there wen Atom was worth $40?

• Although I use mintscan daily and love the product, I strongly believe the Hub should not be funding this. This should be funded via the ICF and the ICF alone. The Hub has a limited community pool and it needs to start being used to drive adoption of ATOM throughout the interchain, not for public goods that largely benefit the entire Interchain. • The AEZ likely will not scale beyond 8-10 consumer chains for the foreseeable future and I don’t believe the Hub should be betting on a sole service provider like Mintscan for such a long period given the amount being asked. • Cosmostation makes a considerable amount as a top validator in the ecosystem, which should be more than enough to cover expenses related to mintscan. Validating on the Hub alone made Cosmostation ~$1M+ in validator commissions this past year, not including the other chains in the ecosystem. Obviously there’s a chance Cosmostation has not sold any ATOM (or other assets), but they also have other revenue streams beyond validating. • If the Hub is to fund this, the Hub should be getting revenue share from anything Mintscan/Cosmostation generates for its product and services. The Cosmos community needs…

Excerpt (1199 of 1426 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

Spot on here. Enough is enough, no more free handouts to poor business models. Capitalist Hub

It means ICS isn’t necessarily a must for the Cosmos Hub, and AEZ is just propaganda. Of course, that could be the case. However, if there’s no alternative to AEZ powered by ICS, we might have to pray for ATOM to the moon again when the bull market returns.

status quo is not a must. AEZ and ICS are nascent, both can fuel Atom flow. better to try this than doing nothing.

anyway, we’re off topic there.

Mintscan is great but shouldn’t be funded thru Atom CP.

Im against this.

1. This should clearly be funded from several chains

2. Mintscan runs a pro=profit business, with ad revenue, (some) paid API services, valdiator revenue (Cosmostation), etc. I think that funding should come from the company itself and not from the chains in this case. Makes 0 sense IMO.

Agreed, this is an ICF type grant, the Hub has other business to attend to.

Besides, I find it extremely expensive for the triviality of the product. I think it is possible to do much better with much less (and there’s already an example with a small competitor).

fair point imo.

Mintscan has lots of utility for various chains so it can be collectively funded

Read all the discussions, and frankly, I am bullish on the cosmos that all people have very well reasoned on the prop. To summarise on my end I can say @Mintscan should reconsider writing this prop and ask from all the 58 chains they provide their support to. 4000 Atom from each chain.

Whichever the chain does not need your service, offboard them and this will definitely help reduce your cost on servers, database, and data transmission.

Thank you for the proposal.

Agree with most comments here. We passed the proposals for Ping Pub, which made a good case to fund Mintscan as well. But I think the difference is Ping Pub is an independent explorer made for public goods, while Mintscan already has a good & profitable business model.

If somehow this proposal goes to the voting period and passes. I would want to see all Cosmos chains included there, which is not the case as of now (because of business reasons).

I agree with most of what’s already been said. I like Mintscan very much and am exceedingly grateful for it. I use it regularly, and there’s certainly a world where I think it could be a public good, but it is functionally and economically not. The existing, already well-capitalized business model prevents comprehensive interchain reach, limiting its utility. The validator communities, the foundations and, by proxy, the end users of these 58 chains are all taxed in various ways without their consent today. The net result is an excellent engineering product with systemically constrained reach and high risk of product-market misalignment given the closed source. The final point is to a certain extent playing out as we speak with 2.0 – large swathes of functionality we all liked disappeared to make way for newer features (some of which I also really like) and I suspect robust, open iteration would have yielded better results. Now, IMHO requesting millions of dollars directly from the community pool, at the bottom of the bear, under the guise of it being a “public good,” after you’ve already been compensated, without complete (financial, product, software) transparency seems like a…

Excerpt (1198 of 1579 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗

I think there were many good questions asked. Its not very convincing that Minscan doesnt answer them in a timely manner.

VK_S16:

d Mintsc

Yes, and now it feels like it was a temperature check proposal, they will let it cool down and come up with an improvised version.

Hello Community,
I am Jung-hun Lee, the CEO of Cosmostation.

First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to the numerous community members who provided valuable feedback on this draft. Specifically, We had a very in-depth discussion with Zaki Manian about this matter, obtaining various ideas and points that need refinement. I would like to extend special thanks to him.

We will take some time to gather more feedback from the community on our draft. We are one of the longstanding members of the community who genuinely wish for the success of the Cosmos Hub. We will always listen to the community’s opinions and strive to gain their support in return. Success without the support of the community is only a half-success.

Currently, the Hub is working towards the success of AEZ. Regardless of this draft, we want to convey to the community that we are willing to do whatever it takes for the success of AEZ.
Once again, I would like to express my gratitude to all community members who have shared their opinions in this short span of time.