Open Grant Proposal: NDN IPFS Chain — Filecoin-Backed Enterprise Storage, Public Gateway, and Open Conformance Suite

Name of Project: NDN IPFS Chain (NDP v1.0)
Proposal Category: app-dev — Applications (with deliverables in Storage, Retrieval, Integrations, and Developer & Data Tooling)
Proposer: @dnkefua — Desmond Nkefua, Founder & Sole Developer, NDN Analytics Inc. (Tulsa, OK; Dubai-based)
Do you agree to open-source all work you do on behalf of this grant and dual-license under MIT and Apache-2.0 licenses? Yes. (NDP v1.0 specification is already published under CC-BY 4.0; reference implementation is already published under Apache-2.0 and will be relicensed dual MIT + Apache-2.0 for grant deliverables.)

---

Project Description

NDN IPFS Chain is a production, multi-tenant content-addressed storage platform live on Google Cloud Run since April 2026. It implements NDP v1.0 — the NDN Data Protocol — which collapses three protocol stacks (blob pinning, AI/ML model registry, structured records) into one canonical envelope under one auth surface, one billing meter, and one audit trail.

Today, Filecoin is a first-class storage tier in the platform. Pins created with tier=filecoin are routed to verified storage deals; cold archival is part of the lifecycle policy from day one. The platform is the only entrant in the table on ndnipfs.com that ships all four of: PSA v1.0 blob pinning, Filecoin cold archival, AES-256-GCM crypto-shredding, and an Apache-2.0 reference implementation.

This grant funds the work that turns NDN's Filecoin tier from "deals submitted" into a verifiable, automated, audit-ready Filecoin storage product — and ships the open ecosystem assets (SDK, public gateway, conformance suite, SP scorecard) that other Filecoin-aligned teams can adopt.

The problem we are solving for the Filecoin Network specifically:

• Onboarding new data is still hard. Web2 teams that want Filecoin's persistence guarantees do not want to write CAR packers, broker scripts, or deal renewal cron jobs. They want an SDK call. NDN turns client.pin(buf, { tier: 'filecoin' }) into a deal pipeline.


• Verifying that a deal is actually working is even harder. End users have no easy way to see, per CID, which Storage Providers hold their data, whether PoSt is current, and whether retrieval works. NDN's Proofs Dashboard (M3) makes this a one-click public artifact — for any user of the gateway, not only NDN's own customers.


• AI/ML model weights are the largest single source of cold, immutable, content-addressable data being generated today — and almost none of it is on Filecoin. The Models data plane has a one-command HuggingFace import (POST /v1/models/import/huggingface) that ends with shards in verified Filecoin deals. This is new bytes onto Filecoin from a high-volume source.


• GDPR Article 17 and immutable storage are in tension. NDN's envelope-encrypted, KMS-managed crypto-shredding makes Filecoin viable for European enterprise data that needs erasure rights. The encryption-key deletion event is recorded on-chain as tamper-evident proof of destruction. This unlocks a class of Filecoin demand that currently goes to centralized providers by default.

A live NDP v1.0 specification, working API, multi-tenant Postgres-backed control plane, three-plane API surface, and Apache-2.0 reference implementation already exist on the day of submission. The grant funds the Filecoin-Network-specific layer above that — broker integration, deal automation, public PoSt-verified gateway, SDK Filecoin methods, and the open assets (conformance suite, SP scorecard, tutorials) that compound across the ecosystem.

---

Value

This proposal directly advances the Filecoin mission of useful, verifiable decentralized storage in five concrete ways.

1. New usage on Filecoin from a high-volume demand source. The Models data plane is a HuggingFace-to-Filecoin pipeline. A single mid-size model (e.g. a 70B parameter LLM) is hundreds of GiB of content-addressed shards. Year-1 KPI is 500 GiB stored on Filecoin via NDN across 2,500 verified deals — a target chosen to be honestly attainable by a solo developer running a free tier, not inflated. Every pin made through NDN's SDK with tier=filecoin becomes an onboarding event for the Filecoin Network.

2. A public, third-party-verifiable proofs dashboard for any CID stored via NDN. Users today have no good way to see whether their Filecoin deals are actually being stored and retrieved. NDN's Proofs Dashboard publishes per-CID deal lists, PoSt verification status, and weekly retrieval test results as a public scorecard. The same scorecard ranks Storage Provider partners on retrievability, latency, and deal-success rate — published monthly, open data. This is a public good for the entire Filecoin user community, not only NDN's customers.

3. An open, dual-licensed Pinning Services API v1.0 conformance suite. NDN will publish @ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance — an open test suite that any provider can run to claim PSA v1.0 conformance. The suite is the missing artifact that makes "PSA v1.0 compliant" a meaningful claim across the ecosystem. NDN itself targets ≥ 80% pass rate at M1 and 100% at M4.

