Hello Nabarun,
The committee has reviewed your proposal, however, we need additional time to discuss a few details. Unfortunately, this means that we will not have an answer for you by the end of today but rest assured we are working diligently to get one finalized.
Regards,
Kino on behalf of the Sia Foundation and Grants Committee
Total Size per product: 9MB (approx)
This might be a bit early but a quick word on a technicality: Sia uses a chunk size of 4MB so a 9MB object stored on Sia would mean payiing for 12MB (3 chunks) or 33% more than your actual data stored.
Two ways to solve this:
@jesta030, Thank you for your feedback and recommendations.
We are currently addressing the issue of image compression and aiming to reduce the image size to a range of 2MB to 4 MB.
We will be storing a substantial amount of product metadata, with a significant increase expected in the second phase. Therefore, paying an additional 33% for storage that exceeds our actual data usage is not a practical solution.
Once again, thank you.
@Kinomora @steve, We would like to request a reduction in the budget.
We have already accomplished over 70% of Milestone 1 development. Now one upfront payment of $30,000, with three follow-up payments of $25,000 will work for us.
The total requested budget now is: $1,05,000
Hey Autify team! Thanks for your proposal and extensive engagement with the community.
At this time, the committee has not approved your proposal but is instead requesting more information and clarity on the following sections:
You mentioned that you will be keeping development closed-source until project completion. This is an abnormal ask for the committee and requires further consideration on our side. We will update you when possible, though it may not be until our next meeting on April 4th.
Your risk assessment describes the risk to the industry but not specifically the project. We would appreciate more consideration on this point. There’s no shortage of possible risk vectors for projects these days - and we certainly don’t need an exhaustive list - but realistic consideration of risk for this specific grant would be appreciated.
It appears as if the proposal is requesting a budget to complete the entirely of the project. This is a bit concerning as the project has already received $1.9 million in funding from external sources. Can you clarify what the current funding has allowed Autify to produce and if the project can be completed in the absence of grant funding from the Foundation?
Due to the large funding received so far, and the current state of the project, the committee is leaning toward only supplying grant funds for the Sia integration portion of the project. But we are interested to hear clarity on this topic if we are misunderstanding your current situation.
There’s certainly a lot of potential here for your project, and we’re excited to see any updates you can provide.
Regards,
Kino on behalf of the Sia Foundation and Grants Committee
@Kinomora. Thank you for your response. Let me clarify all the questions one by one.
We are committed to making our products open source and are currently exploring the best approach to do so. We worked with B2B and enterprise customers and help them with very critical business processes. So, finding the right way to open source our codes is very important.
Below are some of the risks that we have identified.
Security Risks: Blockchain technology is still relatively new and untested in the supply chain management field. It is essential to ensure that our product codes are robust enough to prevent unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security risks.
Privacy Risks: We should also protect the privacy of all users and the information they share with us. Every sensitive data stored must be encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.
Legal and Regulatory Risks: As a supply chain management platform, our product may be subject to various legal and regulatory requirements. We must ensure that our platform complies with all relevant laws and regulations, such as data protection regulations, anti-money laundering laws, and others.
Operational Risks: There are risks associated with the day-to-day operations of the platform, such as server outages, software bugs, or system errors. To mitigate these risks, we should implement appropriate backup and disaster recovery procedures, conduct regular maintenance checks, and perform software updates.
Adoption Risks: Blockchain technology is still emerging and not yet widely adopted. To gain widespread adoption of our platform, we must ensure that it meets the needs of our target customers.
Our startup is developing various large and complex products, including a supply chain management platform, supply chain traceability, sustainability track and trace, vendor aggregator platform, API platform, and B2B cross-border payment system.
We have been working on the development of the supply chain management and vendor aggregator platform for over a year. The milestones we submitted for this grant are only for the Supply chain and Sustainability traceability features and not for the entire project.
Our startup was awarded a milestone-based grant of $400K 1.5 years ago and raised $1.5M in VC funding 8 months ago. We have already invested a huge amount of funding on research and development of the supply chain management & vendor aggregator platforms. We have been diligently building our products for over a year, conducting thorough research and testing multiple technology stacks due to their complexity.
