Grants Proposal #005 - CASA

Chain Agnostic Standards Alliance MetaMask Grants DAO Proposal Proposal Champions: Erik Marks, Olaf Tomalka

What category does this project fall under? Community, Standards & Coordination

Project Name: Chain Agnostic Standards Alliance (C.A.S.A.)

Project Description / Executive Summary: The Chain Agnostic Standards Alliance’s primary function is to facilitate the editing, publication, implementation and adoption of chain-agnostic and not just cross-chain but cross-VM specifications for moving forward the decentralized engineering space as a whole. This primary function entails many secondary functions: a publication engine for the specifications (chainagnostic.org), support for tangentially-related cross-chain public goods (e.g. chainlist.org), structuring and archiving discussion around the specifications, potentially supporting with bounties or retroactive funding open-source development of libraries and sample implementations, hosting in-person events at conventions where many contributors gather, and other ongoing support functions. MetaMask Snaps and WalletConnect are already relying on CAIP standards as a core dependency to structure their implementations.

Project Goals: A successful CASA would mean a healthy environment for cross-chain development, where many previously one-chain or one-VM wallets, dapps, and infrastructure providers connecting the two can branch out into a truly composable and chain-agnostic future for decentralized engineering. More concretely, that means 1.) more Chain-Agnostic Improvement Proposals (CAIPs) being ratified, 2.) more CASA interfaces being built on across communities, 3.) more namespace-specific “profiles” and educational documentation in the Chain-Agnostic Namespaces (CANs, at https://namespaces.chainagnostic.org), and 4.) a more impactful presence for CASA in the decentralized engineering community.

More concretely still, that means shorter times from authoring to ratification or official abandonment/rejection, more professional publication and maintenance of any registries and supporting documentation, and more attendance at period in-person events. The responsibilities from the MM team are just to provide timely input and participation when CAIP and CAN authoring and editing touches on matters where MetaMask is a strategic interlocutor with which alignment is important to the success of that CAIP or CAN.

Target Milestones: CASA would like to have a public, on-chain budget (ideally denominated in USDC or DAI) operated by a multi-sig controlled by its Board before 1Dec, so that it can start hiring for one or more part-time supporting/stewardship roles that would commence 1Jan. Thereafter, we are looking to achieve continuity and consistency as a forum and public good rather than milestone-based achievements, although some public-facing products like explainers on youtube, tutorials, and appearances on podcasts/vidcasts could of course be milestoned as those functions came online.

Timeline: CASA is already in production with only voluntary labor-power and a donations-only budget. Productionizing could happen quite quickly-- basically, as quick as hiring can happen.

About Team: The interim Executive Director (and willing half-time Executive Director after 1Jan, budget allowing) of the CASA is Juan Caballero, who previously worked at Centre, the USDC governance subsidiary of Circle and Coinbase (centre.io), Spruce Systems (spruceid.com), the Decentralized Identity Foundation (identity.foundation), and has participated (as both grantee and grantor) on various NGI projects in Brussels. The Board as currently constituted consists of the founders/executives of Wallet Connect, Spruce, Ceramic, Fission, Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask and is managed through a multisig Gnosis wallet. All of these are considered key stakeholders authoring CAIPs and building open-source cross-chain infrastructure based on them. It is assumed this group will grow with time, in multiple of 2 so that the executive director can always break ties in multisigs and controversial votes. Support personnel who have stepped forward to assume remunerated low-commitment roles facilitating publication, code review, chainlist.org maintenance, and meeting archiving include Naveen Mishra (SuperKey, Bank of Hodlers, Crowdraising.co), Sebastian Posth (iscc.codes, NISO/ISO, if(is)), and others.

Funding and Budget Request: 30K/quarter with initial grant for 6 months Infrastructure (including github, zoom, etc): $1K Treasurer oversight stipend: $3K Events: $2K Bounties and software development: $5K Support staff: $10K Exec Director stipend: $9K

What specific software license does the grantee intend to publish under? All core standards (CAIPs, CANs) are released under CC0 license, with exceptions allowed for auxiliary projects by petition where other SDOs are involved. MIT-0 for software where appropriate, but dual-license with Apache-2 where member orgs donating time or finished code can document a compelling justification for doing so.

What is the grantees legal status and vendor information? The organization's interim "Board" is currently registered as a Gnosis SAFE on Ethereum Mainnet at 0xEDA75C4e519FD27d7d28B7F20be407435fb74e2d , and prefers on-chain transfers for all funds. However, should an incorporated entity be required for legal purposes, the interim E.D. also operates a “German LLC” should that kind of legal footprint be needed.

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: https://github.com/ChainAgnostic/CASA#members

Supplementary Comments from MM Snaps Team: Relationship with CASA - MetaMask Snaps is using CASA standards in production, and will be using more of them as time goes on. We work with CASA on a week to week basis on administrators, editorial and technical tasks.We’ve met with the main operational person, Juan, multiple times over the past conferences to discuss the future of CASA. This allowed us to gain a seat at “The Board” of the alliance, represented as being one of the Gnosis MultiSig smart-contract signers. CASA has been applying for other grants including Ethereum Foundation. We expect CASA to use that MultiSig for all resource allocations with sub-accounts for each grant to easier track incoming and outgoing flows for each.