DEXBot - WP2

DEXBot - WP 2

Name: Cabinet-Multisig-DEXBot-wp2
Freelancers: Octomatic, vvk, permie

Total
Up to $148,800

Duration:
2019/01/01 – 2019/06/30 [6 months]

Discussions:
Telegram
t.me/DEXBotbts

Accounting & Reporting:
https://steemitwallet.com/@dexbot

Introduction:

This Worker Proposal will continue the DEXBot Project. Over the past year the DEXBot team has built a basic market making liquidity program (a trading bot) and created a community to help address the liquidity problems currently present in many of the BitShares markets.

The DEXBot project is off to a great start and is already providing tangible benefits to both Bitshares token holders and the larger ecosystem. We believe the project should continue to scale and require worker funding to fully realize all of the potential benefits of open-source market making bots.

With a solid framework in place and multiple independent developers already involved the DEXBot code base is now mature enough for a bounty system to effectively delegate bot-development work and ensure maximum value for BitShares’ voters. Other essential roles such as Lead Dev, Supporting Dev and QA Engineers will be hired as dedicated roles.

Some users expect DEXBot only to perform the two already implemented basic strategies (Relative Orders and Staggered Orders) while others expect DEXBot to utilise any and all strategies that bring liquidity to the DEX. In either case, users rightfully expect DEXBot to be simple, intuitive to install and easy to run on a variety of systems (Linux, Windows, Mac). The funding provided by this worker will allow the development team to deploy resources to meet the needs of both groups of users.

The goal of this Worker Proposal is to build upon the progress made during the previous twelve months of development by improving and/or maintaining the existing trading strategies while adding new trading strategies and features. The Project Lead will transition from Marko to Permie.

The majority of past development activity was focused on building out the core functionality of a basic trading bot and we now feel it is critical to polish up any and all bugs, to add more user support, to improve user experience and begin to engage in networking activities to build relationships with potential strategic business partners for the future.

Increased liquidity across major trading pairs will greatly benefit all BitShares users. Building relationships with well-connected individuals within the corporate finance community will likewise bring more value to the Bitshares community.

The Cabinet believes that while Tweets and social media articles are great, a more direct marketing approach once DEXBot is suitable for mass adoption with personal attention can take DEXBot to the next level. We plan to use the next 6 months to prepare for this. Spending a little time each month initiating and maintaining a direct line of communication between DEXBot and high-value 3rd parties.

Value
People come to the decentralized BitShares blockchain to trade and exchange various cryptocurrencies. Liquidity - the ability to easily buy and sell an asset at a fair price - has long been an issue within the Bitshares decentralized exchange. By the adding of liquidity on various trading pairs, customers can more easily trade, get a better price, and find more stable markets. While primarily a software development project, DEX liquidity greatly benefits from cultivating relationships and encouraging DEXBot use from prominent individuals in the wider market making community.
The DEXBot software builds liquidity on markets, is open for all to use, increases the number of transactions on the blockchain, and helps pay for itself through increased trading fees. Better spreads, increased liquidity, and communication with potential power-users of DEXBot will help the BitShares DEX attract more coins and users.

PR and Marketing
From preliminary research conducted into the t.me/DEXBotbts telegram chat - 50% of our community members are from outside the Bitshares Community. 50% have no shared groups in common with the Cabinet except DEXBotbts.
This shows that our online articles are drawing in crowds.
We want to increase our efforts with online PR as it has been proven to be very fruitful so far.
Bounties
So far, we have asked developers to work on features considered important by the cabinet and community, and paid per hour. We want to improve this collaboration process by changing to a reverse auction bounty model.

Permie and Octomatic will review bugreports and feature requests of the community, prioritize them, and assign them an initial bounty.
Any person can reserve a task/bounty to himself from Permie.
If a task is not taken within a week, the bounty will be increased by 10%. The bounty will effectively double in 2 months. (The Cabinet reserves the right to change this policy to react to circumstance as needed.)
Once ready, a task can be recognized by making a Pull Request in github. The lead dev will review, ask for changes, and finally merge the changes.
Once merged, the bounty will be paid. Payments will happen in batches once every month.
The Cabinet (multisig escrow group) will oversee Permie’s work, and approve payments if he has worked in accordance with Cabinet’s guidance.

