Openserum SRM Grant Proposal (Market Data)

Grants
#1

Serum Grant Application: Market Data Provider (Openserum.io)

Introduction:

Openserum.io is a market data visualization website and API provider for Project Serum. Market-wide coverage (APIs included) of all markets in existence (USDC and SOL quoted) with data such as bid/ask order books, order book identity reverse lookups, order book snapshots, trade history, charting, historical data, and more.

Website / Team Details

  • Website: Openserum.io

  • How this benefits Project Serum

    • Serum would benefit from an open-source market data project which provides verifiable data (can read/evaluate source code, similar to DefiLlama) for all possible Serum data domains.
    • Charting of on-chain event queue data, without requiring a historical dataset, is not available elsewhere yet. This allows obscure token markets to get a minor amount of recent trade history, before indexing occurs.
    • Order Book Identities is a valuable and unique feature that can provide a human-readable name for each quote on the order book, if the entity is known.
      • Order Book Identities provide high value-add for traders and the feature does not exist anywhere else.
    • Does not require indexing or any database for current MVP/Alpha. Historical datasets in subsequent versions will however require these.
    • Multiple data providers can benefit overall Serum data accuracy.
    • Unique and Creative metrics and features that don’t exist on other order books, such as Trader Activity Rank, and endless possible other metrics, especially if a historical dataset is built.
    • Independent provider of Serum data with strong ethical vision. For example, won’t sell special treatment to paid tokens, or other unscrupulous tactics.

  • Team:

    • Skynet
      • Senior Software Engineer
      • Developer for SolanaJ library, a Solana client made in Java.
      • Developer of SolanaJ-Programs, including a full-featured Serum v3 client.
      • Developer of serum-data, the source code powering this website.
      • Deep experience with Serum accounts and data structures, such as order books and event queues, including with streaming.
      • skynetcap (Michael Morrell) · GitHub and https://twitter.com/skynetcap
      • LinkedIn/more available if requested.

Roadmap

Version 1 / MVP

  1. Live order books with identity reverse lookup (see true wallet of an open orders account, as they are quoting)
  2. On-chain trade history taken from the event queue
  3. Charting (from above data)
  4. Market search by token
  5. Manual/hybrid profiling of market makers (by venture deals, hybrid AMM programs)
  6. Fully open source (similar to DefiLlama approach - code is open source, website and historical datasets are proprietary)
  7. GitHub - skynetcap/serum-data: A web interface for viewing market data from Project Serum, on the Solana blockchain.
  8. Live at: alpha.openserum.io and openserum.io

Following version releases (released iteratively):

  1. Largely focused around historical data and building that data set over time.

  2. Order book snapshots

  3. Long-term trade history streamed and indexed/stored from all markets

  4. Simple historical price and volume APIs

  5. Market rankings by Volume and by Total Liquidity, and more

  6. Other early brainstorm ideas

    1. Wallet PnL profiling
    2. Market makers spread and inventory profiling, recorded as historical data and served through website and API
    3. Many other ideas yet to be enumerated

Early MVP version (alpha.openserum.io)

1239×962 81.1 KB

(Viewing the main SOL / USDC market on Serum. Known entities are identified. Recent trade history still in the event queue is displayed as buys/sells, and rendered as a chart.)

Grant Request Information

  • Requested SRM grant amount: 45,000 SRM
  • Grant funding will be used towards:
    • Cloud hosting costs (AWS/DigitalOcean/Njalla/OVH, etc)
      • Java service and front-end can be hosted on the same server
      • Historical datasets will require investment in additional database-focused servers, cost can range depending on hard drive type,and amount/type/duration of data stored.
    • Solana Validator costs
      • Options
        • Dedicated validator ($350-400/month w/ Advance-5 on OVH) per validator. 2 validators per month may be required, any more is unlikely. Will start with 1.
        • QuickNode ($50/month package isn’t sufficient, next tier is $300 which is same as dedicated)
        • Alchemy (TBD, early launch starting soon)
        • GenesysGo/other assorted providers (possibly free, but slow)
          • May be fine for MVP, not for historical datasets
    • Developer costs
      • May include minor design contracting work
  • May seek additional longer-term funding after launching
2 Likes
#2

who would you say your competitors are / similar projects

what % split do you think the 45k srm will be spent in the buckets you have made

OVerall, I support the creation of an open source tool for Serum

#3

There’s a few tools like serum.markets which just index trades and some minor statistics. A main focus of this will be new features that don’t exist anywhere else, and nobody else has, for example a) reverse lookup of open orders account → wallet, and combined with b) nansen-like wallet-to-entity mapping (manual investigation, hybrid in future). There is no other tool that I know of which has identified entities in order book.

To answer the percentage split question, probably 60% server/DB/warehousing costs, 40% developer (+ possible design work) costs.

And open source is definitely one of the goals, and the project will stay that way.