4. Multi-region public gateway with trustless, Filecoin-backed retrieval. gateway.ndnipfs.com (M2) goes live in three regions with a ?verify=true mode that re-hashes content at the edge and returns an X-Ipfs-Verified header. Behind the gateway, retrieval falls through to Filecoin SP partners when hot tiers miss. This is a free public utility — listed on the IPFS public gateway checker — that benefits every Filecoin user who needs to prove what came back from a CID was the right bytes.

5. Documentation and onboarding that compound. Five published tutorials at docs.ndnipfs.com plus one recorded conference talk (IPFS Thing or Devcon) at M4. Every tutorial includes a tier=filecoin example. Year-1 KPI is 10,000 tracked tutorial completions — these are funnel events for new Filecoin developers.

The reference implementation is Apache-2.0; the specification is CC-BY 4.0. There is no open-core split. The commercial NDN product runs on the same open primitives, differentiated by operational features (multi-region, SLAs, support) — not by source-code locks. Anyone, including direct competitors, can stand up a conforming NDP provider on Filecoin without negotiating with NDN.

---

Deliverables

Concrete, code-shipping deliverables — every one of them is publicly verifiable on completion.

Open-source code (Apache-2.0 + MIT dual license for grant deliverables):

• @ndnanalytics/ipfs — JS/TypeScript SDK on npm, with first-class Filecoin methods (pin({ tier: 'filecoin' }), getDealStatus(cid), listDeals(cid), verifyRetrieval(cid))


• ndn-ipfs — Python SDK on PyPI with the same Filecoin surface, sync + async (httpx), Pydantic v2 models


• ndn — single-binary CLI: ndn pin add --tier filecoin, ndn deal status, ndn deal renew, ndn verify <cid>


• @ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance — open PSA v1.0 conformance test suite that any provider can run


• @ndnanalytics/ndp-conformance — NDP v1.0 conformance test suite (canonical-form vectors, three-plane round-trip tests)


• Filecoin broker module — CAR packing, Boost deal submission across ≥ 3 SP partners, automated deal renewal for deals within 30 days of expiry


• Public gateway code — Cloudflare Workers + R2 fronting Cloud Run; trustless retrieval verifier; subdomain isolation at <cid>.ipfs.ndnipfs.com

Open public infrastructure (run by NDN at no cost to users):

• gateway.ndnipfs.com — anycast in us-west, eu-west, ap-southeast, listed on the IPFS public gateway checker, target p95 TTFB < 250 ms, target uptime 99.95% rolling 90-day


• Proofs Dashboard at proofs.ndnipfs.com — per-CID deal list, PoSt verification status, weekly retrieval results


• SP scorecard at sp.ndnipfs.com — published monthly, open CSV download

Open documentation and community artifacts:

• NDP v1.0 specification submitted for IPFS community review via the working-group / IPIP-style process


• 5 published tutorials at docs.ndnipfs.com, every tutorial includes a tier=filecoin worked example


• 1 conference talk delivered and recorded (IPFS Thing 2026 or Devcon)


• Public Year-1 report — actual vs. target KPIs, lessons learned, sustainability plan


• Third-party security audit report (M2), findings remediated and published in repo

Filecoin Network KPIs (Year-1, honest single-developer scale):

Metric | Target
-- | --
GiB stored on Filecoin via NDN | 500 GiB
Verified Filecoin deals brokered through NDN | 2,500
Storage Provider partners integrated | ≥ 3
SDK monthly downloads (npm + PyPI combined) | 15,000
Public gateway unique clients / month | 100,000
Unique CIDs pinned via NDN (all tiers) | 5,000,000
Tracked tutorial completions | 10,000
Gateway p95 TTFB | < 250 ms
Gateway uptime (rolling 90d) | 99.95%

NDN Analytics Inc. is a pre-revenue Oklahoma corporation; the founder is the sole engineer. There is no overhead loading and no profit margin in this budget — every line item is direct cost or direct labor.

---

Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

NDN IPFS Chain is the foundation of NDN Analytics Inc.'s commercial product line, not a side project. The reference implementation, the SDKs, the gateway, the proofs dashboard, the SP scorecard, and the conformance suite are also the production systems the company runs commercially. Maintenance is a business requirement, not a goodwill commitment.

Concretely:

• Code: Repository is already public at github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain with CI/CD. Issues and PRs are accepted from the community. Apache-2.0 (and MIT for grant-funded subsystems) licenses guarantee anyone can fork and run the platform if NDN ever stepped away.


• Infrastructure: The public gateway, Proofs Dashboard, and SP scorecard are committed as free public utilities for at least 24 months past grant completion. Operating costs after Year-1 are approximately $300–$700 / month at projected gateway scale — funded by NDN commercial revenue and, if needed, by community sponsorship via OpenCollective.


• Specification: NDP v1.0 will be submitted for IPFS community review during the grant period, with the explicit goal of reaching a status equivalent to an IPFS Improvement Proposal. The spec's governance is community-owned from that point on; reserved namespaces and query extensions require spec revision, not a unilateral implementation decision.


