xGov 188: PiPhi Network Submission

Governance xGov Proposals
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1

id: 188
period: 4
title: PiPhi Network Smart Home Visualization Platform
author: Justin Somerville (jsomerville@piphi.network), Kelvin Sanyaolu (ksanyaolu@piphi.network), Dylan Phillips-Levine (dphillipslevine@piphi.network)
email: jsomerville@piphi.network
discussions-to:
company_name: PiPhi Network
category: IOT, Community, DePin
focus_area: Environmental Monitoring, Software, Developers
open_source: No, Proposal Includes Development of OpenSource Platform
funding_type: Proactive
amount_requested: 645833
delivery_date: (2025-04-30)
status: Draft

Proposals that do not include information on all template sections will be rejected.
Please, before submitting the grant proposal, review the contract template and ensure you’re comfortable with its terms. Contract Template

Abstract

This proposal is designed to further develop the Algorand ecosystem by increasing volume through service incentivization. PiPhi aims to propel Algorand-based tokens further into mainstream adoption by distributing an Algorand based token that can be paired with any and all measurable data. PiPhi software incentivizes sensor deployment and community developers through the distribution of proprietary tokens. These tokens ultimately generate value that is not based on the capture and aggregation of data but through deployment and growth of user sensor networks.

PiPhi Network aims to be the bridge between disparate systems and coding to allow users to customize any and all desired networks. PiPhi Network partners with community developers through an incentive program that encourages further development of the Algorand ecosystem through the contribution of additional sensors and features using PiPhi Network software.

Reference:

PiPhi Website - https://piphi.network

Team

Dylan Phillips-Levine is an active-duty military member, naval aviator, and co-founder. He possesses a Bachelor of Science in Maritime Systems Engineering, published numerous papers regarding novel technology, and advised the Pentagon and the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) on emerging concepts.

Kelvin Sanyaolu possesses a Master of Information Technology and is a co-founder. He serves as PiPhi’s Chief Technology Officer and CEO. To date, he has written 30,000+ lines of code as PiPhi’s primary developer.

Justin Somerville serves as a database administrator and is a co-founder. He has 17 years of experience in the IT industry, having the responsibility as an IT manager for all technical operations of a $55M company.

All members have worked together since PiPhi’s inception.

Experience with Algorand

The evolution into PiPhi’s current state traces its origins bac to October of 2021. During this time, one of the cofounders developed the first smart contract in the Algorand Test Net to test the viability of Algorand as the mechanism to allow PiPhi to execute its vision. Even in the early stages of this project, Algorand impressed all founding members of this team with its ease of use and seamless user development experience. During PiPhi’s embryonic stages, the founders continued to repeat a single refrain that captured this seamless user experience: “It just works.” To date, PiPhi through the Algorand blockchain has performed over 470,000,000 transactions and we’re firm believers that Algorand “just works.”

Present Proposal

Supply Shortfall

In the previous crypto bull cycle 2021, low-priced IoT devices outstripped supply due to various supply chain issues and world events. Notably, dependency on overseas markets for many low-priced electronic components created backlogs that took months, and sometimes years, to correct that severely impacted hardware-centric processes.

The Solution

To avoid supply chain logistical pitfalls, PiPhi focused on developing propriety software compatible with commercially available products to develop its own DePIN network.

Software

First released in September 2022, PiPhi Mocha was distributive software active on the Algorand Test Net. It supported various commercially packaged and do-it-yourself bespoke indoor air quality sensors.

On February 17th, 2024, PiPhi released PiPhi Coconut to the community. PiPhi grew to integrate new sensors (20+ to date), including soil monitoring, weather, and energy consumption plugs. PiPhi’s distributive software architecture allows future iterative releases to easily support and integrate community-demanded sensors.

This link shows PiPhi’s software development cycle that integrates developer and community requests and feedback.

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Reception

Discord - https://chibisafe.piphi.network/aFFDbn98UZ0W.png

New Users - https://chibisafe.piphi.network/eydEGyX1m9QB.jpg

Explorer - https://chibisafe.piphi.network/35rOFHxG131V.png

After another year and half of development, PiPhi moved to Main Net with the full support of members from the PiPhi community, consisting of over 1,350 Discord members and 1,200Twitter followers. Through user feedback and iterative development, PiPhi continues development and releases updated software to meet the demands of the community and remains true to its pledge to be a community-oriented enterprise. To date, PiPhi has sold 600 licenses with over 400 connected devices generating $30,000 in revenue. This revenue, combined with the unwavering support from the community and team members, allowed PiPhi to self-fund its development.

