[1IP-56] Launch a crowd and beta testing platform beta.1inch.io Grant Proposal

2.1 General Proposals
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Summary

This proposal is dedicated to the launch of beta.1inch.io - platform for testing web3 projects aimed to ensure quality of projects and skill growth of participants with rewards for their work. The xcrwd.io team is seeking funding of $150K. Portion of the requested funding is intended to pay for the development, the work of the community manager, and the closure of project needs. Part of the requested amount will be directed to rewards for platform contributors.
The platform is actually a synergy of 3 main components: the bugtracker, expert web3 QA community and education portal. That’s all directed to help the web3 projects to increase their products quality with the power of beta testing.

Abstract

We are building a crowd and beta testing platform, designed to involve web3 users to actively participate in the testing and release processes. At its core the platform has a powerful bug tracker where users can submit reports. Approved reports are rewarded, recognizing the valuable contributions of our testing community.
With receiving funding we will be glad to invite 1inch.io as one of the flagship web3 products that will be the first product available for beta-testers that will allow us to set up our platform.
With your support, we aim to transform the platform into an expert and full-fledged testing community that not only benefits from testers feedback but also actively contributes to the advancement of web3 technology. Platform underscores the principle that all valuable work should be compensated, and we are committed to ensuring that our dedicated testing community is properly rewarded for their contributions. When testers submit reports, they earn points (after report validation) that could be spent for rewards from the showcase.

Motivation

beta.1inch.io (by xcrwd team) is a beta and crowd testing platform that addresses a crucial issue in web3 products: the stability and smooth release processes of decentralized applications (dApps). It solves the problem of ensuring that these drops are free from vulnerabilities, bugs, and security flaws. This can be achieved through the platform’s provision of a QA community that is skill-confirmed. By involving a global community of testers from experienced web3 users, the platform enhances the overall reliability and quality of web3 projects by utilizing a global community of testers from experienced web users. There is a shortage of web3 QA engineers, but users are already skilled enough to assist projects with testing and releases for rewards.

The 1inch (and 1inch DAO), like other web3 protocols, can benefit from xcrwd.io platform in the following ways:

  • Enhanced security: by utilizing crowdsourced QA, the 1inch can identify and address bugs of all specter, from UI to smart contracts security;
  • Protocol improvements: feedback and insights from the xcrwd.io community can lead to valuable improvements in the 1inch protocols, making them more user-friendly, secure, and competitive;
  • Motivated beta testers community would help with increasing 1inch products quality and stability;
  • Internal 1inch product teams would get useful and detailed feedback from beta-testers and experts about product issues - structured reports with steps, screenshots/casts, logs and other useful additional information;
  • Stable releases with minimum issues and boost for delivering complex features to users - by beta and crowd testing flow for releases;
  • Crowd testing around the world: user-stories testing, corner cases testing, A/B testing, special tasks for beta-testers to check necessary for 1inch team cases at time, testing on a plenty number of devices, conditions, regions and environments, collecting feedback about features and other cases from community of beta testers, etc…;
  • Community engagement: collaborating with xcrwd.io fosters community engagement and trust. It demonstrates the 1inch commitment to transparency and security, which can attract more users and developers to the ecosystem;
  • Potential refund to DAO in future (after adding new projects to platform);
  • Potential hiring for QA (Dev, etc.) engineers from platform in future;

Specification

The platform will provide the power of crowd and beta testing to web3 products releases and the first one will be the 1inch itself. To do this we will implement the keys features:

  • The platform should support user registration through an acceptance testing, web3 authentication, and profile management:
  • Access to platform by “web3” auth: SIWE (ERC-4361: Sign-In with Ethereum)
  • Smooth acceptance flow: Entrance verification for new users; Users can claim fee tokens only after the probation period.
  • The ability to create, manage, and provide testing products to testers;
  • A built-in bug tracking system to report, track, and manage issues found during testing.
  • The claim contract to issue tokens for paying fee during tests based on 1inch merkle-distribution set of contracts (GitHub - 1inch/merkle-distribution);
  • The showcase where testers can spend earned points for rewards;
  • The space for communication and collaboration among testers and moderators;
  • To avoid abuse users will lose access to the platform if there are abusive actions or no activity;
  • In future we will add an NDA procedure for experts QA who would receive early-access to inner products and features;
  • Also in future we will add ERC-5192 (ERC-5192: Minimal Soulbound NFTs) SBT expert verification;

Looking ahead, we envision the implementation of SBT (ERC-5192) as a means to further empower our users. These tokens will serve as a digital badge of honor, containing records of successful bug reports and showcasing their growing QA skills. This innovative approach not only encourages active participation but also helps users build a portfolio of expertise within the web3 space.

Team

To date, the xcrwd.io core team includes:

  • Danya (founder, pm, front-end): 8+ years as QA Engineer (fullstack); Worked in fields as UGC, social networks, e-commerce, O2O, telecom, foodtech, streaming and now web3; strong experience in developing and optimizing teamwork processes, and setting up release management; experience of leadership in small QA and dev teams; mentoring and educating interns and new employees. https://www.linkedin.com/in/xxai

  • Max (smart contracts and backend developer): 3+ years as Blockchain engineer; Solidity, Rust, Node.js, Typescript, Substrate, Soroban; Develop production-ready DeFi products and backend infrastructure; Solo auditor at strongholdsec.io.
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-nabokov-4174221b0

And part-time contributors:
Full-stack developer (8+ years as Android & iOS Software Engineer with experience in Backend & Web. 3+ years of experience in management of teams);
Frontend developer, (ex QA Engineer): 5 years as full-stack QA& AQA, 2 years in web3.

Roadmap

For now we have a demo for bugtracker app, and we are in progress with app version 1.0 (that includes frontend, backend, auth, smart-contract, etc. for production use).
Also we are in progress with a platform landing page, community space chats and acceptance tests for future contributors (beta-testers), and we are in touch with cyberacademy.dev founders and members as a first part of our education platform.
Resources:

First phase:

In general: develop and release v1.0 platform app as beta.1inch.io and start build community till end of Q3 2024

  • Development & Release:
    bugtracker, profile, reward shop, achievements & rating system;
    smart contract for claim native tokens for test (transactions fees);
    auth (SIWE: EIP-4361);
    Instruments for publishing education materials from partners (1inch, cyber academy, etc.);

  • Acceptance:
    Create landing with information about platform capabilities;
    Acceptance tests for platform users;
    Set up chat & channel for community (telegram/discord);
    Initiate community building, finding/involvement members (beta-testers);
    Land first users (beta-testers) to platform;

  • BD:
    Deliver and connect platform for 1inch products as a first project for testing;

Second phase:

In general: platform growth

  • Development:
    Features and stability;
    Configure infrastructure for scaling - Prepare to add new 1inch products for testing (example 1inch mobile wallet, 1inch Portfolio, etc.)

  • Product & Community:
    Gather a community of beta testers;
    Configure/stabilize processes of beta testing;
    Hire community manager;

Payment structure & costs

Breakdown of the costs by groups for the project duration (till end of 2024):

  • First funding for rewards to beta-testers: $20k
  • Platform maintenance: $130k -
    v1 deliver: backend, frontend & smart contract, design: $100k;
    Infrastructure and operational efficiency: $10k;
    Community building (community manager, articles, activities, etc.): $20k;
  • Total: $150k
  • Receiving address: 0x42985e34d66b6FfbB1A8d67646c0b75c53938a4c

Rationale

Our research has shown that the majority of bug bounty programs focus on testing smart contracts and reviewing code for security issues, so the problem of zero-bug policies and an unsatisfactory user experience are not a top priority. At this point, platforms have a lot of issues such as: non-intuitive experience for new users, lack of community, unclear calculation of payments and impermanence in contributing for testers or white hackers.

Platform’s priorities are to integrate into web3 product release processes, which will result in improved product quality on a regular basis. We aim to educate and transform newbies and IT engineers into experts in web3 QA (and developers, etc.) engineering. Due to the synergy of their bug bounty contributions, our community and education efforts have been strengthened.

We are developing a powerful bugtracking system with a clear and effective bounty and reward program. Our platform builds its own community by interacting with beta testers, attending AMA sessions with web3 experts, and working for tested projects. Additionally, we plan to educate contributors through an education portal and provide them with practical experience in testing different web products.

Our first step will be to integrate into the release processes of products, which is a straightforward task. Initially, beta testers will test simple tasks, then progress to more complex ones as they grow in their abilities.

We plan to begin by addressing minor issues that have the potential to enhance the UX and release processes of web3 projects. Following that, we educate beta-testers and then offer more opportunities for challenging tasks.

So we’ve decided to build platform and growth in three main directions:

  1. create a bugtracker for crowd and beta testing for web3 products
  2. create an expert web3 QA community
  3. create education portal for community members

The first thing that new user will meet is what we call acceptance flow. It will consist of an entrance check to prove that the user is skilled enough to make reports. After the moderation period users will get the access to claiming of native tokens, necessary for paying fee in common dApp flows.
After that the user can see the bugtracker and list of products available for testing. Bugtracker allows users to check already existing reports and to create new ones. For resolved reports the user will be rewarded with a reward point. Points can be exchanged to showcase rewards. In addition to that, in education portal users can gain deep knowledge with materials dedicated to web3.
The report itself should correspond to the high QA standards and will be reviewed by internal teams or moderators. Good report will allow developers to fix the bug quickly and efficiently. So our goal is to teach users to make such good reports.

Considerations

  • Platform rewards and claim-contract abuse - will reduce risks by strong acceptance flow and permanent validation by moderators on platform;
  • Merkle-drop keys compromise - will reduce risks by separate storage keys, HashiCorp Vault;
  • Issues with rewards delivery (after platform scalability);
  • Community building and platform scalability: main question is - “ten or thousands” contributors on start.

Final words

Web3 projects are faced with the challenge of releasing new products and features in a short amount of time due to physical limitations. They are unable to devote much time to quality and testing. Moreover, a few small projects lack any QA engineers at all or finding an excellent QA engineer who comprehends the working of the web3 world is a significant issue. So, from that point, our goal is to create a platform that could enhance the web3 projects and help with quality issues. With help of the combination of our bug tracker and education platform, as well as the power of the community we are building, will lead us to the number of proficient web3 QA engineers.

Also, subscribe to our Telegram and Twitter for news and latest updates:

Or connect directly with Danya (founder):

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Thank you for the proposal @Danya_xo We believe this is a great way to engage the community and improve the product at the same time.

Can you give us an estimate of how many months of rewards can this budget sustain?

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@jengajojo Thanks for question! Discussed briefly this topic on community call

We plan to spend rewards budget until the end of the year, and after think about getting next reward budget funding. Digital points would be awarded to beta-testers per-month or per-quarter, for now our team is currently finalizing the details of the reward points system.

Flow for rewards is simple: beta-testers submiting reports → reports moderating by internal team and moderators → points awarding to beta-testers (points quantity depending on report severity) → beta-testers could spend points on platform showcase for rewards.

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Its a great idea!

just some few question.

How do you ensure a test was properly made? Setting up a test environment for a product is a huge effort. Would you provide a testing environment / setup in GitHub where others could contribute and is reflected in your platform?
Or is this just about manual testing? If yes how do you guarantee that a test was properly made? Today screenshots and videos, even logs could be very easy fake generated via AI

Thanks for the proposal and looking forward to more details

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Hello! So sorry for the late answer:)

Ill start from the end - about report verification:
I agree that contributors could potentially forge their reports using AI or other tools, but this would be usefull because we have several verification steps on platfrom.

  • Firstly, to get an invite to the platform user must pass entrance tests, where we examine their score and determine if we should invite user to platform or not;

  • Next, we have an acceptance period for all contributors. During this period, we manually check how the contributor performs in the bug tracker, their activity in the community, and more;

  • And most important step, contributors can receive digital points (to spend on platform showcase for rewards) only after submitted report is verified by moderators or internal team. For this contributor must provide detailed information and steps how to reproduce the issue, and points are awarded to contributor only after the issue is fixed;

Additionally, our platform will have a rating and achievements system for contributor competitions, and in the future, we plan to control this using Soulbound Tokens SBT.
We also plan to create a special group of beta-testers, which we call “cybercrowd”, who will have signed NDAs and could have access to new(non-released) products and features.

About manual testing and the test environment for products:
Initially, contributors will help only with “simple” issues such as problems with layouts, translation, UI/UX, etc.
Next, we plan to present some QA tools for testing complex features and sections of apps.

So our main goal is to combine crowd and beta testing. On one hand, contributors can perform “simple” manual tests, while on the other, beta-testers will participate directly in the release processes.

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Thank you for your proposal. I have two questions regarding the terms of use for 1inch:

  1. Please specify the terms under which 1inch Labs will utilize your platform. I expect that the use of your platform should be free for 1inch during the development period and for at least 1 year after the launch.
  2. Clarify the conditions for the “Potential refund to DAO” mentioned in your proposal. Elaborate on the criteria for new projects joining the platform and how their participation translates into refund for the 1inch DAO.
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Thanks for the question!

  1. Sure! 1inch Lab will utilize beta.1inch.io platform right after launch in full functional, without additional payment direct to platform, but potentially we will create additional proposal for rewards to platform users.
  2. As platform purpose to be social good, any project, that can provide a reward for users can be added (for small teams/projects that at the starting stage and need QA it will be generally free). From additional funds from projects for platform maintenance we can take some part, to provide refund to 1inch DAO. All details will be shared with community. This proposal only aimed to kickstart the platform.
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  1. I suggest explicitly mention this arrangement in your proposal to ensure clarity for the community.
  2. It would also be good to specify a way to distribute the revenue generated by new projects that will be returned to the 1inch DAO.
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https://commonwealth.im/1inch/discussion/22754-1ip56-launch-a-crowd-and-beta-testing-platform-beta1inchio-grant-proposal?comment=86215

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https://commonwealth.im/1inch/discussion/22754-1ip56-launch-a-crowd-and-beta-testing-platform-beta1inchio-grant-proposal?comment=86215

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Hello community! It’s Danya from the xcrwd team - it’s been a while since I have been here.

Let’s start with the main news:
Our beta and crowdsourced testing platform is ready to launch with 1inch! Right now, we are in the approval phase, preparing for the announcements and launch together with 1inch team.

Some about our development history:
We began building our platform from scratch in jul when receive grant and apply first newbies devs in our team. Our launch was slightly delayed due to ongoing features development and refactoring, and we were nearly ready by mid-Q4 2024. However, we decided to postpone release with 1inch until Q1 2025 to avoid the end-of-year rush when everyone is busy wrapping up tasks and launching before the holidays.

Since jan 2025, we are been in contact with the 1inch team, and starts discussing launch details. Togheter we already planned to sync at the beginning of april to finalize the launch date, marketing staff, and other details - so stay tuned please!

What is xcrwd platform for now?

  1. At xcrwd app, we are building a chain-agnostic platform for beta and crowdsourced testing, (and bug bounty in future) to help Web3 projects improve their products quality. We also aim to educate Web3 users and QA engineers from Web2, helping them become skilled Web3 QA specialists.
  2. Since February 2025, our platform has been in beta mode with our early-bird testers. They actively testing our platform and preparing to test real Web3 products - also waiting specifically for our launch with 1inch.
  3. We’re continuously improving our platform to ensure the best UX for both testers and companies.
  4. For today our team consists of two co-founders, five engineers, a designer, a community manager, and even my dog :grin:. And we are looking forward to expand our team in future.
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About the launch with 1inch:

  1. We are currently in active discussions with the 1inch team to finalize launch details.
  2. Due to policy considerations from 1inch, we haven’t launched a separate beta.1inch.io domain yet. Additional, we are proposed initially launching on 1inch.xcrwd.io as this would speed up the launch process (for now we couldn’t use the 1inch name without official approves from team).
  3. Technically, our platform is prepared for launch with 1inch. The remaining points are related to domain personalization (mentioned above) and application specifics.
  4. Once everything discussins with team would be ready, we and 1inch team will announce the launch together to the community and community channels.

Our staff:

Our main application includes:

  • Bugtracker: a system for creating, viewing, and managing reports.
  • Status and priority flows for reports.
  • Moderator space: a system for managing products, reports, versions, rewards, users and moderators (aka members from project teams being tested on our platform).
  • Points system: a reward currency for testers.
  • Reward showcase: Where testers can view and exchange points for rewards.
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I’m ready to answer any questions and share more details about the platform here in discussion, or feel free to contact me directly:

mail: danya@xcrwd.team
telegram: @xxai_xo

Also, if the community is interested, we can organize a live call where my team and I will demonstrate the xcrwd platform in action. What do you think?

Don’t forget to subscribe to our updates at https://t.me/xcrwd. Most importantly, invite your friends and acquaintances, and submit your applications to participate in beta and crowdsourced testing via our apply bot at https://t.me/xcrwd_bot.

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More details about what was done and what in the development stage:
in the proposal we talked about such goals:

First phase:
In general: develop and release v1.0 platform app as beta.1inch.io and start build community till end of Q3 2024
Development & Release: bugtracker, profile, reward shop, achievements & rating system; smart contract for claim native tokens for test (transactions fees); auth (SIWE: EIP-4361); Instruments for publishing education materials from partners (1inch, cyber academy, etc.);
Acceptance: Create landing with information about platform capabilities; Acceptance tests for platform users; Set up chat & channel for community (telegram/discord); Initiate community building, finding/involvement members (beta-testers); Land first users (beta-testers) to platform;
BD: Deliver and connect platform for 1inch products as a first project for testing;

Second phase:
In general: platform growth
Development: Features and stability; Configure infrastructure for scaling - Prepare to add new 1inch products for testing (example 1inch mobile wallet, 1inch Portfolio, etc.)
Product & Community: Gather a community of beta testers; Configure/stabilize processes of beta testing; Hire community manager;

What is done?

  1. Platform app - app.xcrwd.io (beta.1inch.io domain is waiting for approvals from 1inch team)
  • bugtracker, profile, rewards showcase, auth system (SIWE and we implemented TON Connect, and in near time add SIWS - sign in with Solana)
  1. Create landing with information about platform capabilities - Our landing xcrwd.io
  2. Acceptance bot for apply and onboard users (with general questions on strat, and we will add a test about quality assurance knowledge for apply later)
  3. We setup news channel with all updates - t.me/xcrwd
  4. We setup community spaces in telergram and discord (for now using only telegram)
  5. Initiate community building, finding/involvement members (beta-testers) - we building communit
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  1. Land first users (beta-testers) to platform - check previous point
  2. Deliver and connect platform for 1inch products as a first project for testing - in progress with 1inch team
  3. Features and stability - our platfrom is stable and we building new features fot it
  4. Configure infrastructure for scaling - we are setup all for smooth scaling and ready for all - from big users amount load to a lot of products for test
  5. Gather a community of beta testers - check points 5-7
  6. Configure/stabilize processes of beta testing - it is a continuous process
  7. Hire community manager - hired and doing great job

What is in building phase?

  1. Smart contract for claim native tokens for test (transactions fees) are ready but not implemented into platform
  2. Instruments for publishing education materials from partners (1inch, cyber academy, etc.) - not ready for now, but we in progress with that and colecting all usefull information about testing for our beta-testers
  3. achievements & rating system - in progress (Platform leaderboard where tester could check their raiting and achievments)

So as i previously sad - i’m ready to answer any questions and share more details here