• Conformance suite: @ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance and @ndnanalytics/ndp-conformance are dual-licensed and version-tagged against published spec revisions. Any provider can run them and self-declare conformance — there is no central certification body and no NDN gate.


• Sustainability beyond Year-1: A public sustainability plan is part of the M4 deliverables. Current revenue path: free tier (5 GB, 3 replicas) → metered paid tier → enterprise contracts with SLAs and SSO. Pricing is published on the website. The grant is bridge funding to credible Filecoin-backed product-market fit, not subsidy of an unsustainable business model.

---

Team

Team Members

• Desmond Nkefua ("Blockchainer") — Founder, CEO, and sole developer. Based in Dubai, UAE; corporate registration in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This is a single-developer proposal and the application is honest about that. The mitigation is already-shipped scope: the API is live, the dashboard is live, the multi-tenant Postgres schema is migrated and in production, the NDP v1.0 specification is published, and the Apache-2.0 reference implementation is on GitHub — all on the day of submission. The grant funds incremental, well-scoped work on top of that proven baseline. Of the $34,000 engineering line item, $4,000 is reserved for contractor support during M3 (broker integration sprint) to reduce single-developer concentration risk on the most Filecoin-critical milestone.

Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

• Desmond Nkefua: linkedin.com/in/desmond-nkefua-data-analyst

Team Website

• NDN IPFS Chain: ndnipfs.com


• NDN Analytics Inc.: ndnanalytics.com


• Whitepaper: ndnipfs.com/whitepaper

Relevant Experience

• Shipped a live, multi-tenant content-addressed storage platform on Google Cloud Run. Three-plane API surface (/v1/blobs, /v1/models, /v1/records), tenant-isolated Postgres 16, AES-256-GCM envelope encryption, KMS-managed keys, audit log, all public and verifiable today.


• Authored and published the NDP v1.0 specification — RFC 8785 JCS canonicalization, deterministic CIDv1 generation, JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 enforcement, content-addressed views.


• Built the production NDN Analytics platform — React 19, strict TypeScript, Vite, Firebase Hosting + Functions, Stripe, Resend, Firestore, GA4, Sentry, CI/CD, CSP/HSTS/security headers, 253+ automated tests.


• Operates across the Web3 and AI stack — Ethereum/EVM, Polygon (deployed smart contract suite on Polygon Amoy testnet for a separate ROSCA platform), IPFS, Filecoin, Google Cloud AI, Vertex AI.

Team Code Repositories

• NDN IPFS Chain (this proposal): github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain — Apache-2.0


• NDN Analytics platform: github.com/dnkefua/ndn-analytics


• Founder GitHub: github.com/dnkefua

Live production endpoints (publicly reachable today):

• API health: ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/_health


• API docs: ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/docs


• Dashboard: ndn-dashboard-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app

---

Additional Information

Open-source licensing commitment. All grant-funded code will be dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0. The NDP v1.0 specification is already published under CC-BY 4.0. The reference implementation is already published under Apache-2.0 and will be relicensed dual MIT + Apache-2.0 for the subsystems funded by this grant. There is no open-core split — the commercial product runs on the same open primitives.

Disclosure of parallel funding pursuit. NDN has separately submitted (or is preparing) a proposal to the IPFS Foundation grants program at ipfs/devgrants for the IPFS-protocol-layer work (NDP specification, IPIP review process, three-plane spec maturity). That work is scope-distinct from this Filecoin Foundation proposal, which funds Filecoin-Network-specific deliverables only: the Filecoin broker module, deal automation, Proofs Dashboard, SP scorecard, the Filecoin methods in each SDK, and the Filecoin-backed retrieval verifier in the public gateway. There is no double-funding of any deliverable. Both grant trackers will be cross-referenced in the GitHub issues. We are happy to align scope with the Filecoin Foundation grants team during preliminary review if the scope split needs adjustment.

Why this proposal fits the Devgrants priority on Filecoin Network functionality. The February 2025 Devgrants update made clear that the program prioritizes funding that enhances functionality for the Filecoin Network and de-emphasizes IPFS-only work. This proposal is structured accordingly:

• M3 (the flagship milestone) is entirely Filecoin Network functionality — broker integration, deal automation, PoSt verification, SP scorecard


• The SDKs in M1 explicitly ship Filecoin methods (pin({ tier: 'filecoin' }), getDealStatus, listDeals, verifyRetrieval) — adding Filecoin to popular Web2 developer surfaces


• The public gateway in M2 includes Filecoin-backed retrieval fall-through and trustless verification


• Every M4 tutorial includes a tier=filecoin worked example


• Year-1 KPIs include Filecoin-specific targets (500 GiB stored, 2,500 verified deals, ≥ 3 SP partners) that are independently auditable

Category fit (the proposal touches four of the open-grant categories): Storage (Filecoin broker, deal automation, lifecycle policies), Retrieval (multi-region public gateway, trustless verification, retrieval scorecard), Integrations (HuggingFace → Filecoin pipeline, PSA v1.0 alias for tooling compatibility), and Developer & Data Tooling (SDKs, CLI, conformance suite). We have selected app-dev as the proposal category because the unifying artifact is an application (the platform) that exercises and onboards new usage to the Filecoin Network across all four areas.

