FIL Builder Next Step Grants Application - Geist MicroCMS for filecoin

[debuggingfuture]

Grant Proposal: Geist MicroCMS for filecoin

Project Name:: Geist - MicroCMS for filecoin

Proposal Category: Developer and data tooling

Individual or Entity Name: Individual

Proposer: debuggingfuture (Vincent Lau)

Project Repo(s)

• https://github.com/fractaldotbox/geist-filecoin
• https://github.com/fractaldotbox/storacha-image-service
• https://github.com/fractaldotbox/geist-dapp-kit

Filecoin ecosystem affiliations:

• Lead Applicant (Vincent) is Filecoin Orbit Ambadassor of Singapore and participant of PLDG Cohort #1
• Other team members are applicant for PLDG Cohort #2

(Optional) Technical Sponsor:

Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?:
Yes

1. What is your project and what problem does it solve? (max 100 words)

We propose Geist - an open-source, self-hostable MicroCMS for Filecoin integration. The CMS will enable both technical and non-technical teams to collaborate using on-chain access criteria and a no-code editor. Teams can create structured, programmable datasets on Filecoin for website publishing and applications/AI agents consumption.

New modular Layer-2 solutions like Akave and Storacha enable tailored, scalable solutions with enhanced programmability, supporting features like onchain data lakes and decentralized DAO authentication. We see developers need new tools and middlewares to leverage these capabilities for new collaboration models in web3 and integrating the broader AI ecosystems.

2. How is Filecoin used in this project?

At this project, filecoin is the destinated storage layer for content and data.

• Filecoin serves as on-chain data lake to support various integrations within the ecosystems, providing predicable, cost-effective data storage that adapt to typical enterprise need of hot / cold achive storage via Akave.
• With the decentralized and incentivized nature, it is a particular fit for Agents to discover economical opportunities on the dataset that wasnt possible before.
• At the CMS, there will be No-code editor to create structured content, similar to typical Headless CMS such as Contentful/Sanity/Strapi. This incldues file upload widgets that can directly upload files to filecoin via lighthouse/storacha/akave sdk.
• At the end-users published UI, file upload widgets culd accept end-user contribution on data. This is especially useful for datadao scenarios.
• Non-technical teams will be able to publish data onto decentrlaized storage easily and all these tools are made easy to deploy

3. How will you improve your project with this grant? What steps will you take to meet this objective?

As scope of general CMS could be large, this project aims to create a functional MVP that can better understand user need and technical feasibility, and integrates existing solution whenever possible.

The team has experimented with relevant ideas in hackathons and awarded prizes (refer to section below), and has also developed building blocks during PLDG Cohort 1

A proof of concept is developed earlier --- Storacha Image Service
is an open source mini site that supports Storacha's UCAN Delegated upload flow, empower crowdsourcing data form end-users after authentication.

With this grant the team will extend

• Role based access control (RBAC) base on on-chain criteria

  • EAS attestation, token-gating conditions can be configured to generate UCAN and control content governance.

• No-code Editor for Programmable Structured, Embeddable data (Rich Text)

• Simple Deployment and Publishing

  • Support self host (as docker) and scripts to deploy to selected service such as render.com
  • Deploy structured data, static websites to filecoin and optionally cloudflare pages / Vercel

Number	Grant Deliverable	Briefly describe how you will meet deliverable objectives	Timeframe (within 3 months)
1.	No-code editor	Develop No-code editor to create structured data and upload to filecoin	Wk1-Wk4
2.	Access control with on-chain criteria	Develope Dashboard and data api to allow team to configure and collaborate with different roles base on on-chain criteria	Wk5-Wk8
3.	Deployment and Publishing	Develop Scripts and showcase to deploy and publishto various targets	Wk8-Wk12

4. What is the total amount of this grant request?

$10k

5. Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

We're targeting content teams and DAOs at web3 that would like to leveage new capability from filecoin (as in akave), or to engage the community to co-create datasets

For early adoption, we will make use of the MicroCMS to curate some key and engaging datasets as showcase. HTTP Cat Service is on of the example we created using the current implementation.

We also aims to work with partners to create localized versions of website, so they are able to experiment the new tech stack without bottleneck at existing techstack.

We aims to create a flywheel by providing free tier which hosted sites or processed assets are water marked to attract new clients.

6. If accepted, do you agree to share monthly project updates in this Github Issue until the project described here is complete?