Deliverable

Over two years, PiPhi Network developed and delivered a viable software product. This is evident in the increasing volume of users that is now taxing our normally responsive customer service center. As we look to rapidly expand operations and product development, we request our first cash injection. This cash will be used to support the hiring of dedicated developers and customer support staff to continue delivering on PiPhi Networks promise to the community.

PiPhi has grown to the point where serious consideration of direct and general and administrative costs must be given. Currently, technical support provided to customers averages between 20 and 35 support tickets per day. During surge periods, this number can rise to as many as 40 support tickets per day. The volume of support tickets detracts from developmental work, inhibiting company growth and innovation. In the company’s early days, up to ten hours of development work per day was executed. Today, with the addition of numerous support tickets, that number is sometimes less than one hour per day.

PiPhi management believes that a one-year period of full-time and part-time hires is required to maintain stellar customer service and direct community engagement while continuing development work. Development work is expected to take 12 months.

Deliverables would include the development of the developer incentives focused framework, creating the opensource platform for developers, tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts to further inject value into the project by developing on that framework. This would also include the additional staffing to support the developer team to focus on building the product.

Future Blueprint

PiPhi Network plans to reward users for developing or integrating IoT devices with home automation to enable further distribution of the software making both PiPhi Network and Algorand a household name in the most literal sense. The strategic goal for PiPhi is to serve as the premier platform to aggregate data that spans the spectrum of IoT data from enterprise supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) to entry level tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. To achieve this vision, PiPhi plans to implement an open-source funding program that allows developers inside or outside of the community to develop plugins for the PiPhi Network platform and receive rewards for plugin usage and installations. Imagine a Home Assistant platform with tokenized incentives to build. We believe this could be an innovative platform in becoming a truly community driven project in the DePIN/IoT web3 space.

Benefits for the community

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Beyond a customizable and centralized smart home visualization platform, cross platform compatibility for hardware distributed projects and partnerships, the Algorand community will benefit from the additional interest of developers. PiPhi Network software is a developer focused incentive framework. Developers are compensated through the PIPHIN token for participating in further development of the Algorand ecosystem and PiPhi network by writing code, adding new sensors, and/or features to the software.

Additional information

Funding Allocation

Tier 1: Full Funding

PiPhi requests $155,000 (645833 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations and development for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salaries of two full-time hires and marketing initiatives.

Employee 1 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.

Employee 2 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.

Marketing initiatives & Legal Fees ($5,000)

Tier 2: Partial Funding

PiPhi requests $115,000 (479,166 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salary of one full-time and one part-time hire. Part-time work is defined as work that does not exceed 20 hours per standard work week. Hourly wage is approximately $38/Hour. Timelines for milestone completion will likely exceed 12 months and be in the range of 16 to 18 months. This could require further cash injections to cover operating and development costs.

Employee 1 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for customer service, resolving support tickets, and development.

Employee 2 ($40,000): Responsible for customer service and resolving support tickets.

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Update to Funding Allocation: Salaries updated to reallocate funding for development initiatives. This is to be used for mobile application development, unaccounted for in the initial funding allocation request.

Funding Allocation

Tier 1: Full Funding

PiPhi requests $155,000 (645833 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations and development for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salaries of two full-time hires and marketing initiatives.

Employee 1 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.

Employee 2 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.

Tier 2: Partial Funding

PiPhi requests $115,000 (479,166 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salary of one full-time and one part-time hire. Part-time work is defined as work that does not exceed 20 hours per standard work week. Hourly wage is approximately $38/Hour. Timelines for milestone completion will likely exceed 12 months and be in the range of 16 to 18 months. This could require further cash injections to cover operating and development costs.

Employee 1 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for customer service, resolving support tickets, and development.

Employee 2 ($40,000): Responsible for customer service and resolving support tickets.

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Based on what we’re seeing on Algorand, this project looks to be something unique to the Algorand ecosystem. DePIN is one of the biggest narratives of 2024. It’s great to see these projects finding homes here. I hope to see support for PiPhi Network.