Risk register.

• Single-developer concentration. Mitigated by: $4,000 of M3 budget reserved for contractor support on the broker sprint; production codebase already shipped (incremental, not greenfield); Apache-2.0 + MIT licensing guarantees fork-ability if the founder were ever incapacitated.


• Storage Provider partner availability. Will engage via the Filecoin Foundation builder community, FIL-B Slack (#grants-questions), and the published lists of active SPs on Boost. Targeting ≥ 3 partners; if only 2 are available at M3, will document the constraint transparently in the milestone delivery report rather than overstate.


• Spec review timeline. IPIP-style community review is on the IPFS Foundation track; if Filecoin Foundation prefers, the spec work can be entirely de-scoped from this proposal (no budget reallocation needed since spec work is in the parallel IPFS Foundation track, not this one).

Contact. nkefuan@yahoo.com · Twitter/X @dnkefua · GitHub @dnkefua · Filecoin Slack handle to be created and posted in this issue's comments at submission.

---

Submitted to the Filecoin Foundation Open Grants program. NDN Analytics Inc., a pre-revenue Oklahoma corporation, is the legal applicant. All work funded by this grant will be dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0 and the specification under CC-BY 4.0. No work will commence until the Grant Agreement is signed by both parties.

# Open Grant Proposal: **NDN IPFS Chain — Filecoin-Backed Enterprise Storage, Public Gateway, and Open Conformance Suite**

**Name of Project:** NDN IPFS Chain (NDP v1.0)
**Proposal Category:** `app-dev` — *Applications* (with deliverables in *Storage*, *Retrieval*, *Integrations*, and *Developer & Data Tooling*)
**Proposer:** [[@dnkefua](https://github.com/dnkefua)](https://github.com/dnkefua) — Desmond Nkefua, Founder & Sole Developer, **NDN Analytics Inc.** (Tulsa, OK; Dubai-based)
**Do you agree to open-source all work you do on behalf of this grant and dual-license under MIT and Apache-2.0 licenses?** **Yes.** (NDP v1.0 specification is already published under CC-BY 4.0; reference implementation is already published under Apache-2.0 and will be relicensed dual MIT + Apache-2.0 for grant deliverables.)

---

## Project Description

NDN IPFS Chain is a production, multi-tenant content-addressed storage platform live on Google Cloud Run since April 2026. It implements **NDP v1.0** — the *NDN Data Protocol* — which collapses three protocol stacks (blob pinning, AI/ML model registry, structured records) into one canonical envelope under one auth surface, one billing meter, and one audit trail.

**Today, Filecoin is a first-class storage tier in the platform.** Pins created with `tier=filecoin` are routed to verified storage deals; cold archival is part of the lifecycle policy from day one. The platform is the only entrant in the table on [[ndnipfs.com](https://www.ndnipfs.com/)](https://www.ndnipfs.com/) that ships **all four** of: PSA v1.0 blob pinning, Filecoin cold archival, AES-256-GCM crypto-shredding, and an Apache-2.0 reference implementation.

**This grant funds the work that turns NDN's Filecoin tier from "deals submitted" into a verifiable, automated, audit-ready Filecoin storage product** — and ships the open ecosystem assets (SDK, public gateway, conformance suite, SP scorecard) that other Filecoin-aligned teams can adopt.

The problem we are solving for the Filecoin Network specifically:

- **Onboarding new data is still hard.** Web2 teams that *want* Filecoin's persistence guarantees do not want to write CAR packers, broker scripts, or deal renewal cron jobs. They want an SDK call. NDN turns `client.pin(buf, { tier: 'filecoin' })` into a deal pipeline.
- **Verifying that a deal is actually working is even harder.** End users have no easy way to see, per CID, which Storage Providers hold their data, whether PoSt is current, and whether retrieval works. NDN's Proofs Dashboard (M3) makes this a one-click public artifact — for any user of the gateway, not only NDN's own customers.
- **AI/ML model weights are the largest single source of cold, immutable, content-addressable data being generated today** — and almost none of it is on Filecoin. The Models data plane has a one-command HuggingFace import (`POST /v1/models/import/huggingface`) that ends with shards in verified Filecoin deals. This is *new bytes onto Filecoin* from a high-volume source.
- **GDPR Article 17 and immutable storage are in tension.** NDN's envelope-encrypted, KMS-managed crypto-shredding makes Filecoin viable for European enterprise data that needs erasure rights. The encryption-key deletion event is recorded on-chain as tamper-evident proof of destruction. This unlocks a class of Filecoin demand that currently goes to centralized providers by default.

