Open Grant Proposal: Web3 Compass — The Search Engine for the Decentralized Web

# Open Grant Proposal: `Web3 Compass — The Search Engine for the Decentralized Web`

**Project Name:**
Web3 Compass

**Proposal Category:**
Retrieval

**Individual or Entity Name:**
Blockstars LLC

**Proposer:**
@blockstars-tech

**Project Repo(s):**
https://github.com/blockstars-tech/web3compass-sns-indexer

**(Optional) Filecoin ecosystem affiliations:**
None.

**(Optional) Technical Sponsor:**
None.

**Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?:**
No.

# Project Summary

Web3 Compass is a search engine built for the decentralized web. It makes decentralized websites (dSites), blockchain domains, and content stored on IPFS, IPNS, Swarm, TON Sites, and other decentralized networks searchable from one unified platform, content that traditional search engines cannot discover or index.

As the decentralized internet continues to expand across independent blockchain ecosystems, content discovery has become one of the ecosystem's biggest challenges. While decentralized storage and naming technologies have matured, users still lack an efficient way to search and discover decentralized websites, applications, and content. Traditional search engines were designed for the Web2 internet and do not understand blockchain domains, mutable decentralized content, or decentralized storage protocols.

Web3 Compass solves this problem by continuously discovering blockchain domains, resolving them to their latest content, retrieving data from decentralized networks, and indexing it into a fast and familiar search experience. The platform already supports more than 100 blockchain domain extensions and continues expanding its search index to make the decentralized web more accessible to everyone.

## Impact

Web3 Compass directly strengthens the Filecoin and IPFS ecosystems by improving the discoverability of decentralized content. Storage alone is not enough, users must also be able to easily find the information stored across decentralized networks. By indexing content hosted on IPFS and other decentralized storage systems, Web3 Compass increases the visibility, accessibility, and usefulness of decentralized data.

The project addresses one of the largest adoption barriers facing decentralized technologies: discoverability. Without an effective search engine, decentralized websites and applications remain difficult to find, limiting both user adoption and developer engagement. By making decentralized content searchable through a familiar interface, Web3 Compass lowers the barrier to entry for millions of potential users while encouraging builders to publish more content using decentralized infrastructure.

Our vision is to become the primary search and discovery layer for the decentralized web. Success will be measured by continued expansion of supported blockchain ecosystems, growth of indexed decentralized content, increased search activity, API adoption, ecosystem integrations, and broader usage of decentralized technologies powered by IPFS, Filecoin, and related protocols.

## Outcomes

Upon completion of this project, Web3 Compass will deliver a significantly more scalable and comprehensive search platform for the decentralized web. The platform will support additional blockchain domain ecosystems, expand its decentralized content index, improve retrieval across IPFS, IPNS, Swarm, TON, and future supported networks, and deliver faster, more accurate search results through optimized indexing and ranking algorithms.

The project will also enhance the public Search API, improve developer integrations, strengthen platform security and reliability, and scale the infrastructure required to support continued user growth. These improvements will make Web3 Compass a more powerful discovery platform for developers, businesses, and users across the Web3 ecosystem.

Success will be measured through growth in indexed decentralized websites and blockchain domains, expansion of supported ecosystems, improvements in indexing speed and search latency, monthly active users, search volume, API usage, ecosystem integrations, and overall platform reliability.

## Data Onboarding

Not applicable.

## Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

Web3 Compass serves Web3 users, blockchain domain owners, developers, decentralized application builders, researchers, content creators, AI platforms, and organizations building on decentralized infrastructure. As support for decentralized websites and blockchain domains continues to grow, the potential audience includes millions of users across the global Web3 ecosystem.

Web3 Compass is already a live platform with an existing user base. Rather than acquiring its first users, this project focuses on accelerating adoption through strategic marketing, ecosystem partnerships, developer outreach, public APIs, and integrations with wallets, browsers, AI platforms, and decentralized applications. Success will be measured through growth in users, search queries, API usage, ecosystem partnerships, and overall awareness of Web3 Compass.

## Development Roadmap

Web3 Compass is already a live production platform with an active user base, support for more than 100 blockchain domain extensions, and a continuously expanding index of decentralized websites and content. This project focuses on scaling the platform rather than building a new product.

Thirty percent ($195,000) of our broader $650,000 funding round is allocated to product development, while twenty percent ($130,000) is allocated to infrastructure expansion.

