Small Grant: Wren

Grants Rejected
1

Project Name: Wren

Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal: Hammer Technologies LLC

Describe your project.

This goal of this project is to give the ecosystem a much needed FOSS, and tailored accounting tool for SC, as the options in the market are sub-optimal at best for Sia.

Right now to do any of this is rather manual, and if your going beyond simple send/receive, handling tracking of all the TX types Sia creates is a burden.

This grant request is to create a community maintained fork of GitHub - rotki/rotki: A portfolio tracking, analytics, accounting and management application that protects your privacy and perform an integration of Sia into it.

The project has added UXTO support in the form of Bitcoin, and based on this, there is a clear path to integrating Sia as an UXTO chain.

This would start with using siascan.com as a default explorer for query data, and could be evolved in the future if required, such as a local walletd.

To explain why I am requesting a fork rather then adding upstream… After governance discussions with the project, they requested their own funding to take ownership of any new integration, but saw no issue with an ecosystem creating their own fork.

That left me with two options:

  • Create a tax accounting application from zero targeting only SC, as a MVP, as a whole, and re-invent a lot of things.
  • Create a fork from a mature framework and add in Sia for the community.

So, to me, the smartest path is to create a fork and leverage existing work.

How does the projected outcome serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?

This grant will provide the needed tool for hosts, renters, and users to accurately track their wallet accounting and analytics for tax purposes and give the ecosystem a reliable FOSS tool for tax compliance with SC.

We cannot provide grants to residents of jurisdictions under increased FATF monitoring, those that have active OFAC sanctions, or those that fail our bank compliance tests. We also cannot provide grants if your payment bank account is located in those same locations. Please review the following list.

Are you a resident of any jurisdiction on that list? No

Will your payment bank account be located in any jurisdiction on that list? No

Grant Specifics

Amount of money requested and justification with a reasonable breakdown of expenses: $5,050

  • $4,600 - Developer fees for Derrick Hammer
  • $100 - 1 year Apple developer account for code signing
  • $350 - 1 year Windows code signing

What is the high-level architecture overview for the grant? What security best practices are you following? Please review our Development Guide for further details.

The existing app has the following:

Architecture

  • Layer 1: Frontend (User Interface)

    • Web-based user interface framework for desktop and web platforms
    • State management system for reactive data handling
    • Communication layer via REST and WebSocket protocols

  • Layer 2: Backend (Business Logic)

    • API handlers for request processing and real-time updates
    • Blockchain integration modules for multiple cryptocurrency networks
    • Exchange integration modules for centralized trading platforms
    • Accounting engine for tax calculations and financial tracking
    • Database layer for user data and asset information
    • Event system as core abstraction for all activities

  • Layer 3: Performance (Optimization)

    • Performance-critical components for heavy computation
    • Specialized service for database operations and intensive calculations

Security

  • Credential Management
    • Encrypted database storage
    • Electron safeStorage for passwords
    • No credentials in code or binaries
    • No seeds or key material will be stored, read-only for wallet addresses
  • Input Validation
    • API schemas with validation
    • Frontend form validation
    • Address and URL validation
    • Parameterized database queries
  • Secure Communication
    • HTTPS/TLS for all external APIs
    • Encrypted database sync
    • WebSocket encryption
  • Access Control
    • User authentication with passwords
    • OAuth 2.0 for third-party services
    • API endpoint authorization decorators
    • Database encryption tied to user credentials

This grant will add Sia into the system.

What are the goals of this small grant? Please provide a general timeline for completion.

  • In one month (due 3/25/26), I aim to:
    • Support decoding and tracking basic TX types (send/receive)
    • Support decoding and tracking all RHP4-related TX events
    • Ensure proper history recording of wallet transactions

Based on research, the framework already provides a complete UI system, and so UI integration of Sia is a minimal amount of glue.

Additionally, I will attempt to, if there is time, add support for SiaFunds tracking, but I will not consider that to be a milestone.

I will provide unsigned release binaries for the community on GitHub.

Post-grant completion per governance, I will create signed releases of the apps for the Sia community, and as such, any code signing approvals will not be considered a milestone.

Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:

  • Any architectural unknowns regarding the software or issues porting Sia TS code for transaction parsing into python.

Development Information

Will all of your project’s code be open-source? yes

Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.

Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports? Yes

Contact info

Email: [email protected]

2

I was asked for feedback by Derrick so I downloaded rotki and tried it a bit. I’m not familiar with alternatives to this app but I know some of my friends used some accounting app to import their transactions from exchanges. I mention this because some users on discord argued that existing apps cover their needs.

I don’t think so. SC is the blood of the network and not just a coin for traders. As such I find it very important to ensure that accounting/taxes are simple thing for the users.

I have only two things to mention:

  • if this grant gets approved, the app should be continuously tested with some of the Sia hosts and any issues and feedback should be addressed
  • I’m curious if this won’t need updates… accounting apps have these often as things change
1 Like
3

Hello, to answer this feedback:

  • I will always welcome any Sia ecosystem actor to provide feedback if a transaction is not being processed as expected.
  • I will be a user of the app as well, and will be maintaining the app to keep it in-sync with upstream releases.

I will, however, be clear, and repeat, that this app does not handle anything related to tax documentation in any jurisdiction. It will let you make sense of the flows of money, track and label things, link up the market prices from coingecko / coinmarketcap, see analytics, and overall allow you gather the structured data needed (CSV) to then use it with an accountant in whatever jurisdiction the user is in.

In short: the lowest common denominator that gives the baseline for using with tax compliance, and not getting into the legal stuff.

So based on that, the only updates for accounting that should be needed are Sia network changes that impact how things are tracked, anything from the upstream project Rotki, and any Sia community reports/feedback.

Having Sia support will enable the awareness of both SC as a basic asset, and all the RHP4 contract-related events to be tracking what is going on as a holder, a renter, or a hoster since all the activity will be seen as tax events in the USA as a minimum, and processing of that account data is needed to bring any Sia user sanity.

Kudos.

4

Thanks for your proposal to The Sia Foundation Grants Program.

After review, the Committee has decided to reject your proposal citing the following reasons:

  • The Committee does not agree with the proposed execution of this project of forking instead of pursuing an integration option for your own data source, especially given the maintenance required.

We’ll be moving this to the Rejected section of the Forum.