[Passed] Grant for maintaining a NuDroid server

[willy]

NuDroid v4 - Release Candidate now available for testing:

NuDroid v4 - Now available on Google Play

It allows to add two or more servers in case the primary server is not available. This provides redundancy when a secondary server is available (not part of this custodial grant).
It enables an user to assign their own back-end server and with that creating a completely trustless solution.

Hello people of Nu,

some of you might have realised already that it will be possible to add a second trusted server to verify blocks in the upcoming version of NuDroid (v4.)

Proposal RIPEMD160 hash: 4b20b2b43bac9c1e22edb18c4b8f871e9cfdbe7f

=##=##=##=##=##=## Custodian Hash starts with this line ##=##=##=##=##=##=

Custodial Address: BSTGvERBWS6vYhUKgTuUn8s9z3nsmYpS3x
Amount Requested: 300 NBT

I, willy, would like to run and maintain such a server.

I will run and maintain a dedicated NuDroid compatible server for 6 months after this grant passes on anton.coinerella.com.

For that, I require 50 NBT per month or 300 NBT for half a year, which will buy me a pretty good server and also pays for my maintenance work.

Planned server hardware:

CPU-Cores (Intel® Xeon® E5): 5RAM: 16 GB32 GB SSD Swap800 GB HDD1 TB traffic @ 200 MBit/s Location: Germany

SSL encryption for the server will be provided.

That hardware should be able to handle quiet a few SQL queries and is, to my mind, future-proof for the next 6 months.

The start of the six month term will be announced in this thread and may not be earlier than the day, this grant passes.

The continuation of this grant will be evaluated 14 days prior to the end of the six month term.

=##=##=##=##=##=## Custodian Hash ends with this line ##=##=##=##=##=##=

Verify. Use everything between and including the <custodianhash></custodianhash> tags.

Willy

[masterOfDisaster]

I’m sure that Nu very much appreciates your offer and I have no doubt that such a grant will pass in a very short time.

But I have a problem with the grant in the current version.
I don’t know how big the effort to install and maintain such a server is, but I think you might have to raise the fee.
Depending on your hourly rate and the monthly costs of the server this grant will only pay you a few hours per year.
While Nu can be happy to have generous offers (which I take your offer for), I doubt that this is the right way to make business.
Partners, customers and suppliers need be treated fair in order to develop a sustainable business.
300 NBT for renting and maintaining a server seems to cheap. If this server is meant to be provided in a sustainable way, 300 NBT per year might be insufficient.

What about keeping the 300 NBT in the grant, but offering server installation and 6 months of renting and maintenance?
After 6 months you draw a balance and make an offer for the continuation of the service.
A subsequent grant for the ongoing sever operation could follow based on the overview of efforts you had.
The remaining amount of the 300 NBT grant would be burnt or deducted from the next grant.

That way you could get a feeling for the amount of work and have a better basis for the calculation of the monthly costs.

I think that is more fair for you and Nu.
How does that sound?

I have another concern, which I’d like to address.
I think the domain name linked to the NuDroid server should be in control of Nu. In case the service needs to be continued by someone else, it would be unnecessary trouble for NuDroid users to adjust their server settings - in case the proposed domain name anton.coinerella.com couldn’t be used any longer.

[willy]

Thanks for your post mOD.

Of course I like your 50% time 100% grant approach. I don’t really know how much time it will need to maintain the server but setting it up is something I already did with the help of @MatthewLM. That setup process is quite easily reproducible.
I could evaluate how much time I’ll need in the first 6 month period and then act as you proposed (burning or deducting.)

I think the domain name linked to the NuDroid server should be in control of Nu.

How do you imagine this on a practical level? I wouldn’t really feel comfortable giving the responsibility of DNS control for the service I’m operating into other hands.

I also don’t think that changing servers once a year (only if I discontinue the operation) would be to much to ask. Given the current situation, I think using a domain name like xxx.nubits.com only increases dependency on the person in charge of the nubits.com DNS which is no real benefit in my eyes.

[masterOfDisaster]

nudroid.nu is still free

I wouldn’t really feel comfortable giving the responsibility of DNS control for the service I’m operating into other hands.

The person having DNS control over nudroid.nu could assign your server IP address to it - or any other server IP address in case the service would get moved, right?

…just trying to understand how this could work…

[willy]

The person having DNS control over nudroid.nu could assign your server IP address to it - or any other server IP address in case the service would get moved, right?

Yes. But to my mind this is adding an unnecessary variable to the equation willy = nudroid provider.

Edit: Btw: .nu domains don’t apply to WhoisGuard, which I’m not comfortable with. I don’t know how others in this community did it, but I’m not going to buy a domain with fake data.