### Milestone 1 — Scale Search Infrastructure

**Timeline:** September 2026 – December 2026

**Objective**

Strengthen and scale the existing Web3 Compass infrastructure.

**Deliverables**

- Expand indexing capacity.
- Scale the self-hosted IPFS infrastructure and public gateway.
- Improve crawler performance and indexing throughput.
- Reduce search latency.
- Improve platform reliability.
- Improve UI/UX.

**Team**

- 1 Technical Lead
- 1 Frontend Developer
- 2 Backend Engineers
- 2 DevOps Engineers
- 1 Blockchain Engineer

**Funding**

Development: $70,000

Infrastructure: $50,000

### Milestone 2 — Expand Decentralized Ecosystem Coverage

**Timeline:** December 2026 – June 2027

**Deliverables**

- Support additional blockchain domain extensions.
- Expand decentralized content indexing.
- Improve retrieval across IPFS, IPNS, Swarm, TON, and future networks.
- Improve ranking algorithms and indexing freshness.

**Team**

- 1 Technical Lead
- 1 Frontend Developer
- 3 Backend Engineers
- 1 Blockchain Engineer

**Funding**

Development: $65,000

Infrastructure: $40,000

### Milestone 3 — Platform Growth & Ecosystem Integrations

**Timeline:** June 2027 – September 2027

**Deliverables**

- Enhance the public Search API.
- Expand ecosystem integrations.
- Improve scalability, analytics, and security.
- Continue expanding the decentralized search index.

**Team**

- 1 Technical Lead
- 1 Frontend Developer
- 2 Backend Engineers
- 1 DevOps Engineer

**Funding**

Development: $60,000

Infrastructure: $40,000

## Total Budget Requested

The total funding requested for development and infrastructure is **$325,000**.

- Milestone 1: **$120,000**
- Milestone 2: **$105,000**
- Milestone 3: **$100,000**

This represents the engineering portion of our broader **$650,000** scaling initiative.

## Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

Web3 Compass is an actively maintained production platform. Following completion of this project, our engineering team will continue expanding blockchain ecosystem support, improving search quality, scaling infrastructure, optimizing retrieval performance, and maintaining compatibility with new decentralized storage technologies.

We will continue operating and expanding our self-hosted IPFS infrastructure, indexing services, and public APIs while supporting new blockchain naming systems and decentralized storage protocols as they emerge.

# Team

## Team Members

- Artyom Harutyunyan — Founder, CEO & Web3 Architect
- Madi Sheriff — Senior Solana Developer & Technical Product Manager
- Emmanuel Gevorgyan — Software Engineer

## Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/artyom-harutyunyan/
- (Add Madi's LinkedIn)
- (Add Emmanuel's LinkedIn)

## Team Website

https://www.web3compass.net

## Relevant Experience

The Web3 Compass team has extensive experience building blockchain infrastructure, decentralized applications, search technologies, and distributed systems. Combined, the team has decades of software engineering experience across Ethereum, Solana, TON, EVM-compatible chains, decentralized storage, DevOps, distributed indexing systems, and large-scale backend infrastructure. Web3 Compass itself is already operating as a production platform indexing decentralized content across more than 100 blockchain domain ecosystems.

## Team code repositories

- https://github.com/blockstars-tech
- https://github.com/blockstars-tech/web3compass-sns-indexer

# Additional Information

**How did you learn about the Open Grants Program?**

We learned about the Filecoin Open Grants Program through researching funding opportunities for projects building on IPFS and the broader Filecoin ecosystem.

**Best contact email**

info@web3compass.net **

**Additional Information**

Web3 Compass was built to solve one of the biggest remaining challenges of the decentralized web: discoverability. While decentralized storage networks such as Filecoin and IPFS have transformed how data is stored, there is still no widely adopted search engine that enables users to discover decentralized websites, blockchain domains, and Web3 content.

Our vision is to make Web3 Compass the search engine of the decentralized web. With support from the Filecoin ecosystem, we can accelerate platform growth, expand decentralized content discovery, improve retrieval performance, and make Web3 content significantly more accessible to users and developers worldwide. We believe search is fundamental infrastructure for Web3, and we would be excited to build that future together with the Filecoin community.

This is a grant proposal rather than a scoped repository task. Start by reviewing the linked web3compass-sns-indexer repository and the proposal's three milestones; completion would require delivering the broad infrastructure, ecosystem coverage, and API goals described there.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.