Yes

7. Does your proposal comply with our Community Code of Conduct?

Yes

8. Links and submissions

• If your project began at an event or hackathon, have you submitted it for relevant prizes in the ecosystem? If so, please share the event name and a link to your hackathon submission(s)
  The team has prototyped and experimented with the idea at multiple events

• ETHGlobal Singapore - Finalist

  • Geist, Trustless CMS for DAO
  • https://ethglobal.com/showcase/geist-x3fur

• ETHGlobal Bangkok - Protocol Labs Akave 2nd place

  • Tuk Tuk to the Moon, Web3 patrenon, DataDao tools for creators
  • https://ethglobal.com/showcase/tuk-tuk-to-the-moon-fwn9j

• ETHGlobal Scaling Ethereum 24 - Finalist, Filecoin Runner Up

  • Ethereum Localization Service - DataDAO to crowdsource data for localization
  • https://ethglobal.com/showcase/ethereuml10nservice-v65cs

Additional questions:

• For each team member(s), please list name, email, Github account, and role in the project.
• How did you learn about this grant type program?

We learnt about the grant from PLDG. Below are Memebers of the team.

Vincent Lau

Role: Lead Developer
Twitter: @debuggingfuture
Github: @debuggingfuture
Email: [email protected]

Justin Lau

Role: Developer
Twitter: @justintclau
Github: justin-lau
Email: [email protected]

Ken Yiu

Role: Developer
Twitter: @beanbigdev
Github: kenyiu
Email: [email protected]

Richard Zhang

Role: Developer
Twitter: @rikkusan30
Github: metalboyrick
Email: [email protected]

[ErinOCon]

Hi @debuggingfuture Thank you for your interest in our grants program! We will review your proposal and will contact you with any questions on this thread.

To review details regarding our program process and timeline, check out the “How to Apply and Review Timeline” section of our ReadMe. Please note that the standard timing of our review was paused starting December 21st and kicked off again today.

If you have specific updates or questions for our team in the meantime, please contact [email protected].

[ErinOCon]

@debuggingfuture Before we kick our review off, can you confirm the requested grant amount for this project?

[debuggingfuture]

@debuggingfuture Before we kick our review off, can you confirm the requested grant amount for this project?

$10k (sorry missed above, updated)

[trruckerfling]

@debuggingfuture sounds cool! structured datasets will be very useful. The above describes publishing these datasets to filecoin, but what about dataset retrieval to use in applications (e.g. websites, which require quick retrieval)?

[debuggingfuture]

@debuggingfuture sounds cool! structured datasets will be very useful. The above describes publishing these datasets to filecoin, but what about dataset retrieval to use in applications (e.g. websites, which require quick retrieval)?

very good question --- consider below 3 scenarios

1. (already in) supporting gateway of choice for files uploaded via storacha https://docs.storacha.network/how-to/retrieve/

2. Adapting to application hot cache from the data lake / source of truth

• a) Encapsulated in build process. e.g.storacha-image-service retrieve assets during astro's build process (designed to output mostly-static site) and developer is able to control the final retrieval edge (e.g. deploy onto server / cloudflare pages etc)
• b) more directly, we could create adapters for exporting data to commonly used services e.g. cloudflare D1 / Durable objects

3. Create plugins for customized retrieval proxy/endpoint for access control / transformation base on other open source stack or paid options

• https://docs.lighthouse.storage/lighthouse-1/how-to/encryption-features/access-control-node
• https://imgproxy.net/

[trruckerfling]

2 sounds very viable (all 3 are good options). Thanks!

One more question pls, can you share the plan for user adoption of microcms (including testing for user experience)?

[debuggingfuture]

the plan for user adoption of microcms (including testing for user experience)?

To build on top of the adoption section

5. Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

We're targeting content teams and DAOs at web3 that would like to leveage new capability from filecoin (as in akave), or to engage the community to co-create datasets

For early adoption, we will make use of the MicroCMS to curate some key and engaging datasets as showcase. HTTP Cat Service is on of the example we created using the current implementation.

We also aims to work with partners to create localized versions of website, so they are able to experiment the new tech stack without bottleneck at existing techstack.

We aims to create a flywheel by providing free tier which hosted sites or processed assets are water marked to attract new clients.

1. 3 of the team members are enrolled onto PLDG cohort 2, which we plan to collaborate with tech partners so besides contributing the core open source stack, we can use the microCMS to build show cases for their preferred use cases, to leverage the distribution for a win win situation

2. We're attempting to dogfood the CMS and build an agent collaboration showcase during Ethdenver Buildathon. (Default to the idea of Ethereum Localization Service we prototyped before -- think AI agents collaborate to translate and persist the structured data). This should help us to seek feedback from broader audience.

[trruckerfling]

Adding on an idea - it will be great to keep iterating on this across various hackathons. I really like the idea of tapping on other ecosystem's AI agents to integrate with microCMS and bring out the Filecoin value to other ecosystems