A live NDP v1.0 specification, working API, multi-tenant Postgres-backed control plane, three-plane API surface, and Apache-2.0 reference implementation already exist on the day of submission. The grant funds the **Filecoin-Network-specific** layer above that — broker integration, deal automation, public PoSt-verified gateway, SDK Filecoin methods, and the open assets (conformance suite, SP scorecard, tutorials) that compound across the ecosystem.

---

## Value

This proposal directly advances the Filecoin mission of useful, verifiable decentralized storage in five concrete ways.

**1. New usage on Filecoin from a high-volume demand source.** The Models data plane is a HuggingFace-to-Filecoin pipeline. A single mid-size model (e.g. a 70B parameter LLM) is hundreds of GiB of content-addressed shards. Year-1 KPI is **500 GiB stored on Filecoin via NDN across 2,500 verified deals** — a target chosen to be honestly attainable by a solo developer running a free tier, not inflated. Every pin made through NDN's SDK with `tier=filecoin` becomes an onboarding event for the Filecoin Network.

**2. A public, third-party-verifiable proofs dashboard for any CID stored via NDN.** Users today have no good way to see whether their Filecoin deals are actually being stored and retrieved. NDN's Proofs Dashboard publishes per-CID deal lists, PoSt verification status, and weekly retrieval test results as a **public scorecard**. The same scorecard ranks Storage Provider partners on retrievability, latency, and deal-success rate — published monthly, open data. This is a public good for the entire Filecoin user community, not only NDN's customers.

**3. An open, dual-licensed Pinning Services API v1.0 conformance suite.** NDN will publish `@ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance` — an open test suite that any provider can run to claim PSA v1.0 conformance. The suite is the missing artifact that makes "PSA v1.0 compliant" a meaningful claim across the ecosystem. NDN itself targets ≥ 80% pass rate at M1 and 100% at M4.

**4. Multi-region public gateway with trustless, Filecoin-backed retrieval.** `gateway.ndnipfs.com` (M2) goes live in three regions with a `?verify=true` mode that re-hashes content at the edge and returns an `X-Ipfs-Verified` header. Behind the gateway, retrieval falls through to Filecoin SP partners when hot tiers miss. This is a free public utility — listed on the IPFS public gateway checker — that benefits every Filecoin user who needs to *prove* what came back from a CID was the right bytes.

**5. Documentation and onboarding that compound.** Five published tutorials at `docs.ndnipfs.com` plus one recorded conference talk (IPFS Thing or Devcon) at M4. Every tutorial includes a `tier=filecoin` example. Year-1 KPI is **10,000 tracked tutorial completions** — these are funnel events for new Filecoin developers.

The reference implementation is Apache-2.0; the specification is CC-BY 4.0. **There is no open-core split.** The commercial NDN product runs on the same open primitives, differentiated by operational features (multi-region, SLAs, support) — not by source-code locks. Anyone, including direct competitors, can stand up a conforming NDP provider on Filecoin without negotiating with NDN.

---

## Deliverables

Concrete, code-shipping deliverables — every one of them is publicly verifiable on completion.

**Open-source code (Apache-2.0 + MIT dual license for grant deliverables):**

- `@ndnanalytics/ipfs` — JS/TypeScript SDK on npm, with first-class Filecoin methods (`pin({ tier: 'filecoin' })`, `getDealStatus(cid)`, `listDeals(cid)`, `verifyRetrieval(cid)`)
- `ndn-ipfs` — Python SDK on PyPI with the same Filecoin surface, sync + async (httpx), Pydantic v2 models
- `ndn` — single-binary CLI: `ndn pin add --tier filecoin`, `ndn deal status`, `ndn deal renew`, `ndn verify `
- `@ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance` — open PSA v1.0 conformance test suite that any provider can run
- `@ndnanalytics/ndp-conformance` — NDP v1.0 conformance test suite (canonical-form vectors, three-plane round-trip tests)
- Filecoin broker module — CAR packing, [[Boost](https://boost.filecoin.io/)](https://boost.filecoin.io/) deal submission across ≥ 3 SP partners, automated deal renewal for deals within 30 days of expiry
- Public gateway code — Cloudflare Workers + R2 fronting Cloud Run; trustless retrieval verifier; subdomain isolation at `.ipfs.ndnipfs.com`

**Open public infrastructure (run by NDN at no cost to users):**

- `gateway.ndnipfs.com` — anycast in `us-west`, `eu-west`, `ap-southeast`, listed on the IPFS public gateway checker, target p95 TTFB < 250 ms, target uptime 99.95% rolling 90-day
- Proofs Dashboard at `proofs.ndnipfs.com` — per-CID deal list, PoSt verification status, weekly retrieval results
- SP scorecard at `sp.ndnipfs.com` — published monthly, open CSV download

**Open documentation and community artifacts:**

- NDP v1.0 specification submitted for IPFS community review via the working-group / IPIP-style process
- 5 published tutorials at `docs.ndnipfs.com`, every tutorial includes a `tier=filecoin` worked example
- 1 conference talk delivered and recorded (IPFS Thing 2026 or Devcon)
- Public Year-1 report — actual vs. target KPIs, lessons learned, sustainability plan
- Third-party security audit report (M2), findings remediated and published in repo

