Add Notifications Center to Aave v3

Governance General
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Hey all :wave: this is HAL team, leading efforts on pushing Aave Notifications Center forward. :ghost: :robot:

We wanted to bring forward this possible proposal to the Aave community to kick off a discussion around it, and figure out if there’s interest and a path forward for it:

Aave Notifications Center

In our research, we found that many protocols wanted to integrate our notifications engine to re-engage their users, help them manage their risks (Health Factor in the case of Aave), grow transactions, TVL or boost their DAO participation and voting. But we had to integrate better into the user journey and provide a seamless experience. We also learned that notifications had to meet people where they are and when they need it.

By meeting today with Aave users where they are, we provide a pragmatic stepping stone towards community (re)engagement with user-friendly and easy-to-use risk management tools aka ,notifications".

General Points and Specifications

The Aave protocol and community would benefit from increased adoption of Aave users due to the enablement of a notifications center as a core touchpoint for user (re)engagement and risk management.

Additionally, we believe that descriptive notifications are just a first step. We think corrective and predictive notifications on positions can bring a higher degree of protection to Aave users and are the way to go which is why we would like to collaborate with the Aave DAO.

Ask and Next Steps

:point_right: Establish a Subgroup in the Aave Ecosystem: Community Notifications Center

  • $250,000 (stables, or AAVE equivalent) allocated from the Aave DAO to fund this subgroup:

– $75k from the budget for community contributions related to this subgroup, including grants for development, evangelism and retroactive rewards for using the Notifications feature.

– $175k from the allocated budget will go towards HAL maintenance contract. Paid 25% upon execution, and then additional 25% every 3 months.

  • This subgroup will support the administration and maintenance of the Notifications Center, and will also serve a support system to onboard users and evangelize notifications to allow users to control their positions and use notifications to manage their risk.

  • Additionally, the group will be responsible for providing updates to the broader Aave fam on the evolution of the notifications

:point_right: A 12-month maintenance contract awarded to HAL for the continuous monitoring, maintaining, and improving of the deployed Notifications Center.

  • HAL will help host the Notifications Center

  • HAL will also be responsible for the deployment, and continuous monitoring, maintenance, and improvements on the server throughout the duration of the contract.

  • If Aave DAO votes to end the contract funding will be returned against the remaining days of the year and we will provide sufficient training for admins to transfer those duties to a new organization.

  • The server is expected to be live within 7 days of this proposal being accepted on governance, assuming that access to the necessary systems and people is provided on a timely basis.

  • The 1-year contract will begin when this proposal is accepted on governance, and there will not be additional setup fees even if there are increased coordination costs to get the service running.

:mega: I want to thank anyone again for reading all of this, and we would love to open the discussion with the community to address any concerns and review this idea.

We look forward to any future collaboration.

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Are there any usage numbers of current HAL integration on v2 (which supports all markets but amm iirc)?

Generally speaking I think the decentralized aave interface should not be promoting 3th parties.
In my eyes the proposed integration is making the aave interface to opinionated to a specific notification service (hal.xyz) - there might be other services in the same niche.

Also i find the proposed amount a bit “high” when considering that it’s just enhancing a service that already exists, which is not unique to aave & still has to be paid per user on top.

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Thanks @sakulstra for those questions :raised_hands:

  • Sharing here that HAL currently has 4,700 users coming from Aave. 250 users have triggered an health factor alert past week (in a non-bear market).

  • Notifications center is an open source contribution to the decentralized Aave interface and the only part that is centralized is the backend which is fully replaceable. At HAL, we believe competition is healthy and do encourage innovation. That’s why anyone providing a better backend service than HAL could easily plug into our open source notification center and replace us.

  • Regarding the grant amount request, this Notification center would be under the Aave website and brand. HAL does not appear as a brand here and only provide the service. Aave users won’t go to HAL website anymore and won’t need to pay, it is all included in the price proposed to Aave DAO.

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I think that HAL is a very useful tool for users, so I agree that it benefits Aave Community.

Said that, I think that in this proposal, HAL has a too prominent situation on the interface. If for whatever reason HAL backend would fail, then a big part of the interface would not work, so it would be adding centralization. I say important, as it looks like it will be added at the same level as Governance, Staking, etc, even though it will redirect to an outside source. From this proposal it would look like as HAL is the chosen notification solution on Aave interface, discouraging others to also support the ecosystem. Don’t know if the solution would be to have a view on the interface where users would be able to choose different integrations.

One thing I don’t get, is that the proposal requests funds to maintain the service, but as for my understanding, users already pay to have the HAL notifications. Shouldn’t this already support the business model of HAL? In my opinion, if Aave DAO funds this initiative, some of the gains should go back to the protocol, this way community would be more involved on the subgroup you want to create.

