Summary

This proposal is dedicated to the launch of beta.1inch.io - platform for testing web3 projects aimed to ensure quality of projects and skill growth of participants with rewards for their work. The xcrwd.io team is seeking funding of $150K. Portion of the requested funding is intended to pay for the development, the work of the community manager, and the closure of project needs. Part of the requested amount will be directed to rewards for platform contributors.

The platform is actually a synergy of 3 main components: the bugtracker, expert web3 QA community and education portal. That’s all directed to help the web3 projects to increase their products quality with the power of beta testing.

Abstract

We are building a crowd and beta testing platform, designed to involve web3 users to actively participate in the testing and release processes. At its core the platform has a powerful bug tracker where users can submit reports. Approved reports are rewarded, recognizing the valuable contributions of our testing community.

With receiving funding we will be glad to invite 1inch.io as one of the flagship web3 products that will be the first product available for beta-testers that will allow us to set up our platform.

With your support, we aim to transform the platform into an expert and full-fledged testing community that not only benefits from testers feedback but also actively contributes to the advancement of web3 technology. Platform underscores the principle that all valuable work should be compensated, and we are committed to ensuring that our dedicated testing community is properly rewarded for their contributions. When testers submit reports, they earn points (after report validation) that could be spent for rewards from the showcase.

Motivation

beta.1inch.io (by xcrwd team) is a beta and crowd testing platform that addresses a crucial issue in web3 products: the stability and smooth release processes of decentralized applications (dApps). It solves the problem of ensuring that these drops are free from vulnerabilities, bugs, and security flaws. This can be achieved through the platform's provision of a QA community that is skill-confirmed. By involving a global community of testers from experienced web3 users, the platform enhances the overall reliability and quality of web3 projects by utilizing a global community of testers from experienced web users. There is a shortage of web3 QA engineers, but users are already skilled enough to assist projects with testing and releases for rewards. The 1inch (and 1inch DAO), like other web3 protocols, can benefit from xcrwd.io platform in the following ways:

• Enhanced security: by utilizing crowdsourced QA, the 1inch can identify and address bugs of all specter, from UI to smart contracts security;
• Protocol improvements: feedback and insights from the xcrwd.io community can lead to valuable improvements in the 1inch protocols, making them more user-friendly, secure, and competitive;
• Motivated beta testers community would help with increasing 1inch products quality and stability;
• Internal 1inch product teams would get useful and detailed feedback from beta-testers and experts about product issues - structured reports with steps, screenshots/casts, logs and other useful additional information;
• Stable releases with minimum issues and boost for delivering complex features to users - by beta and crowd testing flow for releases;
• Crowd testing around the world: user-stories testing, corner cases testing, A/B testing, special tasks for beta-testers to check necessary for 1inch team cases at time, testing on a plenty number of devices, conditions, regions and environments, collecting feedback about features and other cases from community of beta testers, etc…;
• Community engagement: collaborating with xcrwd.io fosters community engagement and trust. It demonstrates the 1inch commitment to transparency and security, which can attract more users and developers to the ecosystem;
• Potential refund to DAO in future (after adding new projects to platform);
• Potential hiring for QA (Dev, etc.) engineers from platform in future;

Specification

The platform will provide the power of crowd and beta testing to web3 products releases and the first one will be the 1inch itself. To do this we will implement the keys features:

• The platform should support user registration through an acceptance testing, web3 authentication, and profile management:
• Access to platform by “web3” auth: SIWE (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4361)
• Smooth acceptance flow: Entrance verification for new users; Users can claim fee tokens only after the probation period.
• The ability to create, manage, and provide testing products to testers;
• A built-in bug tracking system to report, track, and manage issues found during testing.
• The claim contract to issue tokens for paying fee during tests based on 1inch merkle-distribution set of contracts (https://github.com/1inch/merkle-distribution);
• The showcase where testers can spend earned points for rewards;
• The space for communication and collaboration among testers and moderators;
• To avoid abuse users will lose access to the platform if there are abusive actions or no activity;
• In future we will add an NDA procedure for experts QA who would receive early-access to inner products and features;
• Also in future we will add ERC-5192 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5192) SBT expert verification;

Looking ahead, we envision the implementation of SBT (ERC-5192) as a means to further empower our users. These tokens will serve as a digital badge of honor, containing records of successful bug reports and showcasing their growing QA skills. This innovative approach not only encourages active participation but also helps users build a portfolio of expertise within the web3 space.

