Open Source the IC-API that powers the Internet Computer Dashboard

[justmythoughts]

@diegop

I know you’re doing your best to communicate word from R&D leadership, but their stonewall message communicated through your extraordinarily kind persona really feels like a slap in the face.

DFINITY has indeed been open sourcing the majority of its repositories over the past two years, but conveniently the IC API has been left out, regardless of the fact that this is the only repository that has a thread on the forum asking DFINITY to open source it.

Getting priorities from R&D leadership has nothing to do with open sourcing the IC API.

I know that there is a small team within DFINITY that is specifically in charge of off-chain tooling, and data aggregation for the analytics that power the IC Dashboard. This team is NOT working on AI, ckERC-20, or whatever the current roadmap items and priorities are.

@diegop

This include data about the replica operation (so that anyone can verify whether or not nodes behave correctly) as well as data for canister developer (cycles consumptions etc) that will allow them to better develop their code.

I’m sorry again, but this is a deflection. You’re talking about developer metrics, and I’m talking about network metrics, for which all of the bases of growth and usage of the Internet Computer Network are based off of, both in terms of marketing materials and read/used by investor analyses.

If it isn’t a deflection, can you be more specific on the metrics and data that will be made visible?Hopefully through a pathway that is open source?

@diegop

I realize its not exactly what folks are asking, but it is the current thinking when the “reality of limited resources” meets “balancing protocol-level work.”

Again, this is not work that requires protocol engineers to work on it. Many of the engineers that work on the IC Dashboard and the IC API don’t work at the protocol level. Unless there was a huge shake-up recently and that team was fired, that team has primarily been siloed to off-chain tooling & infrastructure for DFINITY. All of that is off of the IC (AWS), and there’s nothing wrong with that…it’s A LOT of data and would be unmanageable to all have on the IC.

There are a few thoughts that go through my mind seeing this lack of response over the past 18+ months, ranging from most likely all the way to conspiratorial.

1. DFINITY does not care about open sourcing off-chain components of their system.
2. DFINITY believes the IC-API and off-chain components of their infrastructure are insecure, and are therefore uncomfortable open sourcing them.
3. The off-chain metrics and aggregation is error prone, so it is possible that a bug will reveal false statistic in the IC Dashboard which could be embarrassing.
4. The off-chain components reveal a data export from the IC that DFINITY engineers can use to read private canister metrics and/or state for “debugging purposes” that would normally only be available to the controller of the canister.
5. DFINITY is purposely manipulating/specific data that is released through the IC-API to the dashboard. (i.e. hiding the neuron information of several high level team members so that their neuron activity and voting power is not searchable/viewable through the Dashboard)