[cryptog]

Nice initiative.
But is this necessary at this stage?
One criterion would be to see the traffic on the current server? (cc @Cybnate )

[masterOfDisaster]

But is this necessary at this stage?

Absolutely! It shows that other servers are not only said to be usable by NuDroid - @willy’s server shows that it actually works.
I would be very happy to see a guide to installing such a server.
Everybody who wants to keep a decent amount of money on the NuDroid should care about the integrity of the whole system.
External servers are out of one’s control.
That’s why using individual servers is so important!

[cryptog]

Absolutely! It shows that other servers are not only said to be used by NuDroid - @willy’s server shows that it actually works.

Right. I missed that. Basically you can decide to receive the blocks broadcasted by another node, increasing the integrity of the whole system. In that case, indeed, it would be useful.

[Cybnate]

The main reason I would support this draft grant is for resiliency. The current NuDroid server is just one server after all.Having another server supported by another member of the community only improves the resiliency even further.

The proposed server is more than adequate, the current server runs on a single CPU with just 1MB memory, but has adequate virtual memory from a fast SSD and some ‘special’ external caching.
Willy’s specified server should be very fast and it would be interesting to see the difference.

[willy]

I will let anton.coinerella.com run as a test phase and will put all this up for voting when I feel confident that the test server is running stable.

[willy]

After monitoring the server for three days and rebooting repeatedly, my required level of confidence in the software has been reached.

Everything is working smoothly and I’m ready to move this to the main server, once this grant passes.

anton.coinerella.com will continue to run until this grant passes and the switch to the new, dedicated server, should be seamless.

Thanks @MatthewLM for the great support.

[cryptog]

CPU-Cores (Intel® Xeon® E5): 5RAM: 16 GB32 GB SSD Swap800 GB HDD1 TB traffic @ 200 MBit/s Location: Germany

That is a very high performance server.
I think it is very important to show that Nu is serious about becoming the first decentralized currency on the Internet since I assume that a crypto is a not a currency if not stable.
For that we need to pay for services whose role are to to broadcast the Nu’s blockchain, including for NuDroid in a very reliable and fast way.
By the way, I feel that this kind of server should be also used for broadcasting for example the liquidity info.
Maybe this NuDroid server could be used for that too.

4b20b2b43bac9c1e22edb18c4b8f871e9cfdbe7f verified and voted.

[willy]

By the way, I feel that this kind of server should be also used for broadcasting for example the liquidity info.

I didn’t follow that discussion closely… all you want is a json with the current liquidity (ask/buy) that updates every minute?

That should be possible.

[masterOfDisaster]

I think both the liquidity information from the last block and the history of the liquidity can be important.
I’ve started to log both the current liquidity (most recent block) and the history of liquidity (liquidity each block, starting 1 day ago).
I’ve recognized some swings in this one single day.
Having a history or an average liquidity per last x blocks would assist decisions for park rate adjustments.

I’ve played with blocknotify to get the liquidityt information:

Broadcasting the liquidity info as a Web service

I've started to play with blocknotify to get the liquidity logged into a file each time a new block is found. Each new block overwrites the logged liquidity information. Effectively the log contains only the most recent liquidty. If the blockchain is not up-to-date this information is not accurate. To identify that the block height is reported as well. If a web service provides access to the data in that file via API it should be a start for a solution to the request. The script is located a…

Parsing the blockchain to get a full history is possible, but beyond my skill

[willy]

@assistant custodian vote BSTGvERBWS6vYhUKgTuUn8s9z3nsmYpS3x

[assistant]

Hi @willy

I couldn’t find the details for the Custodian Vote on BSTGvERBWS6vYhUKgTuUn8s9z3nsmYpS3x:

[willy]

The requested amount has been successfully granted, thank you all for your trust.

http://blockexplorer.nu/transactions/7f78b1d60bfc42f73857aa854f460f09b920615ccc39a01d828c8b52a0964c51

I’ll hold the launch of the shareholder paid server until the current issues with NuDroid are resolved:

NuDroid v4 - Now available on Google Play

Issue with NuDroid and most likely Nu2.0 There are sync issues with the new Nu2.0 clients with NuDroid. It can still sync with v1.2 clients. I'm contacting Matthew to work on a solution to this. We might need to install the new client on the server immediately, but I don't want to act without his advise as we have at least a workaround (pointing to trusted v1.2 client) to keep the wallet running. BTW the latest version of NuDroid is now on Google play.

[willy]

@MatthewLM pushed an update for NuDroid (4.1) on Google Play Store, which seems to work fine for me so far.

I’ll order and set-up the server shortly.