**Filecoin Network KPIs (Year-1, honest single-developer scale):**

| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| GiB stored on Filecoin via NDN | 500 GiB |
| Verified Filecoin deals brokered through NDN | 2,500 |
| Storage Provider partners integrated | ≥ 3 |
| SDK monthly downloads (npm + PyPI combined) | 15,000 |
| Public gateway unique clients / month | 100,000 |
| Unique CIDs pinned via NDN (all tiers) | 5,000,000 |
| Tracked tutorial completions | 10,000 |
| Gateway p95 TTFB | < 250 ms |
| Gateway uptime (rolling 90d) | 99.95% |

---

## Development Roadmap

The roadmap below is a Filecoin-forward restructuring of the milestone plan published in the NDN whitepaper. Total ask: **$50,000 USD**, paid against four milestones over twelve months. Each milestone has a single binary acceptance criterion: the deliverables are public and demonstrable, or they are not.

### Milestone 1 — SDK Foundation, PSA v1.0 Conformance Suite, and Filecoin SDK Surface
**Duration: 3 months from contract signature** | **Budget: $15,000**

- `@ndnanalytics/ipfs` v1.0 published to npm — ESM + CJS + browser bundles, WebCrypto AES-256-GCM, tus streaming, **Filecoin methods (`pin({ tier: 'filecoin' })`, `getDealStatus`, `listDeals`)**
- `ndn-ipfs` v1.0 published to PyPI — sync + async (httpx), Pydantic v2, identical Filecoin surface
- `ndn` CLI (single static binary) — `pin add`, `pin list`, `pin get`, `deal status`, `deal renew`, `keys rotate`; works against any PSA v1.0 backend
- `@ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance` v1.0 published to npm — open PSA v1.0 test suite; NDN passes ≥ 80% of public tests
- NDP v1.0 specification posted for community review

**Acceptance:** All packages installable from public registries; CLI binary downloadable from GitHub Releases; conformance suite runnable by any third party against any PSA v1.0 endpoint and produces a public pass/fail report; NDN's own conformance score published.

### Milestone 2 — Public Multi-Region Gateway with Trustless Filecoin-Backed Retrieval
**Duration: months 4–6** | **Budget: $15,000**

- `gateway.ndnipfs.com` live in `us-west`, `eu-west`, `ap-southeast` — anycast DNS, Cloudflare Workers + R2 fronting Cloud Run
- Subdomain gateway at `.ipfs.ndnipfs.com` with origin isolation
- `?verify=true` trustless retrieval — re-hashes content at the edge, returns `X-Ipfs-Verified: true|false` header
- Gateway falls through to Filecoin SP partners on hot-tier misses
- Listed on the public IPFS gateway checker
- Third-party security audit complete; findings remediated and published in the repo
- p95 TTFB < 250 ms and uptime ≥ 99.9% over the 30-day acceptance window

**Acceptance:** Gateway publicly resolvable from all three regions; verifier header observable in `curl -I`; gateway listed on the public IPFS gateway checker; security audit PDF published in repo.

### Milestone 3 — Filecoin Broker, Deal Automation, and Public Proofs Dashboard *(flagship Filecoin milestone)*
**Duration: months 7–9** | **Budget: $10,000**

- Filecoin broker integrated — `tier=filecoin` pins trigger CAR packing + Boost deal submission across ≥ 3 Storage Provider partners
- Automated deal renewal for any deal within 30 days of expiry
- **Proofs Dashboard** at `proofs.ndnipfs.com` — per-CID deal list, PoSt verification status, weekly retrieval test results, all public
- **SP scorecard** published monthly at `sp.ndnipfs.com` — retrievability, latency, deal-success rate, downloadable CSV
- ≥ 250 GiB and ≥ 1,250 verified deals brokered through NDN by end of milestone (50% of Year-1 target)

**Acceptance:** Proofs Dashboard publicly accessible; verifiable PoSt status displayed for ≥ 100 sample CIDs; SP scorecard published for at least one full month with downloadable open data; deal-renewal automation observable in repo logs.

### Milestone 4 — Year-1 Scale, Full Conformance, and Ecosystem Outputs
**Duration: months 10–12** | **Budget: $10,000**

- Full Pinning Services API v1.0 conformance — 100% of public test suite
- 5 published tutorials at `docs.ndnipfs.com`, each with a `tier=filecoin` worked example
- 1 conference talk delivered and recorded (IPFS Thing 2026 or Devcon target)
- Year-1 public report — actual vs. target KPIs, lessons learned, sustainability plan published
- Final KPI scorecard against the table in the *Deliverables* section, published as an open CSV

**Acceptance:** 100% PSA v1.0 conformance demonstrated by re-running the M1 suite; tutorials live and indexed; conference talk recording linked in repo; Year-1 report PDF + open KPI CSV published.

