Moneroj.net improvements, articles and maintenance

Hello community, I'm CryptoMorpheus_.

Some of you probably know me, or at least already know my work. I am the creator of Moneroj.net, a website with Monero metrics, and also the developer behind Monero.com website (for Cake Wallet). I started Moneroj.net in 2021, over a year ago, after developing a method for calculating the value of Monero based on its daily transaction count (which I called Metcalfe's Law Method, considering it was based on that theory). I always felt that Monero lacked a dedicated website with some interesting metrics, in order to instigate adoption, so I started developing the project around that time. When I started, I only had about six charts on the website and I never imagined I could put together so many metrics. Now the page has more than 30 charts.

I started the project with my own resources, and promptly clarified that the project was not (and still is not) intended to make profit, as it was just a "tool" I was building to help the community and spread the word about this amazing cryptocurrency.

Some community members donated some small sums to me when I first delivered the website, but now the project has completed one year and has grown much larger than anticipated. Now it needs some serious improvements as soon as possible. The server is not able to handle all the requests, and there is so much data on it that it takes a lot of time to load some of the charts. Part of this is because when I first developed the project, I made it as simple as possible, as it was not for profit, so I couldn't invest many hours of work in it.

But now things have changed, and I believe many like and use my work on a daily basis. The website is a tool to provide useful information to community members and also to awaken people to this wonderful form of money. That said, I intend to do a complete restructuring of the website:

Open-sourcing the current website

The community asked, and it makes a lot of sense, judging by the CCS rules, so I'm open-sourcing all the current code for Moneroj.net. The idea is to have a cool website for the community to use for free. You can take a look at https://github.com/cryptomorpheuss/moneropro.git. Just take it easy on the criticism, since this was done on my spare time last year, and I intend to do a much better job with my working hours. But all critics are welcome, anyway, and you can all leave a message to me on this platform or in any other, including e-mail and on Reddit.

What needs to be done

As it was suggested by members of the community, I divided the original Proposal into two. The original was about three months work. This one is two months, dealing with a litle more than half the contents of the original one. When near the conclusion, if everything is going well, I intend to launch a new proposal with all leftover work from that original proposal. This proposal is about 240 hours of my work, which I'll have to invest in these two months. The idea is to:

Deploy new server, fix bugs, loading speed, improve the interface and build new charts

1. Deploy the website on a faster server;
2. It needs an improved interface and visual identity (I'm already doing this since May 11,when I submitted the proposal);
3. I plan to get privacy-preserving statistics using Plausible (which has a monthly cost), the same way Seth does at https://sethforprivacy.com, so we can check the increase in user numbers (to get some feedback);
4. There are many bugs that need to be fixed, including some in the database itself, which I never had the opportunity to fix;
5. Some graphics need to be better presented, with a broader explanation of their content, so that new Monero users can understand easily;
6. I need to develop a new method of presenting information so that the server loads in a faster time, perhaps changing the structure of the database completely for some charts;
7. Seriously reduce the usage of Javascript (I'm already doing this since May 11), or perhaps give the user the possibility to load the website completely without it. Community member Plowsof reached me out on this subject and it seems doable. I'll give my best on this. Perhaps a well placed button to change the website to a version with images instead of dynamic charts will do the trick. The charts could be generated as images with a website scraper and then displayed to the user.
8. Deploy a hidden service for the website_. Community members asked for this. I plan to try this just after I improve the loading speed of the website.
9. Build a minimum of 20 new and improved charts from the list (I'm already doing this since May 11). Not all charts might be doable, some I might run into problems to get the data (for example the number of nodes, perhaps I'll have to use Monero.fail instead). But my idea is to note all possible charts on the following list and build as many of them as I can in those 240 hours of work. I usually build without issues 4-5 charts/week when I have no other problems to solve, but since there are the other objectives for this proposal, I'm sticking to a minimum of 20. If there are leftover charts from the list to be built after two months of work (or if people suggested new ideas for metrics), those will be included on a next CCS Proposal.

