1 year of ZECpages servers

Applicant background

I, Michael Harms, am a full stack web developer. I built ZECpages.com a year ago. I made zecmailer.com before that, as a way to streamline anonymous publishing.

ZECpages is an example of what Balaji Srinivasan has called "Blockchain MVC", a full stack app built on a global data store. For ZECpages, this means a set of encrypted memos associated with one view key. This makes the data that powers ZECpages durable, auditable, and open.

ZECpages has a few core features:

• A directory of Zcash users, contact info, and their z-addresses.
• A message board where posts, likes, and replies are made via encrypted Zcash memo
• A substack-esque subscription/publishing platform. Users can "subscribe" to other users for .05 ZEC. Users can publish to subscribers using a simple interface that sends z2z memos to all their subscribers.

Motivation and overview

To be 💯 with you, I want to feel out this weird grant process in a lower-stakes situation where I'm confident in what I'm asking for. I'm only asking for compensation for the quantifiable devops infra costs/grunt work of ZECpages.

Technical approach

This is all set up. I'll describe my humble aws config below, but there's not much to describe here. I'll keep running the boxes and the app.

Execution risks

ZECpages/ZEC usage might outscale my server setup. Would be a nice problem to have. In this case, I'd be ok with upgrading and shouldering the costs in the short term, keeping open the possibility of a future grant if added costs are large enough to justify it.

Downsides

Centralization of costs. right now I pay the bills. If the block rewards pay it, that's one fewer financial actor, and by definition more centralized.

Evaluation plan

I'd be happy with 99.9%+ ZECpages uptime.

Tasks and schedule

Day 1: The app keeps running Day 366: The app is still running

Budget and justification

ZECpages runs 3 ec2 boxes:

• Large instance + Extra Storage - ZECpages's Lightwalletd instance: lightwalletd.zecpages.com:443
• Large - Dedicated wallet job server (daemon listens for new posts, pays users who receive likes, manages subscription repayments and publishing)
• Medium - The app server itself

ZECpages also maintains a signed warrant canary, updated monthly. (zecpages.com/about - scroll down) Pulling from Nighthawk's lightwalletd proposal, I'll call this $150/month.

Total: $550/month AWS costs - $300/month Devops Support/Maintenance - 2 hr/month * $50/hr = $100/month Warrant Canary - $150/month

550 * 12 months = $6600 for 1 year