Committee Grant #003 - Staging Labs

*RFP response Proposal Champion: Christian Montoya

Project Name: Staging Labs

What request is this project responding to? Security Solutions

Project Description / Executive Summary: Staging Labs’ Snap safeguards crypto wallets from phishing attacks and malicious transactions.

Project Goals: Why: The goal of this grant is to create a Snap that allows users to protect their wallets by automatically transferring their assets from their main wallet to a secure vault/backup wallet. This transfer process would be triggered in the event of a phishing attack or the signing of a malicious transaction. By doing so, we can significantly reduce Fund Loss Incidents (FLI's) for MetaMask, provide its users with peace of mind, and address one of the primary obstacles to the mainstream adoption of crypto.

How: The Snap will be designed to move assets from a primary wallet to a vault/backup wallet when user specified detection thresholds are activated. A threshold is any type of high-level logic or behavior that is enforced by our system to initiate an automatic backup process. Initially, users will be able to apply thresholds based on common banking controls, such as a $100 daily transaction limit. In the future, we will be bringing automatic thresholds by partnering with machine learning detection protocols like [Forta.org] to widen our detection scheme.

In regards to the responsibilities of each team, Staging Labs will be responsible for developing and designing the solution under the product/project management guidance of the MetaMask Snaps team.

Target Milestones: Milestone 1 (Secure service): [COMPLETE] Create Microservices (API, Daemon, Database) a. Host an internal API that will be used to turn the service on/off and set threshold values from users. b. Host internal daemon that real-time scans user wallets, applies thresholds, kicks off a front-running back-up transaction for the user . c. Create network I/O heuristics to kick-off a backup transaction with ≥= 90% success rate d. Create secure cloud infrastructure to mitigate attack surfaces. e. Create a front-end demo for user end-to-end testing and feedback.

Milestone 2 (Demo MetaMask snap): [COMPLETE] a. Port front-end demo to MetaMask Snaps. b. Stylize front-end and user test for UX improvements.

Milestone 3 (Secure smart contract): [IN DEVELOPMENT] a. Create a smart contract that bundles multiple ERC-20 assets in batches and enforces decentralized principles by removing power from our centralized back-end service. b. Create a contract deployment scheme for future logic upgrades and state maintainability. c. Design multi party computation scheme for secure smart contract state data updates.

Milestone 4 (Finalized security auditing and investigation): a. Complete a final security audit to ensure the attack surface is minimized. b. Complete finalized testing to ensure we are meeting our performance metrics c. Complete user testing with Snaps before launch d. Marketing and preparation for public relation announcements.

Timeline: Given the current progress of the team and security-based product development, we are aiming for a launch within four months. This target launch includes a large buffer for our final security audit, so we can confidently provide users with safety and trust.

About Team: Jake (Co-founder, CTO) worked as a technical-lead and Senior Software Engineer at Sonos who specialized in distributed computing. He was the youngest engineer on track to be a Distinguished Engineer. He was also previously an engineer at Microsoft, holds multiple patents, and graduate of Honours Computer Science from McMaster University ‘18. He has been involved in the blockchain space since 2017 while initially interested in pursuing a PhD within distributed computing (specifically peer-to-peer networking).

Frankie (Co-Founder, CEO) is a experienced business and product leader who served as General Manager for Entrepreneur First in Singapore and Canada. During his tenure, he helped launched over 50 venture-backed companies, including crypto startups Merkle Science and Propine Capital. Prior to venture capital, Frankie was a product manager at three high-growth tech companies: LightSpeed POS (went public), TradeGecko (acquired by Intuit), and Holmusk (raised Series A+ funding).

Tai (Engineer): was previously a Director of Software at HelpWear (S17), as well as engineer at Ceridian and PointClickCare. Tai is a seasoned software engineer with a proven track record of success in leadership positions. At HelpWear, Tai was the founding engineer of their software stack and built his own team. He has extensive experience in full-stack web development including back-end systems development, testing operations, user experience, and user interface design.

Funding and Budget Request: We are requesting $35,000. $15,000 will cover Staging Labs' development costs, and the remaining $20,000 will be for a security audit before the public launch of the Snap.

Team Size & Funding Status: We’re a team of three, and raised a $1.1m USD pre-seed in Oct 2022. We’re backed by The General Partnership, Flourish Ventures, AlphaGrep, Longterm Ventures, scouts from a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and a group of experienced founders and angel-operators from companies like Anchorage Digital, Coinbase, Chainalysis, Algorand, Quicknode, Blockdaemon, Discord, and more.

What specific software license does the grantee intend to publish under? Works that are developed for this snap by Staging Labs will be open sourced under MIT, Apache 2.0, or similar license.

What is the grantee's legal status and vendor information? We are incorporated in the United States(Delaware C-Corp), our corporate address is: 382 Northeast 191st Street, Miami, FL 33179, United States

Does the grantee agree that they'll open source all code produced as a result of a successful grant application? Yes

Other Information / Relevant Links / Supporting Documents: We've run an (on-chain) demo of our alpha with 70+ users, would be happy to walk the Snaps team through it. Website: https://www.staginglabs.io/ Pitch Deck (from Sept 2022): https://docsend.com/view/nqtztsgqw5rdd9j2