EVM Infrastructure Funding Proposal

Summary

Tharsis, the team of engineering architects, owners, and core maintainers of the Ethermint EVM library that powers Kava’s Ethereum co-chain, is requesting 3M out of ~80M KAVA tokens (~3.7%) from the Community Pool Treasury to fund, develop and advance critical EVM Infrastructure through the Ethermint Engineering and R&D team for 1 year.

The Tharsis team will use these resources to grow the existing Ethermint engineering team, so Tharsis can take on the commitments and responsibilities necessary to keep maintaining and supporting the Ethermint code repository and to implement new functionalities for the EVM.

NOTE: This is a summarized version of the proposal, for more details check the full proposal description here.

Context

The Tharsis team is requesting 3M KAVA tokens, an approximate value of $5.45M USD at the time of writing, from the Kava Community pool to continue to maintain and drastically improve the critical infrastructure that powers the Ethermint EVM library, and thus one of the core value propositions of the Kava Platform’s Ethereum Co-Chain.

Tharsis will utilize the funding for

1. Hiring, managing, and training relevant Tharsis personnel whose role will encompass:
   1. Maintenance: Maintaining Ethermint and all its components
   2. Research and Development: Research and implement new functionalities and use cases for the EVM.
2. Performance Improvements: Improve performance of the Ethermint EVM and clients such as JSON-RPC and WebSockets.
3. Stability Improvements: Ensure the EVM equivalence with go-ethereum through rigorous testing.
4. Security Improvements: Run bug bounties and white-hat hacker programs to detect and fix potential security vulnerabilities. Tharsis will also hire engineers to work on Quality Assurance (QA) of the Etheremint EVM library.

Tharsis firmly believes that by delivering on the items outlined in this proposal, users and developers on the Kava Platform will benefit from a better UX, improved performance and new use cases enabled by the custom functionalities from the Ethermint EVM. This will create a net positive outcome for both teams working on the EVM on Cosmos.

Multisignature Committee

• Federico Kunze Küllmer - Tharsis (Proposer)
• Felix Lutsch - Chorus One
• Sebastien Couture - Interop Ventures & Epicenter Podcast

The account address for the 2/3 multisig key is: kava1uk6w6gwm0p570pu2laq72wtchtx3xftz4vwaxk

Governance Votes

The following items summarize the voting options and their implications for this proposal.

• YES: You approve the proposal statements and distribution of 3M KAVA to the multisig address. The treasury will allocate the funds to the Tharsis team, leading Ethermint’s core R&D, educational, infrastructure, and hiring efforts for the Ethermint EVM for the duration of 1 year. It will also lead to core technology maintenance and continuous discussion to ensure the project’s longevity.
• NO: The NO vote is a request for improvements or adjustments. You agree that this proposal’s motivation is valuable and that the team should create a follow-up proposal with the corresponding amendments.
• NO (VETO): You veto the entire motivation for the proposal. The Tharsis team will look for alternatives to ensure the long-term alignment between projects that use the Ethermint EVM implementation.
• ABSTAIN: You are impartial to the outcome of this proposal.

Discussion and More

This full proposal has been shared with the Kava team and later pre-published with their approval for public discussion in the r/kava_platform Reddit here and in the Evmos Forum (Commonwealth) here.