Hello everyone,
Every 3 months, the smoldot project seeks the continuation of its financing for the next quarter.
As many of you might already know, smoldot is an alternative implementation of the Polkadot client focused on using as little CPU, memory, and bandwidth as possible. It can be embedded within a web page, and thus allow end users to connect directly to the Polkadot network.
You can find a link to smoldot's repository here: https://github.com/smol-dot/smoldot/
It must be emphasized that smoldot is not a prototype. It was initially started in December 2019 within Parity Technologies and has been financed through treasury proposals since February 2023. Since its inception, all of its goals have been fulfilled consistently and on relatively short time frames. It is robust and ready to be used in production.
You can find all the details of the proposal here: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmYVdyouLyiWwTs9grXbdRyph2dzfb33reveJgT2U7uPE2
This document highlights the work that has been performed, and proposes new milestones for the upcoming quarter year.
Please let me know what you think in the comments.
This is now the 4th treasury proposal that smoldot goes through, and it has been very difficult to estimate the amount of time that milestones take. Additionally, having fixed milestones ahead of time makes it difficult to react to short-term needs. For these reasons, I am thinking of changing the model of financing of smoldot in 2024 and beyond, and instead do work ahead of time and ask for retroactive payments. This is not a decision I have made yet, but something I've had in the back of my head. Please also let me know what you think about this in the comments.
Thank you for reading!
Tomaka