Some suggestions people gave so far:

• Number of miners;
• Number of transactions by type (MLSAG, CLSAG, etc.);
• Twitter followers;
• Incorporate Google Trends;
• Performance comparison to competitors ($, log);
• Privacy marketcap (all privacy coins);
• Monero dominance (on privacy marketcap);
• Transaction dominance;
• Monero Marketcap dominance (against all coins);
• Coinmarketcap Ranking;
• Mean block size;
• Difficulty;
• Mean transaction size;
• Futures funding rate;
• Open interest;
• Futures volume;
• Futures long liquidations;
• Futures short liquidations;
• Balanced price (price averaged by reported traded volume);
• Puell Multiple;
• Difficulty ribbon (same as from Glassnode for BTC);
• Fee ratio multiple (sema as from Glassnode for BTC);
• Number of nodes;
• Merchants acceptance (total numbers, clearnet);
• Merchants increase (absolute numbers, clearnet);
• Merchants increase (%, clearnet);
• Coincards usage;
• US-Inflation adjusted price (since 2014);
• US-Inflation adjusted marketcap;
• M2 adjusted marketcap;
• Fiat inflation x XMR inflation;
• Metcalfe's Model Deviation;
• Daily Reddit Posts;
• Daily Reddit Comments;
• Alexa rank;
• P2Pool stats (these will probably spin-off into a bunch of different charts;
• Other pools stats;

From Monero.com as courtesy from Cake Wallet:

• Market cycle
• Price in Sats (log)
• Shielded transactions
• Total transactions

So, there's a total of 41 possible new charts. The website had 45 charts when I made the CCS Proposal on May 11, but since the CCS rules state that I can begin work before approval, I already built 10 new ones from that list (but had to remove one from the list as requested). They are: DREAD forum users, Privacy marketcap (all privacy coins), Monero Marketcap dominance (against all coins), Coinmarketcap Ranking, Merchants acceptance (total numbers, clearnet), Merchants increase (absolute numbers, clearnet), Merchants increase (%, clearnet), Coincards usage, Daily Reddit Posts, and Daily Reddit Comments. The idea on this proposal is to solve problems from items 1) to 8) and then invest all remaining hours to deliver as many of the charts listed in item 9) as possible, respecting the minimum of 20. I hope I can keep delivering a good number of them every week, so we shrink this list if there's leftover.

Later work) If this project gets funded and everything turns out great, the community approves and the Core Team is happy with my work, on a next proposal I'll keep building these charts listed. People come with new ideas everyday, so expect this number to go much higher with time. I'll also propose (in the future) to start developing the "Articles" section, where I intend to create a blog-like system where contributors can write articles about Monero and supervisors can review, approve, delete or modify posts. I also have a lot of good articles to write, if people are interested. One idea is to make a weekly article regarding the analysis of the metrics from the website. I also plan to build in the future a RSS feed for these articles so that others can embed them in their news source.

There is so much that can be done with that website to promote the adoption of Monero, that I feel it would be very good to focus on improving Moneroj.net as a tool for our community. The most important right now is to improve server loading time (by rebuilding the database structure and renting on a better server). I am totally open to suggestions, so that this work can be improved over time. Not all metrics are possible to calculate, given the privacy-preserving nature of Monero, but I bet there are many others that can be plotted. I aim to make Moneroj.net a source of information that the regular Monero user can check daily.

How much to be invested

Total of 46 XMR paid after conclusion.

I intend to invest 240 hours along two months, that will be 25 usd/hour, considering Monero's average price at $130 (21 daily EMA), that will be a total of 46 XMR.

If I manage to complete 1) to 8) plus 20 charts for 9) before schedule, I'll just keep working those total hours and delivering more charts than predicted, so if there's some work as leftover, a second proposal will demand less work, and therefore less funding. This is the idea. One thing to note is that for this Proposal I'll also rent a better server and spend some money on Plausible statistics, but I'm already accounting for those, so my real rate for this work is a little lower in reality.

Author's Note

This is my first CCS proposal, but I hope the community understands and believes in my mission. I hope I was clear on this. I also hope the community can see that I have been working with the best intentions and transparency. I made Moneroj.net for the community out of my own pocket and time, over a year ago, and kept as much as I could updating and improving. I certainly believe that this is a project that deserves some investment, as it is very useful as a tool, and has been increasing in size. It's time for the next step, and that involves costs that I can't keep out of my own resources and time.