I really think that HAL gives value to Aave users, but maybe instead of a proposal with year around maintenance, and opinionating that much the interface by adding a full, feature complete Notification center with its own backend (centralized solution), it would make more sense to ask for a Grant to develop, maintain the Notifications Center, and on this proposal ask for funds to develop / integrate all the new networks / markets as this was already accepted by the community.

Either way, thanks for the grate work you are doing, and can’t wait for support on the new markets :slight_smile:

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Hi team - I noticed you submitted an almost-identical proposal on Sushi five days ago.

Requesting $250k as well and touting a similar promise - see here.

As Aave helped bootstrap your team via a grant, do you see merit in a more preferential contract?

2nd question - can HAL be hosted via IPFS? Seems more friendly and decentralized.

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gm @sendrax :wave:

One thing I don’t get, is that the proposal requests funds to maintain the service

The proposal is not about requesting funds to maintain the service as it is now (Aave UI integration → HAL website).

But a new and different service. That would replace (upgrade) the previous one if approved.

Users already pay to have the HAL notifications

End users don’t have to pay on hal.xyz and it has never been the end goal.

TL;DR What we are proposing is a notifications center integrated to Aave where the Aave user wont have to go to HAL again, and in which Aave users will be able to centralize all their alerts, as well as benefit from new ones created by HAL with the Aave community.

If for whatever reason HAL backend would fail, then a big part of the interface would not work, so it would be adding centralization

We have since 2020 a reputation to deliver on-chain events notifications near real time and at scale. Aave’s core services won’t anyway be affected by a disruption from a third party such as HAL, and protocol will continue working properly.

gm @fig :wave:

can HAL be hosted via IPFS?

We are flexible. As Aave open source front end, the notifications center UI can be hosted and served on IPFS. We will need to test it but don’t see any blockers.

As Aave helped bootstrap your team via a grant, do you see merit in a more preferential contract?

Aave was 12% of our revenues in 2021 and we are grateful for the early support of the Aave fam :ghost: :robot:.

For this reason we would like to push the revised proposal:

:point_right: A quarterly maintenance contract awarded to HAL for the continuous monitoring, maintaining, and improving of the deployed Notifications Center on app.aave.com/notify .

  • $30,000 (stables, or AAVE equivalent) allocated from the Aave DAO for the HAL Notifications Center development & maintenance contract. Paid 100% quarterly upon execution.

  • HAL will host and serve the Notifications Center UI (on IPFS). Everything else will still be centralized (API + backend).

  • HAL will also be responsible for the deployment, and continuous monitoring, maintenance, and improvements on the server throughout the duration of the contract.

  • If Aave DAO votes to end the contract funding will be returned against the remaining days of the quarter and we will provide sufficient training for admins to transfer those duties to a new organization.

  • The server is expected to be live within 7 days of this proposal being accepted on governance, assuming that access to the necessary systems and people is provided on a timely basis.

  • The contract will begin when this proposal is accepted on governance, and there will not be additional setup fees even if there are increased coordination costs to get the service running.

:point_right: Establish a Subgroup in the Aave Ecosystem: Community Notifications Center

  • Budget up to Aave DAO and allocated from the Aave DAO to fund this subgroup - we recommend a $50,000 (stables, or AAVE equivalent) minimum budget for community contributions related to this subgroup, including grants for development, evangelism and retroactive rewards for using the Notifications feature -

  • This subgroup will support the administration and maintenance of the Notifications Center, and will also serve a support system to onboard users and evangelize notifications to allow users to control their positions and use notifications to manage their risk.

  • Additionally, the group will be responsible for providing updates to the broader Aave fam on the evolution of the notifications.

This is a temperature check post. Feel free to comment before we push a governance proposal.

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Hi @HAL.xyz , nice to see the success of your product, and so many users from Aave using it!

Some aspects to comment from my side:

  • I obviously think that the proposal is beneficial for the community, basically continuing to improve what you already created in the first Aave integration of HAL, and making it a bit more “native” to the ecosystem.
  • Even if roughly I consider that the numbers (budget, duration) could be fine, I think it is important to go a bit “deeper” on the understanding of this type of collaboration. At the moment, as a data monitoring/automation service/product, HAL kind of enters into the category of tooling in what respects to Aave: a tool which the community can use to get better real-time assurances on their Aave positions.
    Taking that into account, I differentiate 2 main costs (in all senses) for a platform like HAL regarding Aave:
    • Cost of expertise and effort to develop a solution adapting to the needs of Aave. This is what the past grant covered for the initial version, and what a certain budget should cover for any further improvement like the one proposed.
    • Maintainance cost for the infrastructure of running continuously a service like this for Aave users. In a case like this, where HAL basically builds and maintains a let’s say “white-labelled” solution for Aave, the cost should be transferred directly and transparently to the DAO. Basically, something like “the cost of running and maintaining the infrastructure for Aave is 5’000 USD a month, we want Aave to cover it month-per-month”. On this side, Aave should understand how dedicated is the infrastructure to their users, especially because if the Aave brand is used on the notifications center, the reputation of Aave is on the line if the service would have degradation.
      So from my perspective, it would be clearer to define the scope that way: price and duration for the development/improvement, cost or running the service on behalf of Aave during X time.
  • More on the operational side, how will the support to users will be managed? Probably could be a good option to create a discord channel for this on which HAL personnel could take care of.
  • In terms of UX, giving the “white-labelled” nature of the development, it is mandatory that the interface is in line in design with the current Aave application. If the proposal for the Aave <> BGD Labs passes, we can help on that, and other contributors like the Aave companies can definetly participate on this I think.
  • Regarding the sub-group for community notifications and grants, I don’t really think it is needed at the moment, so I don’t support that part. Of course, within the scope of the Aave Grants DAO applications, this direction will kept being incentivise, but an specific subgroup doesn’t make sense in my opinion, as it is not exactly the same as something like security initiatives.
  • Last thing to consider, as important reflection for the Aave community. Apart from a customer, what is Aave to HAL? It is one of the biggest user-acquisition channels for HAL. I don’t think the budget and conditions of the collaboration are not considering this point, but I think it is important to keep it always present for the Aave community; its self-value.
2 Likes
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Taking that into account, I differentiate 2 main costs (in all senses) for a platform like HAL regarding Aave:

  • Cost of expertise and effort to develop a solution adapting to the needs of Aave . This is what the past grant covered for the initial version, and what a certain budget should cover for any further improvement like the one proposed.
  • Maintainance cost for the infrastructure of running continuously a service like this for Aave users . In a case like this, where HAL basically builds and maintains a let’s say “white-labelled” solution for Aave, the cost should be transferred directly and transparently to the DAO. Basically, something like “the cost of running and maintaining the infrastructure for Aave is 5’000 USD a month, we want Aave to cover it month-per-month”.

We understand and appreciate your feedbacks.Taking this into account, below is a new proposal structure, which should fit your expertise/maintenance costs split expectations. fyi @sendrax @sakulstra @fig @MarcZeller

On this side, Aave should understand how dedicated is the infrastructure to their users, especially because if the Aave brand is used on the notifications center, the reputation of Aave is on the line if the service would have degradation.

HAL does provide highly reliable and scalable endpoints for the crypto industry, being able to scale up to 180 million requests per hour at peak times (25 billion per month). Our infrastructure is running on multiple servers across several data centres to ensure the fastest data delivery and the lowest latency possible. We have redundant hosting and load-balanced environments for maximum reliability.

Our API endpoints use HTTPS so Aave user traffic is secured when requesting and receiving data from HAL.

So from my perspective, it would be clearer to define the scope that way: price and duration for the development/improvement, cost or running the service on behalf of Aave during X time.

  • More on the operational side, how will the support to users will be managed? Probably could be a good option to create a discord channel for this on which HAL personnel could take care of.

Service support would be handled by HAL on your discord (to meet users where they are) or on ours. It is part of our proposal and therefore accounted for in quarterly fee.

This support could be a new discord channel with HAL as Support role: we believe Aave community will find it warmer and easier.

  • In terms of UX, giving the “white-labelled” nature of the development, it is mandatory that the interface is in line in design with the current Aave application. If the proposal for the Aave <> BGD Labs passes, we can help on that, and other contributors like the Aave companies can definetly participate on this I think.

We definitively are keen to work with BGD Labs and you @eboado as well as with @Emilio, the latter we have some experience working with on the HAL<>Aave v2 integration.

  • Regarding the sub-group for community notifications and grants, I don’t really think it is needed at the moment, so I don’t support that part. Of course, within the scope of the Aave Grants DAO applications, this direction will kept being incentivise, but an specific subgroup doesn’t make sense in my opinion, as it is not exactly the same as something like security initiatives.

Agreed. In that case, it will be up to Aave Grants DAO and existing subgroups to take the lead on this.

  • Last thing to consider, as important reflection for the Aave community. Apart from a customer, what is Aave to HAL? It is one of the biggest user-acquisition channels for HAL. I don’t think the budget and conditions of the collaboration are not considering this point, but I think it is important to keep it always present for the Aave community; its self-value

Here is the modified proposal for Aave Notification Center:

:point_right: 1- Front end development : $10,000 (discounted as an appreciation of our historical relationship)

:point_right: 2- Operations, maintenance (per quarter) : $20,000

:point_right: 3- User support (per quarter): $5,000

:point_right: 4- Improvements (per quarter): $5,000

Payment conditions:

  • 1st payment (FrontEnd + first quarter): $40,000 ($10,000 + $30,000). Paid 100% upon delivery.

  • Following quarters: $30,000. Paid 100% quarterly upon execution.

$ payment in stables, or AAVE equivalent.