---

## Total Budget Requested

**USD $50,000**, paid in four milestone gate payments of **$15,000 / $15,000 / $10,000 / $10,000**, over twelve months from contract signature. Use of funds:

| Category | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering labor (founder, principal developer) | $34,000 | SDK, gateway, broker, conformance suite, dashboard |
| Third-party security audit (M2) | $6,000 | External firm; report published in repo |
| Storage Provider partner integration & test deals | $4,000 | Test capacity + integration time with ≥ 3 SP partners |
| Multi-region cloud infrastructure (gateway + dashboard) | $3,000 | Cloudflare Workers, R2, Cloud Run, Cloud SQL beyond free tier |
| Documentation, tutorials, and conference travel | $3,000 | Hosted at `docs.ndnipfs.com`; one talk |

NDN Analytics Inc. is a pre-revenue Oklahoma corporation; the founder is the sole engineer. There is no overhead loading and no profit margin in this budget — every line item is direct cost or direct labor.

---

## Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

NDN IPFS Chain is the foundation of NDN Analytics Inc.'s commercial product line, not a side project. The reference implementation, the SDKs, the gateway, the proofs dashboard, the SP scorecard, and the conformance suite are *also* the production systems the company runs commercially. **Maintenance is a business requirement, not a goodwill commitment.**

Concretely:

- **Code:** Repository is already public at [[github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain)](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain) with CI/CD. Issues and PRs are accepted from the community. Apache-2.0 (and MIT for grant-funded subsystems) licenses guarantee anyone can fork and run the platform if NDN ever stepped away.
- **Infrastructure:** The public gateway, Proofs Dashboard, and SP scorecard are committed as **free public utilities** for at least 24 months past grant completion. Operating costs after Year-1 are approximately $300–$700 / month at projected gateway scale — funded by NDN commercial revenue and, if needed, by community sponsorship via OpenCollective.
- **Specification:** NDP v1.0 will be submitted for IPFS community review during the grant period, with the explicit goal of reaching a status equivalent to an IPFS Improvement Proposal. The spec's governance is community-owned from that point on; reserved namespaces and query extensions require spec revision, not a unilateral implementation decision.
- **Conformance suite:** `@ndnanalytics/pinning-services-conformance` and `@ndnanalytics/ndp-conformance` are dual-licensed and version-tagged against published spec revisions. Any provider can run them and self-declare conformance — there is no central certification body and no NDN gate.
- **Sustainability beyond Year-1:** A public sustainability plan is part of the M4 deliverables. Current revenue path: free tier (5 GB, 3 replicas) → metered paid tier → enterprise contracts with SLAs and SSO. Pricing is published on the website. The grant is bridge funding to credible Filecoin-backed product-market fit, not subsidy of an unsustainable business model.

---

## Team

### Team Members

- **Desmond Nkefua** ("Blockchainer") — Founder, CEO, and sole developer. Based in Dubai, UAE; corporate registration in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This is a single-developer proposal and the application is honest about that. The mitigation is **already-shipped scope**: the API is live, the dashboard is live, the multi-tenant Postgres schema is migrated and in production, the NDP v1.0 specification is published, and the Apache-2.0 reference implementation is on GitHub — all on the day of submission. The grant funds incremental, well-scoped work on top of that proven baseline. Of the $34,000 engineering line item, $4,000 is reserved for contractor support during M3 (broker integration sprint) to reduce single-developer concentration risk on the most Filecoin-critical milestone.

### Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

- Desmond Nkefua: [[linkedin.com/in/desmond-nkefua-data-analyst](https://www.linkedin.com/in/desmond-nkefua-data-analyst/)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/desmond-nkefua-data-analyst/)

### Team Website

- NDN IPFS Chain: [[ndnipfs.com](https://www.ndnipfs.com/)](https://www.ndnipfs.com/)
- NDN Analytics Inc.: [[ndnanalytics.com](https://www.ndnanalytics.com/)](https://www.ndnanalytics.com/)
- Whitepaper: [[ndnipfs.com/whitepaper](https://www.ndnipfs.com/whitepaper/index.html)](https://www.ndnipfs.com/whitepaper/index.html)

### Relevant Experience

- **Shipped a live, multi-tenant content-addressed storage platform on Google Cloud Run.** Three-plane API surface (`/v1/blobs`, `/v1/models`, `/v1/records`), tenant-isolated Postgres 16, AES-256-GCM envelope encryption, KMS-managed keys, audit log, all public and verifiable today.
- **Authored and published the NDP v1.0 specification** — RFC 8785 JCS canonicalization, deterministic CIDv1 generation, JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 enforcement, content-addressed views.
- **Built the production NDN Analytics platform** — React 19, strict TypeScript, Vite, Firebase Hosting + Functions, Stripe, Resend, Firestore, GA4, Sentry, CI/CD, CSP/HSTS/security headers, 253+ automated tests.
- **Operates across the Web3 and AI stack** — Ethereum/EVM, Polygon (deployed smart contract suite on Polygon Amoy testnet for a separate ROSCA platform), IPFS, Filecoin, Google Cloud AI, Vertex AI.

