UnitedBloc - Treasury Proposal for Q2/Q3 2024

Abstract - UnitedBloc is a group of community collators who have been actively involved with Moonbeam since the early testnet phase. In early 2023, we introduced our public RPC service for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase Alpha. This initiative rapidly gained traction within the user and developer community, with the RPC serving over 5 billion requests in 2H2023 across all three chains. Calls have remained steady over the past few months, with a slight decline in February, likely due to markets remaining fairly static.

On October 3rd UnitedBloc was selected by the Moonbeam Treasury Council as one of the supported RPC providers for Q4 2023 and Q1-Q3 2024.

Motivation - Our first objective is to foster Moonbeam’s growth, it’s crucial for developers to have seamless access to top-tier RPC services. Our free public RPC service serves as a stepping stone, supporting new developers as they launch and expand their projects. No signup. No accounts or accounting, just point the app to a UB endpoint and go. If at any point the project RPC requirements exceed our capacity, we’ll guide them toward commercial service providers. Our second objective is to facilitate the RPC needs of non-profit endeavors. If community focused non-profits ever need more RPC than our public service provides, we will work with them to meet the need.

Project Overview and Team Experience - UnitedBloc members excel in Linux administration, allowing us to deploy robust servers. Each member organization takes responsibility for deploying and maintaining their individual RPC servers. This approach leverages our collective expertise for a decentralized network architecture.

Overall Cost - This proposal encompasses combined operational costs for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase Alpha for Q2 2024. The total requested amount per quarter is $10,800 (Q3 submitted later date), and we request 12,203.39 GLMR ($6,480 USD) and 189.08 MOVR ($4,320 USD) in a 60/40 split using a TWAP 30D of $0.5310 for GLMR and of $22.8473 for MOVR, as of March 29th (CoinGecko data).

Metrics

Combined WS + HTTP RPC Calls

December 2023

~982,000,000

January 2024

~ 972,100,000

February (MTD 26th Feb 2024)

~ 768,500,000

Quarterly Total 1,741,582,000

Use of Treasury Funds - As community collators reliant on community delegations, we have launched the RPC service to give back, operating with a non-profit focus. This grant covers our infrastructure costs for the RPC service across Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase Alpha, including the provision of boot nodes for all three networks. It excludes any margin or profit for UnitedBloc.

Specifications - The UnitedBloc RPC service encompasses four regions: North and South America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. In December the service responded to nearly 1 billion calls across all three networks. We employ global DNS load balancing to efficiently route users to UnitedBloc servers in their respective regions. We also include eth_getLogs at no additional costs across all 3 networks. Within each region, OpenResty enhances RPC requests with additional load balancing and optimization. When demand surges, we promptly adjust by adding more servers or specific services. Our design is thus scalable, flexible, and cost effective.

We provide our endpoints at the following addresses:

https://moonbase.unitedbloc.com

wss://moonbase.unitedbloc.com

https://moonriver.unitedbloc.com

wss://moonriver.unitedbloc.com

https://moonbeam.unitedbloc.com

wss://moonbeam.unitedbloc.com

Steps to Implement - Our public RPC service has been fully operational, serving the community since early 2023.

The full proposal can be found here: UB Moonbeam RPC proposal - Retroactive Funding Proposal for Q3 2023 - Google Docs 4

UnitedBloc Linktree: unitedbloc | Twitter | Linktree

- Problem Statement: Providing top-tier RPC services for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase Alpha to support developers and non-profit endeavors.
- Significance: UnitedBloc aims to offer seamless RPC services without the need for signups or accounts, fostering growth and supporting community-focused projects.
- Proposed Solution: UnitedBloc members will deploy and maintain individual RPC servers to meet the RPC needs of the community across different regions.
- Expected Outcomes: Requesting $10,800 per quarter for Q2 2024 to cover operational costs, with a focus on scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness in providing RPC services.

#25 [Proposal: MB25] UnitedBloc Q2 2024 RPC Services

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