TL;DR: This proposal seeks to extend the bootstrap agreement for up to one year.
Background:
tBTC launched with three bootstrap providers: Boar, P2P, and Staked as described in TIP-045 – Bootstrap Proposal v2. The DAO then extended the original term by TIP-074 in January 2024.
Purpose:
to authorize the expenditure of DAO funds to maintain bootstrap node agreements with aforementioned providers.
Discussion:
Bootstrap nodes serve several vital functions but primarily support peer-to-peer node discovery and provide electrum connectivity for the network. Detailed explanations of hardware requirements are listed in each of the prior TIPs, and not repeated for brevity, and are incorporated by reference.
A recent proposal TIP-092 proposed ending inflation, and acknowledged that the bootstrap nodes are a significant expense costing the DAO $360K annually. Considerable thought has gone into exploring options to reduce or eliminate this expense by various means.
However, since no decision has been reached in one direction or another, I have come to the conclusion that extending the existing proposal is the best course forward for the time being to ensure stability and continuity.
All three of the original bootstrap providers agreed to continue to provide this service to Threshold Network under the same terms and cost to the DAO.
Proposal:
Extend the terms of TIP-045/TIP-074 for 6 months, starting February 2025 until July 2025, at which point the DAO may extend the agreement up to two times by an additional 3 months each. Each provider, Boar, P2P, and Staked, will continue to receive $10,000 per month in T.
Modified Proposal:
Extend the terms of TIP-045/TIP-074 for 3 months, starting February 2025 through April 2025, at which point the DAO may extend the agreement up to three times by an additional 3 months each. Each provider, Boar, P2P, and Staked, will continue to receive $10,000 per month in T.
Just to add some context around the costs, to better inform further decisions, please remember that the mentioned 3 bootstrap providers (P2P, Boar, Staked) are not only simple entrypoints to the network. A tBTC bootstrap node is not the only thing they run. They also provide:
Bitcoin RPC which requires running at least one full Bitcoin node and an one Electrum node
Ethereum RPC which requires running at least one full Ethereum stack (e.g. Geth + Prysm)
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum RPCs require some degree of redundancy (e.g. 2 Bitcoin nodes + 2 Electrum nodes) and a proper monitoring to ensure a decent SLA. That increases costs even further.
Those Bitcoin and Ethereum RPCs are used by multiple tBTC nodes, the tBTC SDK, the Threshold dApp, and some internal monitoring tools we use for protocol observability.
Last but not least, please remember that all of the three mentioned bootstrap providers also run multiple tBTC beta operator nodes without any additional reimbursement from the beta staker program.
Let’s please remember the above as those bootstrap providers are a very important part of the tBTC infrastructure. Their contribution to protocol stability is invaluable. This is an important context that is often missed in discussions and proposals.