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.