As a last note, I must thank Cake Wallet for the opportunity they gave me to build Monero.com website and I clarify that the work on this project is a completely different topic and with different methods.

These are really cool charts, and I can personally vouch for Morpheus's professionalism and hard work on monero.com. I initially reached out to him because I was inspired by his initiative for moneroj.net.

This definitely has an ACK from me if the work is CC BY 4.0 and MIT (or similar)

@CryptoMorpheus_ I'll reach out to you separately about this to start the transition, but Vik and I are happy to help contribute by making the unique charts you already coded for Monero.com available (C) Cake Labs LLC under a permissive MIT license, so anyone can use them!

That's awesome Justin! I'm really thankful for that.

I certainly agree your website & charts are great. I am thankful for your heavy lifting with regards to making it a reality and further enhancing the quality of content it delivers to all since the very beginning; however, there are a few factors that make me question whether pursuing funding from the CCS is the best path to take in this particular case. Let me take a stab at breaking my train of thought down henceforth.

You do state moneroj.net and monero.com are different projects you are working on. Nonetheless, it looks, to me, like yet another overlapping Cake Wallet-overlapping CCS proposal. If you are the paid developer behind monero.com and you work for Cake Labs LLC, perhaps in addition to the charts found on that website getting a permissive MIT license, they can fund the further improvement of your side project with moneroj.net as well while also coming up with a public repository of your front and back-end code — I do not see any Git link in your website, making your work open source, as per CCS rule number 4 for proposers —, you can explore sponsorships from other companies, or launch a self-hosted wishlist campaign like Monerujo and Rucknium do. Simply alternative funding ways around; take it at face value.

Thanks for the kind words about my project. I'm really glad you enjoy.

To clarify, I built Monero.com for Cake Wallet as a consultant last month, but I don't work for them. That job is done. My contact with them happened these last few months and Monero.com is already complete. I can't speak for Cake Labs, I'm not an employee.

My project was around since April last year, and I've been maintaining it with my own efforts. I feel the project is something the community uses and likes, but to improve it I need some serious work onto it, which I can't afford right now. I tried asking for donations, and I received some when I first launched (which I'm very thankful), but it's something that is not working anymore.

About the permissive license, I have nothing against open-sourcing my work, both front and back end and nothing against using a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0) with MIT, but I'm not very familiar with these. As I said, this is my first CCS proposal, so please do tell me if I need to opensource before making the proposal or if I can do that on the first few days of work. Also, do I have to change the proposal or something? What exactly do I have to add? I have absolutely nothing against people using and/or modifying it, so if in the future someone wants to use it, please go ahead.

Just note that I don't work for Cake, and my website is completely different from theirs. If we judged all CCS Proposals by that standard, no proposal would be able to obtain crowdfunding, since any company can take advantage of any project.

As promised, I have published the source code for the charts with the MIT license for anyone to use (including moneroj.net): https://github.com/cake-tech/monerocom-charts/

For clarity, Cake's contract with Morpheus is complete, and Cake doesn't own moneroj.net. In fact, one can view it as a "competitor" of sorts to monero.com, since they have similar functionality.

I think @CryptoMorpheus_ job is pretty professional and would be awesome to get more statistics and info about the real usage of Monero. Maybe you could also reach some guys at the MRL, for example Rucknium or xmr-ack to ask if they have some graphics that could be easily updated and translated in layman's terms. I believe that their work at the MRL would also have more publicity. Just an idea. From my side I think it would be nice to have a place to see these graphs in a more organized way and get a feeling of what is really going on with the ring signatures (level of privacy) and etc. I would also be happy to help by providing some data if necessary.

Considering current state of this proposal, there are many red flags for us and our vote is NO.

1. Not fully open-source / reproducible at this point

Projects funded by CSS must be fully open-source and reproducible for everyone in the community. We can clone the website html/css/javascript but we can't reproduce it as maintainer which is big red flag. We are community of open-source software and CSS funded maintainer should not have any advantage from rest of community. Script source must be provided, not just resulting layout. It easily can be proven maintainer honesty in this case. CSS funding rules need to be updated because this flaw is being exploited already with couple of projects.

2. Over-priced

45 USD/hour? You should re-consider your hourly rate based on how much Monero core developers are paid to work on code that really matters. There is no guarantee neither reference that you are producing code not even on similar level.