### Team Code Repositories

- **NDN IPFS Chain (this proposal):** [[github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain)](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-ipfs-chain) — Apache-2.0
- NDN Analytics platform: [[github.com/dnkefua/ndn-analytics](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-analytics)](https://github.com/dnkefua/ndn-analytics)
- Founder GitHub: [[github.com/dnkefua](https://github.com/dnkefua)](https://github.com/dnkefua)

**Live production endpoints (publicly reachable today):**

- API health: [[ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/_health](https://ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/_health)](https://ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/_health)
- API docs: [[ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/docs](https://ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/docs)](https://ndn-api-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/docs)
- Dashboard: [[ndn-dashboard-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app](https://ndn-dashboard-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app/)](https://ndn-dashboard-1037328355027.us-west1.run.app)

---

## Additional Information

**Open-source licensing commitment.** All grant-funded code will be dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0. The NDP v1.0 specification is already published under CC-BY 4.0. The reference implementation is already published under Apache-2.0 and will be relicensed dual MIT + Apache-2.0 for the subsystems funded by this grant. There is no open-core split — the commercial product runs on the same open primitives.

**Disclosure of parallel funding pursuit.** NDN has separately submitted (or is preparing) a proposal to the **IPFS Foundation grants program** at `ipfs/devgrants` for the IPFS-protocol-layer work (NDP specification, IPIP review process, three-plane spec maturity). That work is **scope-distinct** from this Filecoin Foundation proposal, which funds **Filecoin-Network-specific deliverables only**: the Filecoin broker module, deal automation, Proofs Dashboard, SP scorecard, the Filecoin methods in each SDK, and the Filecoin-backed retrieval verifier in the public gateway. There is no double-funding of any deliverable. Both grant trackers will be cross-referenced in the GitHub issues. We are happy to align scope with the Filecoin Foundation grants team during preliminary review if the scope split needs adjustment.

**Why this proposal fits the Devgrants priority on Filecoin Network functionality.** The February 2025 Devgrants update made clear that the program prioritizes funding that enhances functionality for the Filecoin Network and de-emphasizes IPFS-only work. This proposal is structured accordingly:

- M3 (the flagship milestone) is **entirely** Filecoin Network functionality — broker integration, deal automation, PoSt verification, SP scorecard
- The SDKs in M1 explicitly ship Filecoin methods (`pin({ tier: 'filecoin' })`, `getDealStatus`, `listDeals`, `verifyRetrieval`) — adding Filecoin to popular Web2 developer surfaces
- The public gateway in M2 includes Filecoin-backed retrieval fall-through and trustless verification
- Every M4 tutorial includes a `tier=filecoin` worked example
- Year-1 KPIs include Filecoin-specific targets (500 GiB stored, 2,500 verified deals, ≥ 3 SP partners) that are independently auditable

**Category fit (the proposal touches four of the open-grant categories):** *Storage* (Filecoin broker, deal automation, lifecycle policies), *Retrieval* (multi-region public gateway, trustless verification, retrieval scorecard), *Integrations* (HuggingFace → Filecoin pipeline, PSA v1.0 alias for tooling compatibility), and *Developer & Data Tooling* (SDKs, CLI, conformance suite). We have selected `app-dev` as the proposal category because the unifying artifact is an application (the platform) that exercises and onboards new usage to the Filecoin Network across all four areas.

**Risk register.**

- *Single-developer concentration.* Mitigated by: $4,000 of M3 budget reserved for contractor support on the broker sprint; production codebase already shipped (incremental, not greenfield); Apache-2.0 + MIT licensing guarantees fork-ability if the founder were ever incapacitated.
- *Storage Provider partner availability.* Will engage via the Filecoin Foundation builder community, FIL-B Slack (`#grants-questions`), and the published lists of active SPs on Boost. Targeting ≥ 3 partners; if only 2 are available at M3, will document the constraint transparently in the milestone delivery report rather than overstate.
- *Spec review timeline.* IPIP-style community review is on the IPFS Foundation track; if Filecoin Foundation prefers, the spec work can be entirely de-scoped from this proposal (no budget reallocation needed since spec work is in the parallel IPFS Foundation track, not this one).

**Contact.** `nkefuan@yahoo.com` or `nkefua@ndnanalytics.com` · Twitter/X [[@dnkefua](https://twitter.com/dnkefua)](https://twitter.com/dnkefua) · GitHub [[@dnkefua](https://github.com/dnkefua)](https://github.com/dnkefua) · Filecoin Slack handle to be created and posted in this issue's comments at submission.

---

*Submitted to the Filecoin Foundation Open Grants program. NDN Analytics Inc., a pre-revenue Oklahoma corporation, is the legal applicant. All work funded by this grant will be dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0 and the specification under CC-BY 4.0. No work will commence until the Grant Agreement is signed by both parties.*