The increased rate in bounty price is to find a balance between reaching “market rate” (as decided by the bidding independent developer) ASAP, and getting tasks done as cheaply as possible.
This system would also allow new developers to snap-up “underpriced” small bounties as a chance to showcase their skills with the intention of taking on larger bounties in the future.

New devs will be encouraged to get involved and “first task” appropriate bounties will be labelled as such.

There will be unpublicised price ceilings on the Reverse Auction bounties so that developers cannot simply let bounties age in an effort to increase compensation.

Bugs
Bounties will initially focus on known bugs. Bugs cause unexpected behaviour and eliminating unexpected behaviour is critical for a financial application.

Quality Assurance
A Quality Assurance Engineer will also be hired to ensure DEXBot runs as smoothly as possible. The QA lead will be assisted by the DEXBot community testers and shadowed by a Deputy QA Engineer; who will be separated from the Lead QA Engineer to mitigate bad-collusion. The shadow QA Engineer is important for redundancy and to retain essential knowledge of QA protocols and history in the event of the unexpected.

A “Quality Assurance Best Practices” document will be followed to formalise the QA structure and to ensure thorough testing procedures visible for community review.

Minor Integration Testing bounties will be offered to collect data on how DEXBot performs and installs on Windows, MacOS, Raspberry Pi and Linux. These small bounties will be easily accessible to the wider DEXBot community and will encourage participation with our project.

Additional Strategy Development
The DEXBot community is regularly discussing new strategies to implement. All strategies that add liquidity or increase trade activity on the DEX will be considered and those suitable will be offered via Reverse Auction Bounty. Each additional strategy added to the bot increases the value, utility and liquidity on the DEX.

Improving the User Experience
Small incremental improvements to the application will be considered. However the overall design is a good enough basis, and shall not be chang

Documentation and Website
We will create and publish more documentation and user guides. Comprehensive information will increase the confidence of users and thus usage of the software.”

Budget
Additional Development of the DEXBot code are handled by developers who accept bounties and work under the direction of the Project Manager. Payments are facilitated and overseen by The Cabinet and Pull Requests will be merged by the Lead Developer.
Tasks will be assigned on GitHub and follow-ups by the PM will continue weekly to coordinate efforts and ensure everyone is on track and happy.
We propose to retain Codaone for the roles of dedicated Quality Assurance Dev, Technical Documentation Specialist and Build Maintainer for 1 full-time week per month, resulting in a new DEXBot release monthly. The main reasons being that they have a reputation on line, and they are most familiar with the codebase.

Furthermore, the BitShares Cabinet will retain a management fee in billed at $50/hr for each of the 6 members of Cabinet for all activities related to the on-chain worker proposal, multisig approval of transactions, guidance of the PM, and occasional discussions. The Cabinet will ensure all worker funds are tracked and presented to the community in a manner that is transparent and accessible.

Financial Services Networking
DEXBot has attracted noteworthy individuals and Financial Services firms to its Twitter account and online PR. Quite a few in fact.
We want to keep their attention and make sure that DEXBot and Bitshares stay on their radar.
16hrs per month will be spent personally contacting these individuals and mining them for information on what can be done to increase or retain their interest. We believe a focussed approach on certain individuals could yield benefits disproportionate to the cost of the hours to contact them.

Bitshares 3rd Party Exchange Co-operation
50% of our DEXBot telegram community members are from outside Bitshares. Many arrived from google searches for “example-bts-exchange trading bot” google searches.
DEXBot benefits massively from the 3rd party exchanges that run on top of Bitshares.
We want to spend 16hrs per month to liaise with these exchanges to make sure DEXBot fits their needs, and to also make new exchanges aware of the benefits that DEXBot brings them and to encourage exchanges to promote DEXBot to their customers.