During the initial phase of our product development, we created several proofs-of-concept (POCs) and minimum viable products (MVPs) and worked with B2B companies and the Government of India. Building a large product from the ground up in this industry takes much more time and effort compared to developing a simple dApp.
Our current limitations restrict us from focusing on only a few specific areas, and launching our products would take a longer time than we desire. With this grant funding, we can expedite our efforts and development and lunch multiple solutions quickly. And that’s the reason we are exploring alternative funding options and strategies to secure the necessary resources and accelerate our growth trajectory.
As mentioned before, we still utilize centralized storage such as S3 for certain products. Our goal is to integrate Sia infra for all our products (Supply chain management, supply chain traceability, sustainability track and trace, vendor aggregator platform and API platform) within the next three months.
So, the funding we are asking it’s not only to store supply chain traceability data on Sia but to integrate Sia as the default infra for all our current and future products. The potential here is huge for the ecosystem.
I hope I was able to answer all your questions.
@Kinomora, I would like to give you a recent update about open-sourcing our development.
After consulting with our tech team, we have decided to adopt the AGPL license. All of our development work part of this grant will be completely open source.
We believe that this approach aligns with our commitment to transparency and collaboration, and we are excited to contribute to the wider community of open-source software development.
Thanks Autify team for your updates. The committee has approved this proposal!
We were pleased to see your commitment to open-source the project under the AGPL license, a more thoughtful list of risks, and more information regarding the budget concerns.
The committee has recommended that each team be reminded of the importance of gauging progress against milestones. The Foundation reserves the right to hold further funding if sufficient progress is not made.
Please provide an email address that we can use to reach your team and begin the grants onboarding process!
Regards,
Kino on behalf of the Sia Foundation and Grants Committee
@Kinomora, Thank you so much for the update.
You can reach us at nabarun@autify.network for the grant onboarding process.
Please let me know if you need any other details.
@Kinomora, Could you kindly provide us with an estimated timeline for the completion of the onboarding process?
Having a timeline in place would allow us to better plan our developments.
Hi Nabarun! Check your inbox, we’ve got the email out 
Please include a summary of work accomplished, what you’re working on next, and links to any code written. Thanks!
If you are unsure what it should look like, take a look at examples from other projects for previous months such as Sia Satellite and Lume.
@Nabarun Your Monthly Progress Report is past-late now. Are you having trouble writing this report ? Please feel free to reach out to us here on the forums or the discord if you need assistance.
@Kinomora, I’m sorry for the delay in responding. I was dealing with an urgent situation that prevented me from replying.
Please find some of our recent updates till now.
We completed the UI/UX design prototype of the supply chain traceability platform and are currently in the process of migrating the future to our main supply chain management dashboard [Dashboard URL]
We adopted ERC-2535: Diamonds, which are modular smart contract systems that can be upgraded/extended after deployment and have virtually no size limit. GitHub - autifynetwork/Autify-Smart-Contracts
We published a comprehensive blog on ERC-2535: Diamonds standard as well. [Blog URL]
We implemented ERC4337: Account Abstraction to deliver a seamless web2-like user onboarding and experience [URL].
ERC-4337 brings a wealth of advantages to the table, including effortless account recovery, streamlined transactions, and gas abstraction. Also, we partnered with Biconomy.
We completed the password-less authentication using Magic Auth, the verification system (KYB Module) to whitelist the brands using the platform. [P.S. Codes of this development will be available on our GitHub sometime]
Autify Network has been named a TOP 25 WEB3 INNOVATOR by YourStory Media & BuidlersTribe.
We partnered with Stellar for cross-border payment development and were selected for Stellar community fund awards.
We have crossed over 200+ signups for our exclusive upcoming Beta launch in just 30 days since our launch.
Our product team has embarked on a global journey, engaging with small and medium businesses to understand their unique challenges and demonstrate how Autify Network can provide effective solutions.
Our development team is actively working on integrating Sia storage into the supply chain management module, and we are on track to finalize the process by the end of next month.
Thanks for the detailed progress report Nabarun!
Due to the proximity of this report to the end of May, you don’t need to submit another in the beginning of June. You can submit your next progress report at the beginning of July, detailing your work for the end of May and all of June.
Thanks,
Kino on behalf of the Sia Foundation and Grants Committee