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What is PiPhi’s monetization strategy?

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Currently PiPhi Network revenue generation is accrued through license sales & adoption. We also recognize that the data being collected is another path to monetization, although those customers still need to be attained, it is not the sole source of revenue generation for the company today.

Future iterations, with additions of new features like automations, threshold alerting, text notifications and tier based reporting for larger and more complex data sets will give users the choice to opt into subscription based services on the platform in the future.

It’s important to note, Cross platform compatibility opens the door for our software to be hardware agnostic and adopted on other projects hardware allowing for a broader scope of adoption. This means other blockchain projects that focus on the distribution of hardware have the ability to run our software independently, through a docker container, to provide their users the ability to visualize the data from sensors they support or have attached. The result is a wider scope of revenue generating paths, increasing license sales and exposure.

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Aside from the prospect of accumulating tokens, what is the practical reason for acquiring these licenses? Does use of the software and the sensors involved provide some benefit to users?

What does the market for that look like? What sorts of practical applications could that be used for?

Is that for the users? Can you explain what practical applications that would be used for? Automation/alerting/etc of what?

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Yes these feature sets are intended to equip users with a customized experience in their interactions with the software. Energy usage and consumption is an example of automations benefiting a user in reducing the energy consumption of their home and appliances within. More and more homeowners are finding they can’t always be in the know, with air BNB, home rentals, vacation homes and/or their own homestead being their largest investments, having that information proactively informing them and automating the preventative measures of water leak detection or energy efficiency in their home creates a sense of comfort knowing their investments are being taken care of at all times of the day. Those are just a couple examples of the utility creating value.

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Thank you for taking the time. I just wanted to understand the product better so I could evaluate the ask.

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PiPhi’s ultimate strength comes in the form of being explicitly a software and hardware agnostic unlike nearly every other DiPIN project. The future vision is that entities and communities that need specific IoT sensing requirements can be easily developed and built on PiPhi’s platform. The primary source of revenue streams is generated by license sales.

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Update to proposal to include milestones and who the community will see onboarded as a result of the funding and where the community will receive confirmation on those hires

Tier 1: Full Funding

PiPhi requests $155,000 (645833 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations and development for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salaries of two full-time hires and marketing initiatives.

All new hires will be announced via the PiPhi Network Discord announcements channel which notifies the entire community and anyone who has alert following our channel. We also plan on launching a company linkedin profile which will display the currently active list of employees for our company

If approved, these resources will be hired immediately based on full funding plan. If only partial funding plan is granted, Milestone 1 will be completed and announced to our community immediately. However, milestone 2 is expected to take up to 6 months from the time of approval.

Milestone 1:

Employee 1 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.Justin Somerville, will be coming on full time to help with development of software and initiate the transition to bring the platform to the open source community.

Milestone 2:

Employee 2 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching. Kelvin Sanyaolu, will be coming on full time to continue developement of software and enhance the transition to an open source platform.

Tier 2: Partial Funding

PiPhi requests $115,000 (479,166 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salary of one full-time and one part-time hire. Part-time work is defined as work that does not exceed 20 hours per standard work week. Hourly wage is approximately $38/Hour. Timelines for milestone completion will likely exceed 12 months and be in the range of 16 to 18 months. This could require further cash injections to cover operating and development costs.

Milestone 1:

Employee 1 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for customer service, resolving support tickets, and development. Justin Somerville, will be coming on full time to help with development of software and initiate the transition to bring the platform to the open source community.

Milestone 2:

Employee 2 ($40,000): Responsible for customer service and resolving support tickets. The team will be looking to hire a part-time developer, to assist and continue development of software and enhance the transition to an open source platform.

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Hi, just for the record, you expect 1/3 of all xgovs to vote for your proposal which is unrealistic if you do not control the xgov whale accounts.

I recommend you to request funds only for next 3 months as the grants program is going to change and after that it will be more likely the bigger grants will get approved.

I assume you may get from from the current program something like 50 - 150k algos, the 650k algo is unrealistic.

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The ask is too high when compared to total allocation of 2 million algo per session. Better to split the whole funding requirement into 6 milestones. Over that period algo price will appreciate which can reduce your algo requirement and hence increase chances of passing.

