2022-09-13 Update

All items from the brainstorming were converted to GitHub issues. Going forward, we will track the roadmap on GitHub. See Station Milestone M0.5:

Brainstorming on 2022-08-19

• #118 Consent with telemetry & error reporting
  • Smallprint on the website before download
  • A new screen in the app

• #80 Usage analytics:
  • consent screen
  • infra integration
  • events: one for each step in the onboarding flow: a user starting the app, the user closing the app at “Enter FIL” screen

• Telemetry
  • #78 Sentry for recording errors. The app needs to ask the user for consent.
  • #79 Infra for collecting metrics (prior art: IPFS Desktop)

    Metrics:

    • Machine spec (are people comfortable sharing that?)
      • CPU power, Memory size, Storage size,
      • Network speed test against an L1 node
    • Number of jobs processed per hour
    • Number of stations up & running

• #84 Saturn L2 Node
  • Stress testing
  • Code review (nice to have)
  • Instrumentation & telemetry
    • We need to mention this in Station’s Consent screen
  • Setup CI for L2-node
  • L1-node#48: L1 ↔ L2 integration deployed to testnet

• Station ↔ L2 integration
  • L2-node#52: L2 reports stats - total number of retrievals served
  • L2 reports events - connected, disconnected - see https://github.com/filecoin-saturn/L2-node/pull/62
  • #81 expose stats & events for WebUI
    • Station backend collects stats & events and exposes them for consumption by front-end

• #119 Redesigned Station UI
  • Outer shell - top navbar, background, navbar, etc.
  • Onboarding
    • Intro screens
    • Ask for consent to storing data, or quit app
    • Connect FIL address
  • FIL address management - show in the UI, UI action to disconnect, reconnect, and change the address.
  • “My Station” dashboard

• #120 Branding & visual identity
  • App logo
  • Tray icon
  • DMG background

• #121 Website
  • Download Station for each OS
  • FAQ
    • What data is stored?
    • Who connects to me?

• #108 Testing
  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • UX testing

• Misc
  • #35 Support Apple Silicon M1/M2 (darwin arm64)
  • #48 Better handling of saturn-l2 startup errors
  • #53 Improve UX for auto-upgrading
  • #77 Start at login

Out of scope

• Payments

• Log ingestion

• Bandwidth limiting

• Automated testing for the onboarding flow inside the app

OLD CONTENT - NO LONGER RELEVANT

The road to v1.0 (MVP)

We want to grow the user base as fast as possible. How can we make Station an attractive offering?

1. Modules are bundled as part of the Electron app. There is no install/uninstall functionality, this part will be managed automatically by the Station.

2. Modules are running in a privileged mode with full access to the user’s operating system resources. This is acceptable because the initial modules are developed either by ProtocolLabs or a trusted party.

The Next Milestone

A high-level collection of ideas and tasks to pick from. We will create GH issues after we get a consensus about the high-level direction & scope.

DONE

• Saturn module
  • Configure ROOT_DIR env var for Saturn L2 node.
    Store the cache in the right location - %LOCALAPPDATA% on Windows, XDG_CACHE_HOME on Linux, ~/Library/Caches/ on macOS. See https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/issues/1656, https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/8124, https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/1404
    GH issue: https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-station/issues/56#issuecomment-1196476975

MUST HAVE

• Saturn module
  • #46 Tailor Saturn Dashboard UI to Station needs
  • Update to the latest Saturn version
  • L1→L2 cache miss

• Branding & visual identity
  • App logo
  • Tray icon

• Website
  • Download Station for each OS
  • FAQ
    • What data is stored?
    • Who connects to me?

• Redesigned Station UI

  Work with the Subvisual team to convert their Figma wireframes into Station implementation.

  • Outer shell - top navbar, background, navbar, etc.
  • Onboarding
    • Intro screens
    • Ask for consent to storing data, or quit app
    • Connect FIL address
  • FIL address management - show in the UI, UI action to disconnect, reconnect, and change the address.
  • “My Station” dashboard
  • My Station vs Discovery view
  • Install the first module (Saturn L2)
  • Configure Saturn L2
  • Uninstall module
  • Start / stop module

• Activity log
  • Events like “Saturn connected to Orchestrator”, “Saturn connected to X L1 nodes and awaiting jobs”, and “Saturn node cannot reach the network”.
  • Events to report the number of Saturn jobs handled in the morning/afternoon/evening/etc.
  • Events for FIL rewards paid out

• Data for the dashboard
  • The total amount of FIL earned (by this Station?)
  • The total number of jobs handled (by this Station?)

• Module Configuration

  filecoin-station/2022-07-module-configuration.md at main · filecoin-project/filecoin-station

  Station modules want to allow Station users to tweak certain aspects of their runtime behaviour. For example, Saturn L2 Node lets users control how much disk space they are willing to offer for the cache. This configuration is module-specific. Each module has different options.

  https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-station/blob/main/docs/architecture-decision-records/2022-07-module-configuration.md

  

  • Saturn L2: add config schema file
  • Station build: extract config schema file from Saturn L2
  • Station backend: persist (save, load) config file for Saturn module
  • Station backend: send config via env vars to Saturn L2 process
  • Station frontend: edit Saturn config

• Testing
  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux

SHOULD HAVE (can be deferred to the next milestone)

• Dashboard
  • Metrics (now-ish + 30d)
    • Load
    • Storage
    • Bandwidth
    • Earnings
    • Request count
  • Event log (live)

• Global configuration
  • Max load
  • Max storage
  • Max bandwidth
  • Max request count (?)

https://github.com/filecoin-project/filecoin-station/milestone/2