Hey @lara and ICP community,
I would like Aviate Labs to be considered for the Participant Management & Node Admin Team grant. In the past year, I’ve engaged with many of you mainly within the community of ICP Node Providers, but for those of you who I haven’t met yet:
My name is Louise Velayo, and I am applying on behalf of Aviate Labs.
About Aviate Labs and Our Team
Aviate Labs: Website | Twitter | Linkedin | Github
Louise Velayo: Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub
Quint Daenen: Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub
Roald Parmentier: Twitter | Linkedin
Relevant Experience
- Aviate Labs has over 3 years of experience managing nodes for one of the largest node providers on the IC since its genesis.
- Aviate Labs developed and open-sourced a notification service for node providers, which we also host for free so all Node Providers can easily sign up and receive alerts.
- Aviate Labs has collaborated with DFINITY to test initial runbooks/builds and troubleshoot bugs.
- Aviate Labs has an ongoing grant for building a notification service based on public node metrics and plans to apply for future grants to further develop a platform for Node Providers.
- I organized the first Node Provider ICP Lab, bringing together over 20 node providers to discuss process changes and future developments, and I serve as the community lead of the Node Provider Working Group.
- Quint Daenen has over 6 years of professional software development experience and 3+ years developing on the IC, contributing various Motoko packages used by other IC projects.
Technical Knowledge
- Aviate Labs’ Projects:
- Autonomous Asset - A framework where digital assets can be fully sovereign on the IC. In the usecase developed in collaboration with Nodenaysteen (art gallery in gent), the file of the digital artwork, frontend and backend are hosted on a canister.
- Node Monitor - A free hosted notification service that sends Node Providers dail status reports on their nodes as well as alerts as soon as their nodes go down.
- Quint Daenen developed a Golang agent for the IC as part of a grant.
Motivation for Becoming a Voting Neuron
Our motivation stems from our early involvement in the IC since its genesis. We believe it is essential for Aviate Labs to play a more active role in governance, particularly in participant management, to ensure that node providers are properly onboarded, as they are crucial to the IC’s infrastructure. Given our track record of contributions and the insights we’ve gained from being deeply involved in this part of the ecosystem, we believe that the responsibility of being a voting neuron best leverages our expertise and experience.
Need for Grant Funding
Our team is fully dedicated to the IC, focusing on two primary activities: developing a support model and platform for node providers and collaborating with various clients to implement their projects on the IC. This commitment inevitably limits our time and resources for governance activities. Securing grant funding would enable us to allocate additional hours to actively vote and conduct necessary checks for node provider applications. Moreover, it would allow us to create an objective evaluation process for candidate NPs/DCs and other node administration-related proposals. This funding is crucial for us to ensure a robust and well-governed IC ecosystem, leveraging our expertise and dedication to its growth and stability.
Long-term Interest in ICP
Our business activities are deeply intertwined with ICP. Our mission, particularly with our node provider-focused initiative, is to streamline node management and facilitate scalability, positioning the ICP infrastructure to compete with web2 giants. Acting maliciously would undermine our efforts and jeopardize our future in the industry, as it would deter potential collaborators and partners from working with us.
Interest in Participant Management & Node Admin
Having engaged with numerous prospective and operational node providers, we have gained both the practical and technical understanding necessary for these types of proposals. Thus, our interest stems from the experience we have built in this domain. Additionally, our active participation in the Node Provider Working Group and other discussions provides us with valuable insights and the confidence to vote on these matters effectively.
Commitment to Long-term Voting
We will continue to serve as a voting neuron even after the grant period, as our support and tool development for node providers require a well-organized, decentralised, and growing community. By understanding the profiles of entities interested in becoming node providers and the common administrative tasks they need to perform through proposals, we can develop better tools to support them effectively.
Voting Principles
Our primary voting principle is to adhere strictly to decentralization principles. This currently involves voting in accordance with the community-agreed target topology. Future voting will align with the community’s conclusions from ongoing discussions about adapting to the target topology, improving KYC for Node Providers and data centers, and decentralizing the onboarding process for node providers.
We are excited about the opportunity to contribute to the ICP community in a more structured and impactful way. Thank you for considering our application 