Lead Developer/Supporting Dev Role
Contributing developers need guidance from the Lead Dev. To ensure a quick response time both the Lead Dev and Supporting Dev will be available 10 hours per day each to monitor a telegram/slack channel where only Bounty Contributors vetted by the PM may post.

The Lead Dev role and the Supporting Dev roles will be sporadic so a flat fee has been chosen to compensate them and to ensure prompt response times.

During times where both Lead and Supporting Devs are unavailable the Project Manager will help Bounty Contributors refer to a “Bounty Guidance Template” written by the Lead Dev.

Role, Monthly Fee, Availability Hours (UTC)
Lead Developer, $650, 16.00 -02:00
Supporting Developer, $550, 07:00 - 19:00

Role, Hourly Rate, Monthly Hours, Monthly Total

Project Manager: $50/hr, 95, $4750

Build Maintainer: $100/hr, 20, $2000

Senior Contribution Auditor: $100/hr, 20, $2000

Contribution Auditor: $80/hr, 7, $560

Quality Assurance Engineer: $100, 15, $1500

Shadow Quality Assurance Engineer: $50, 10, $500

Strategy Software Development: $6950

Financial Services Networking: $50/hr, 16, $800

Website Management: $50/hr, 10, $500

Online DEXBot PR: $50/hr, 30, $1500

Telegram User Support: $15/hr, 16, $240

Strategy Research and Development: $50/hr, 16, $800

Bitshares 3rd Party Exchange Cooperation Services: $50/hr, 12, $600

Cabinet WP Management - 6 members, 3hrs per month: $50/hr, 18, 900

Total: < $24,800

Individuals Involved

Octomatic
Role: Lead Developer,Senior Contribution Auditor, Code Review
Experienced Python Dev
Active in DEXBot and community and large contributor
Years of experience.

Vvk
Role: Supporting Dev, Contribution Auditor
Active in DEXBot community and large contributor
Experienced in GitHub Maintenance

Codaone
DEXBot lead devs last year
Expert Knowledge in DEXBot code
Established Development Company

Permie
Role: Project Manager
4 years experience in BitShares Community.
Gained the trust of multiple BitShares Whales and prominent community members.
Organised and encouraged the DEXBot Cabinet and project inception.
Co-developed the Staggered Orders Strategy.
Wrote the first prominent paper wallet guide for BitShares 1.0.
Wrote extensive business and economic analysis of “Why BitShares will succeed.” Expanding on Bytemaster’s Austrian Economic Theory.
Business-to-business Client Support experience.
Financial Services experience.
As Project Manager Permie will liaise with the Development team and the Cabinet. He will discuss and supply project direction, organise bounties, vet potential new developers, review and prioritise twitter leads and organise phone meetings with financial firms to encourage further interest in DEXBot.

Community
We have a growing community of contributors who are likely to contribute but not required to. Project Management will heavily involve sourcing and encouraging new developers to contribute to DEXBot via the bounty system. We have a telegram room of over 900 members and we want as many people as possible to come into contact with DEXBot development.

Worker Proposal Detail
The Cabinet managing the multisignature spending authority of the WP funds do not know each other personally and live in multiple jurisdictions - ensuring a decentralised nature to Cabinet Multi-Sig authority. All transactions require 3/6 approval.
A public spreadsheet will describe and account for every transaction made by the multi-sig account.
The Cabinet all have Bitshares reputations to maintain and will not collude. Our combined reputations exceed 10 years of active participation in the Bitshares Community.

With a Monthly Budget of $24,800 this Worker requires $815 per day.
20,370bts per day is required to sustain the project down to a low bts price of $0.04.
Payments will be made in bitUSD, which will be bought from the market in a manner that doesn’t move the price.
Throughout DEXBot WP1 we have never taken orders off the book.
Each time we have needed to sell bts to buy bitUSD we have placed bts sell orders at gradual % increments above market price and then waited for someone else to take out offer. We will continue this method through WP2.

Left-over BTS will be given back (reserved, burned).