Team

To date, the xcrwd.io core team includes:

• Danya (founder, pm, front-end): 8+ years as QA Engineer (fullstack); Worked in fields as UGC, social networks, e-commerce, O2O, telecom, foodtech, streaming and now web3; strong experience in developing and optimizing teamwork processes, and setting up release management; experience of leadership in small QA and dev teams; mentoring and educating interns and new employees. https://www.linkedin.com/in/xxai
• Max (smart contracts and backend developer): 3+ years as Blockchain engineer; Solidity, Rust, Node.js, Typescript, Substrate, Soroban; Develop production-ready DeFi products and backend infrastructure; Solo auditor at strongholdsec.io. https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-nabokov-4174221b0

And part-time contributors:

Full-stack developer (8+ years as Android & iOS Software Engineer with experience in Backend & Web. 3+ years of experience in management of teams); Frontend developer, (ex QA Engineer): 5 years as full-stack QA& AQA, 2 years in web3.

Roadmap

For now we have a demo for bugtracker app, and we are in progress with app version 1.0 (that includes frontend, backend, auth, smart-contract, etc. for production use).

Also we are in progress with a platform landing page, community space chats and acceptance tests for future contributors (beta-testers), and we are in touch with cyberacademy.dev founders and members as a first part of our education platform.

Resources:

• Landing: https://xcrwd.io/
• Demo: https://demo.xcrwd.io/
• App (alpha version): https://app.xcrwd.io/
• Claim smart contract: https://github.com/xcrwd/merkle-distribution
• Cyberacademy: https://cyberacademy.dev/

First phase:

In general: develop and release v1.0 platform app as beta.1inch.io and start build community till end of Q3 2024

• Development & Release: bugtracker, profile, reward shop, achievements & rating system; smart contract for claim native tokens for test (transactions fees); auth (SIWE: EIP-4361); Instruments for publishing education materials from partners (1inch, cyber academy, etc.);

• Acceptance: Create landing with information about platform capabilities; Acceptance tests for platform users; Set up chat & channel for community (telegram/discord); Initiate community building, finding/involvement members (beta-testers); Land first users (beta-testers) to platform;

• BD: Deliver and connect platform for 1inch products as a first project for testing;

Second phase:

In general: platform growth

• Development: Features and stability; Configure infrastructure for scaling - Prepare to add new 1inch products for testing (example 1inch mobile wallet, 1inch Portfolio, etc.)

• Product & Community: Gather a community of beta testers; Configure/stabilize processes of beta testing; Hire community manager;

Payment structure & costs

Breakdown of the costs by groups for the project duration (till end of 2024):

• First funding for rewards to beta-testers: $20k
• Platform maintenance: $130k - v1 deliver: backend, frontend & smart contract, design: $100k; Infrastructure and operational efficiency: $10k; Community building (community manager, articles, activities, etc.): $20k;
• Total: $150k USDC
• Receiving address: 0x42985e34d66b6FfbB1A8d67646c0b75c53938a4c

Rationale

Our research has shown that the majority of bug bounty programs focus on testing smart contracts and reviewing code for security issues, so the problem of zero-bug policies and an unsatisfactory user experience are not a top priority. At this point, platforms have a lot of issues such as: non-intuitive experience for new users, lack of community, unclear calculation of payments and impermanence in contributing for testers or white hackers. Platform’s priorities are to integrate into web3 product release processes, which will result in improved product quality on a regular basis. We aim to educate and transform newbies and IT engineers into experts in web3 QA...

To access the full proposal, check out the link below.