Developer Award Application
Proposal: Apsu — Designing and delivering native Akash auditing
Contact:
**1. First & Last Name: (optional) **
**2. Email Address: **
**3. Akash Wallet Address: ** akash17fqxak4kprh2rlatjlv9w04s9ugl7mn32ckut3 (new account for fund separation)
**4. Akashian URI: ** 30 deployments
**5. Time Zone: ** EDT
6. Language: English
Social Networks
**8. Discourse Username: ** N/A
**12. Website: ** poweredbyakash.com, projectphoenix.xyz, akash-downloader.com, etc.
Experience:
**14. Are you a developer or software engineer? ** Yes
**15. Are you currently involved in Akash’s Discord developer community channel? (discord.akash.network) ** Yes
**16. Have you deployed on Akash’s Mainnet or Testnet? (docs.akash.network) ** Yes
**17. Do you have other team members? ** Yes
**18. Are you looking for additional team members? ** Support from Akash Team
Product Vision:
**23. What is your project? ** Apsu
**24. What is the problem you will solve? ** There are currently two classes of Akash providers: Equinix and everyone else. For those who want a peer-to-peer hosting solution, they must incur a large security risk by trusting unaudited providers.
**25. What are your goals? ** Implement a tiered security solution to audit providers of various configurations.
**26. What impact will this project have on the Akash developer community? ** It increases legitimacy of providers and security of deployments.
**27. Who will use your project when it’s complete? ** Providers will utilize the service and tenants can utilize the corresponding signature.
**28. Will you monetize your project? ** I will receive payment for work.
**29. Will you open source your project? ** Yes (excluding actual audits)
Product Leadership / Drive:
**31. What’s your aspiration for blockchain technology? ** I think blockchain is a vector for peaceful detachment from oppressive policies. Akash is interesting in that it can serve a philosophical purpose, but also a mainstream purpose.
**32. If you had $1 million in grant funding what would you do? ** Get Akash into the hands of university students.
**33. Who will benefit most from your project? ** Providers/Tenants
**34. How will you help grow the Akash community? ** Tenants will be assured that a provider has been audited for baseline security and resources run as desired.
**35. How will you make Akash approachable to developers? ** Providers can join a tiered system verifying their configurations without paying for a 3rd party review. Tenants will be more comfortable leasing from audited providers.
Product Execution:
**37. How would you utilize the grant funding? **
-Paying for software licenses
-Time building out programs
-Randomized trial configurations (deployments)
**38. Have you already started this work? ** Yes
**39. Do you have a GitHub or website for your project? ** Github is private while in production, but the Akash team has seen it.
**40. How will this task be accomplished? ** Meetings with Wazuh and N-Able set up with Eric, designing program referencing experience, manuals, etc.
**41. How would you break this work up into 3 or 4 phases / milestones? **
- Create right to audit contract
- Establish up-time metrics for providers using lightweight clients
- Design randomized trial configurations and documentation process
- Create tiered auditing and integrate with chain signatures
**42. How many months of work will this project require? **
This will be a continuous process; as an auditor, I need to execute the documentation that will be OS’d for other auditors.
**43. What’s the expected amount of funding required for your project? **
$100,000
Product Progress:
**44. Will you open source your project? ** Yes
**45. How do you plan to share your work with the community once complete? ** Application will be created for prospective auditors. This process will be further hashed out with Akash team.
**46. Will you report your progress to the community every month? ** Yes.
**47. Do you have any screenshots, videos, or other context you can share? ** More detailed proposal, with attestation from Eric Zietlow, linked here.
Developer Associations:
**48. Are you associated with any accelerators, incubators, venture capital firms, or startup funds? ** No
**49. Are you associated with any startup communities? ** No
**50. Are you associated with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)? ** No
**51. Are you associated with any open source projects? ** Project Phoenix
**52. Are you associated with any of the Akash Network core team members? ** Comms with team regularly
Legalese:
53. Are you a resident of, citizen, or located in a geographic area that is subject to UN, US, EU, Swiss or any other sovereign country sanctions or embargoes? No
54. Are you over the age of 18? Yes