3. No previous reference

You referenced that you created Monero.com (for Cake Wallet). I am very well introduced to code of Monero.com (Cake Wallet) there was no new coded added, just other currencies are not shown, couple of IF here and there. Please correct me if I am wrong.

4. Bloated with Javascript

Your current website doesn't even load without javascript which is not something I like. Your website also doesn't have onion hidden service which is red flag.

5. Conflict of interest

On your website it says "Use the official software wallet on PC, or the Cake wallet on your cellphone." Is there something wrong with Monerujo on cellphone? What's the guarantee tomorrow you will list Majestic Wallet when it goes live?

The main point here is Not fully open-source / reproducible at this point. Open-source it, let us check your work and then we can decide better.

This is my current opinion, if proposal change I might change opinion. Projects like this are always welcome to Monero community but 15,000 USD on some shady terms is not something I will donate to.

@MajesticBank thanks for the feedback. I understand your criticism. I'll try to solve these issues later this weekend and I'll post an answer to your statements.

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@MajesticBank

Thanks for your patience. I was visiting a family member and couldn't make the changes sooner. Answering your statements:

1. Not fully open-source / reproducible at this point

You are totally right on this. The website wasn't open-sourced before because it was just some small project I had. But as I said on the proposal, it started to grow, and judging by the CCS rules as @rottenwheel also said, I should open-source it. So I just did. I'm totally OK with it, and if people would like to contribute in the future, that would be awesome.

2. We are in a time where prices are going up and down a lot, so it doesn't make sense to say that I would work for some amount of USD value, so I changed the way I calculate my rates, so the price could be lower in XMR terms. I changed it to 70 XMR (total for 3 months), but I'll work even harder to deliver those objectives. That's something I can agree with. Anyway, if the proposal gets accepted, people would be free to finance with whatever they want, including nothing if they think it's not worth it. That's something I'll also respect.

3. Just to be clear, I built the website, not the app. Sorry about the confusion.

4. About Javascript

It's a website with graphics. The charts need javascript to run smoothly. You can now check the code, of course. The charts are generated using Javascript, it's the script behind the charts. I get that people don't like it. We can try to reduce its use, there are some useless code on the website as well, which should be removed when I begin upgrading it. About the hidden service, it doesn't make much sense for me, since I don't think anyone will use a hidden service just to see some metrics. This can be done much better on the clear net. It's just a website with some metrics, we aren't doing anything worrysome. It's like Coinmetrics, but for Monero. Of course if the community thinks this is that important, then a hidden service will have to be built. But it's up for the community. My advice would be that none would use it, for now at least.

5. You are in fact right when you wrote that I should list Monerujo as a wallet on Moneroj.net. I changed the code there, so it is listed. I have nothing against it, It just happened that I didin't think about it when I was writing the website. But that is fixed now.

Thanks for the suggestions, and I hope I could meet your demands. I am open to others, as well.

Link to Github code: https://github.com/cryptomorpheuss/moneropro

EDIT May, 17: I started working on the website, and removed a bunch of Javascript from it, just left the strictly necessary, and then moved to working on the website visual identity. Added two new charts (https://moneroj.net/competitorssats/ and https://moneroj.net/competitorssatslin/)

EDIT May, 19: I updated the proposal to add the future development of these charts:

• Darknet adoption (markets)
• Darknet adoption (forum users)
• Number of miners
• Number of transactions by type (MLSAG, CLSAG, etc.)
• Number of users in other media, such as twitter
• Incorporate Google Trends
• Performance comparison to competitors ($, log)
• Marketcap
• Privacy marketcap
• Monero privacy dominance
• Transaction dominance
• Mean block size
• Difficulty
• Mean transaction size
• Futures funding rate
• Open interest
• Futures volume
• Futures long liquidations
• Futures short liquidations
• Balanced price (price averaged by traded volume)
• Puell Multiple
• Difficulty ribbon (same as from Glassnode for BTC)
• Fee ratio multiple (sema as from Glassnode for BTC)

From Monero.com as courtesy from Cake Wallet:

• Market cycle
• Price in Sats (log)
• Shielded transactions
• Total transactions

Total of 27 new charts. The website currently has 45 charts, it will go to 72 (for now).

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