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Good point @scholtz maybe a smaller ask with a shorter roadmap is what you mean? I’m personally new to this whole process but I want to see DePIN expanding on Algorand and PiPhi is doing that so any funding that the foundation has to offer is great for the project and ultimately great for the Algorand community.

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why do you think so? what makes you think so?

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I think nobody in this forum think otherwise

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Scholtz, thanks for your advice. We discuss these comments as a team to ensure PiPhi has the best chance of being awarded a grant.

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Update to proposal to include shorter timelines for Algorand XGov Injections on a set schedule
The suggested XGov Injection term will cover a period of 12 months with quarterly injections. //
Dates posted presume a July 1st 2024 date as the start of the first quarter.

Funding Allocation

Tier 1: Full Funding

Q1 July(24’)-September(24’) = $27,000 (USD) 17.4%
Q2 October(24’)-December(24’) = $35,000 (USD) 22.6%
Q3 January(25’)-March(25’) = $46,500(USD) 30%
Q4 April(25’)-June(25’) = $46,500(USD) 30%

PiPhi requests $155,000 (645833 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations and development for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salaries of two full-time hires and marketing initiatives.

All new hires will be announced via the PiPhi Network Discord announcements channel which notifies the entire community and anyone who has alert following our channel. We also plan on launching a company linkedin profile which will display the currently active list of employees for our company

If approved, these resources will be hired immediately based on full funding plan. If only partial funding plan is granted, Milestone 1 will be completed and announced to our community immediately. However, milestone 2 is expected to take up to 6 months from the time of approval.

Milestone 1:

Employee 1 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching.Justin Somerville, will be coming on full time to help with development of software and initiate the transition to bring the platform to the open source community.

Milestone 2:

Employee 2 ($77,500/Yr): Responsible for PiPhi development, coding, testing, error identification and error patching. Kelvin Sanyaolu, will be coming on full time to continue development of software and enhance the transition to an open source platform.

Tier 2: Partial Funding

Q1 July(24’)-September(24’) = $20,010 (USD) 17.4%
Q2 October(24’)-December(24’) = $25,990 (USD) 22.6%
Q3 January(25’)-March(25’) = $34,500(USD) 30%
Q4 April(25’)-June(25’) = $34,500(USD) 30%

PiPhi requests $115,000 (479,166 ALGO) in outside funding to support operations for the next 12 months. This amount will sustain the salary of one full-time and one part-time hire. Part-time work is defined as work that does not exceed 20 hours per standard work week. Hourly wage is approximately $38/Hour. Timelines for milestone completion will likely exceed 12 months and be in the range of 16 to 18 months. This could require further cash injections to cover operating and development costs.

Milestone 1:

Employee 1 ($75,000/Yr): Responsible for customer service, resolving support tickets, and development. Justin Somerville, will be coming on full time to help with development of software and initiate the transition to bring the platform to the open source community.

Milestone 2:

Employee 2 ($40,000): Responsible for customer service and resolving support tickets. The team will be looking to hire a part-time developer, to assist and continue development of software and enhance the transition to an open source platform.

1 Like
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For the record i still see you request xgov-192-PiPhi Network-Smart Home Visualization Platform by KelvinSan · Pull Request #192 · algorandfoundation/xGov · GitHub 645833 algos in this round, which i think is impossible to achieve, but feel free to do as you wish

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We broke it down into quarterly injections to absorb some of the up front cost. PiPhi Network is going to pursue and complete the objectives necessary, however the timeline could change drastically given the circumstances of cost. Hence the reason we have given multiple injection methods for the Algorand Foundation to consider. Up front, Full Funding or Partial Funding, in addition to the quarterly injection method. The proposal is complete in it’s messaging and fulfills the needs of the project. We hope this is relatable to those that consider this to be a viable project for growth of the Algorand community.

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What do you mean with the tiering set-up in your proposal? xGov work as all or nothing. So you either get all requested ALGO’s or you don’t get anything.

As many said before, I’d also advice to split up this proposal in smaller ones. The requested amount for both Tier 1 or Tier 2 requires you to get a substantial amount of the whales to vote on you. Unless you have those whales in your pocket (or speed dial), it’ll be a real challenge to get it passed :wink: