SPP2 [Lighthouse Labs]

Service Provider Program Service Provider Applications
1

1. Applicant Information

  1. Team Name: Lighthouse Labs
  2. Website/Company Blog: https://lighthouse.cx/ / Lighthouse Labs
  3. Entity ENS: lighthousegov.eth
  4. Primary Contact(s): Arnold Almeida, 1a35e1.eth. James MacWhyte, jkm.eth.
  5. Company Overview: We are an applied research lab with a mandate to improve the accessibility of on-chain governance in decentralised environments. We offer three services:
  • Lighthouse Governance, public good, native client free for end users.
  • Dispatch, an enterprise multi-faceted messaging tool for on-chain orgs.
  • Signals, an open-source emerging-ideation protocol to supplement governance.
  1. Requested Amount: Requesting $400k for a one year stream
  2. Team / Commitment: Currently 2.5 FT resources, ready to expand to 4 if this proposal is successful. We commit to making the work outlined in this proposal our top priority for the duration of the agreement.

2. Eligibility Confirmation

  1. Company Age & Reputation: We have been operating for ~29 months as a bootstrapped company.

  2. Team Experience

  • We are the first to market with a native mobile app that supports multiple governance systems with attention to complex features, such as voting with Safe and native notifications.
  • Our work and experience indexing all the major DAOs across the EVM landscape has given us deep insight into operational inefficiencies we plan to address through our work.
  • In addition to native app development, we also are competent blockchain developers as evidenced by our Signals protocol (which won the Arbitrum x RnDAO hackathon), and our Snapshot x Safe integration which included a complicated mix of on- and off-chain voting.

Arnold, Founder/CTO

  • 15 years industry experience
  • Led teams up to 10 heads
  • Scaled orgs with headcount up to 150 at C level
  • Taken 10+ products to market from ideation
  • One exit, two public listings

James, CPO

  • 12 years crypto startup experience
  • Early-stage Coinbase and Kraken
  • C-level at BRD, involved in 4 rounds of funding leading to one exit

Xaun, Head of Engineering

  • 10 years digital experience
  • Led cross functional teams up to 8 heads
  • Digital Agency, Founder Experience
  1. ENS Token Endorsement Requirement

No public endorsement as of yet. Please consider voting for us in the upcoming vote!

  1. OFAC Sanctions Compliance
  • We, Lighthouse Labs, confirm that neither our organization nor any of our employees, contractors, or executive leadership is located in, or a resident of, an OFAC-sanctioned country. We further confirm that none of our business resources are derived from or routed through any country or entity that is subject to sanctions imposed by the United States (OFAC) or equivalent regulatory bodies. We pledge to remain compliant with all applicable sanctions laws and will promptly notify the ENS DAO if our status changes.
  • For avoidance of doubt, all employees currently reside in:
    1. United Kingdom
    2. Australia
  1. Multi Year Stream Eligibility

Not Applicable.

3. Open Source Commitment

  • Our governance client mobile app and Lighthouse Dispatch is currently closed-source. We simply do not have the resources to maintain an OS variant and want to be in a better capital position before taking on the work of preparing an open source release.
  • Our business model does require modules to be developed in conjunction with other protocols, and in those instances, we are more than happy to issue MIT licensed code for our work.
  • For Lighthouse Signals, an on-chain protocol, we adopted an AGPL to ensure forkers are unable to re-license works as proprietary.
  • Work we do for ENS will be open sourced where appropriate.

Generally, we prefer AGPL primarily as it forces work to remain in the public domain. MIT code, for example, can be forked and made private.

4. Scope of Work & Budget

  • Requested amount: $400,000
  • Description:

We propose to support ENS by adding ENS-specific features into the Lighthouse app, as well as leveraging our other products to improve the ENS governance ecosystem. For a detailed scope, please see the below spreadsheet which covers the projects we will commit to delivering over the course of the 1-year program.

  • KPIs / Success Metrics
    • In addition to delivering the above, we will also maintain the below SLA:
      • 99% uptime for using the Lighthouse app to connect to the Lighthouse service
      • 99% success rate of in-app message delivery
      • Parity with on-chain data sources with a maximum latency of 5 minutes
      • Maintain feature parity between iPhone and Android (100% support for the 5 most recent iOS and Android major releases)
  • Budget:
    $400K per year to cover development and infrastructure costs

5. Past Achievements & Additional Information

At Lighthouse Labs, we create more than voting software. We think deeply about the promise of tokenised systems and their potential impact as a technology.

1600Ă—900 175 KB

Our team’s background is rooted in mainstream technology (high-traffic e-commerce and AI), being early adopters to Web3 technology (Bitcoin ATMs, Bitcoin Wallet Software) and experience in companies like Coinbase and Kraken.

We are on a mission to make governance and associated systems so easy to use that even non-crypto users can get involved. We strongly believe that ENS has the potential to serve as a critical component of this infrastructure, both through the ENS Protocol and how the ENS DAO conducts its operations.

Company History

  • Nov 2022, Idea born.
  • May 2023, ETH Global - Lisbon hacker
  • July 2024, Deployed iOS and Android apps for voting on Snapshot and Governor systems.
  • Aug 2024, Awarded SAFE DAO grant to research and implement native voting.
  • Late 2024, Gitcoin and Optimism Retrofunding participant, Governance client recognized as a public good by both organizations.
  • Dec 2024, Signals won Arbitrum x RNDao collab tech hackathon.
  • Jan 2025, Currently participating in Uniswap Hooks Incubator for nuanced protocol development for Signals.

Thought Leadership

Appendix

Ecosystem affinity

  • Safe
  • Alchemix,
    • Exploring solution for renewing ENS with ALCX in-app
  • Optimism
  • Gitcoin, GG22

6. Video Introduction (≤ 5 minutes)

7. Conflict Of Interest Statement

N/A

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2

Hi @Arnold!

Thank you for submitting your application for the ENS Service Provider Program, Season 2. After review, we are pleased to confirm that your application meets the eligibility criteria as outlined in the program design. MetaGov will also include Lighthouse Labs in the endorsement snapshot on April 1. :saluting_face:

We want to point out a quick note regarding program compliance if selected for SPP2.

The program design, per the most recent passed snapshot, states that all work funded directly by the SPP must be open sourced (MIT). We encourage all applicants to align scope with this criteria.

All work done directly funded by this program must be Open Source and Freely Licensed (MIT). Service Providers are free to also have proprietary codebases but the works establised in their proposals and quarterly reports must also be available on github or other public repositories.

We look forward to seeing you in the running for SPP2!

Metagov Stewards

4 Likes
3

Hi all, based on feedback and a closer look at the open source requirements, we have updated our proposal and included additional details.

We are unable to edit the main post, so here are the revised sections 3&4 (the rest is the same). The entire updated proposal can be seen here.

3. Open Source Commitment

Our core product, Lighthouse, is a free native mobile app which is not currently open-source. However, we commit to building the work in this proposal as public, open-source resources, and will then (using other funding) integrate that work into our core product.

The Signals protocol is open source, and that will not change for continued Signals development.

4. Scope of Work & Budget

4.1 Basic Scope of Work

Requested amount: $400k

Overview

Lighthouse’s core product is a native mobile app that optimises governance participation and communication, and in the course of developing this product we have gotten deeply involved in the area of on-chain governance data and infrastructure. For this proposal, we would like to focus on work that will

  1. Deeply integrate ENS functionality into the Lighthouse app
  2. Make on-chain governance data easily and publicly accessible
  3. Advance ENS’s governance objectives for the ENS DAO

Integrating ENS into Lighthouse and offering public tools

Budget: $150k

Overview: We already require DAOs represented in Lighthouse to have an ENS configured, and we support end users’ ENS data throughout the app. We would like to expand on this support, by adding additional ENS functionality throughout our app. We will make the below deliverables publicly available, and will also use them to add this additional functionality to our app.

Deliverable 1: We will create an open-source, reference implementation of the following key ENS features for native mobile clients:

  • Register an ENS
  • Renew an ENS
  • Update ENS text records and other metadata
  • Delegate voting power to ENS user

Deliverable 2: We will release an open-source indexer, designed to do the following:

  • Surface all of the important on-chain data related to the ENS ecosystem
  • Trigger notifications of upcoming expirations and other important events that users may want to be made aware of
  • Provide an index of all ENS delegates
  • Surface on-chain proposal metadata

Impact: In addition to providing more open-source resources that others can use in their own projects, we will integrate the above into our Lighthouse ecosystem, enabling the following features:

  • ENS onboarding flow for new users
  • In-app notifications of upcoming expiration and important ENS-related situations
  • In-app customization of a user’s ENS profile, in relation to how they appear in the Lighthouse app
  • In-app surfacing of ENS delegates, and easy delegation of voting power

These features will make Lighthouse a much more powerful tool for ENS governance participation, but will also bring more activity and users to ENS and further solidify ENS’s reputation of being an on-chain representation of one’s identity.

Measure of success:

  • Number of forks/stars of open-source repos
  • Number of new ENS names registered through Lighthouse
  • ENS-related notifications delivered through Lighthouse

Increase transparency and improve ENS DAO operations

Budget: $150k

Overview: We currently offer a service called Lighthouse Dispatch which enables DAOs to broadcast official communications to their members. With Dispatch, users who are authorized to publish messages on behalf of the DAO can broadcast their official communications through the Lighthouse platform, getting the attention of DAO members through push notifications. All communications are authenticated and verifiable, and members can discuss proposals and announcements directly in-app.

Our next stage of innovation is to make this feature more transparent and add functionality which ENS DAO can leverage to improve DAO coordination and communication.

Deliverable 1: We will open-source our Dispatch client, making available (for reference or audit) how authentication is performed and communications are initiated.

Deliverable 2: We will add to the Dispatch client the following features:

  • The ability to specify a DAO org chart (through Hats protocol or equivalent), allowing the DAO to specify who is authorized to broadcast official communications
  • We will work together with ENS DAO to identify and implement the ideal solution for providing on-chain authorization of access-control lists
  • Additional communications channels (member-to-member, DAO-to-member, delegate-to-delegate, etc) gated by verifiable authentication

Impact: The above improvements will give DAO communications additional credibility by adding an on-chain component to authentication and verification. It is important to note ENS DAO will not be forced to transition to a new system, and these new features will work in tandem with existing DAO infrastructure.

Measure of success:

  • Number of roles publicly assigned on-chain
  • Number of DAO communications and proposals initiated through Lighthouse

Continuing Signals development

Budget: $100k

Overview: Signals is a new, experimental protocol which enables on-chain communities to surface what their members consider most important. It uses a token lockup mechanism which allows members to more concretely commit to their opinions, and enables even smaller token holders to have an equal voice.

Deliverable: We will commit 25% of this proposal’s budget towards continuing Signals development with engagement from the ENS community:

  • Refinement and deployment of the Signals smart contracts and web UI
  • The launch of a pilot program on testnet for ENS holders
  • We will compile a final report on the findings of the pilot program and an assessment of the protocol’s appropriateness for the ENS DAO
  • An analysis of pilot program metrics:
    • Number of initiatives proposed
    • Number of initiatives reaching the activation threshold
    • Impacts from activated proposals
    • User feedback

Impact: As this is the most experimental portion of this proposal, impact may be hard to predict. However, ENS will be taking a pivotal role in developing a new and novel governance protocol, which can only be a net benefit to the crypto ecosystem.

Measure of success:

  • Number of ENS holders who participate in the Signals pilot program
  • Metrics from the pilot program final report
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