Reporting Period: Completion of MVP

1. Plan vs. Actual: A Comparative Analysis

The execution of the Project Progress Tracking Platform successfully delivered the core features outlined in the original proposal, while also incorporating key scope enhancements to improve usability and future scalability.

2. Key Decisions & Challenges

Key Decisions

1. Implementing a Project Creation Form:
   • Rationale: The initial MVP was planned for direct database entry. The decision was made to spend development time on a user-friendly frontend form instead. This addresses scalability concerns preemptively, improves long-term usability, and decentralizes data entry by eliminating the need for specialized database access.
2. Facilitating Grantee Updates via Discord:
   • Rationale: To reduce administrative overhead and lower the barrier for grantees to provide progress updates, we implemented a mechanism allowing updates to be submitted directly through their associated Discord username. This leverages an existing, familiar communication platform.
3. Adopting a Dark Theme:
   • Rationale: Based on the platform's purpose, which requires users to spend time reviewing metrics and updates, a dark theme was chosen to minimize eye strain and improve overall readability.

Technical Challenges

1. Discord Slash Command Enforcement:
   • Challenge: Discord's recent policy change requiring the use of slash commands (/update) for bot interactions forced an extra step in the update submission flow.
   • Impact: This adds slight friction to the user experience (UX) for grantees, deviating from the intended seamless text-based submission flow. This is currently an unavoidable native Discord policy constraint.
2. Real-time Synchronization and Risk Engine Logic:
   • Challenge: Developing the system to simultaneously monitor and aggregate two distinct, real-time data sources (GitHub Webhooks/Polling and Discord updates) and feed them into the 30-day risk engine required robust back-end logic.
   • Solution: Custom scripts were developed to normalize timestamps and activity types, ensuring that both technical (GitHub) and narrative (Discord) updates correctly contribute to the project's overall health and reset the inactivity timer.

3. Project Outcomes & Value

The platform currently brings significant value to the Nervos ecosystem by achieving its core goal of transparency and centralizing scattered information:

• Centralized Transparency: Provides a single, unified source of truth for all funded project progress, eliminating the need for manual cross-referencing of GitHub and Discord.
• Proactive Risk Monitoring: The automated "At-Risk" status flag immediately highlights projects that are either behind schedule or inactive for 30 days or more. This enables the funding entity to intervene proactively, maximizing the chance of project success.
• Reduced Administrative Burden:
  • Technical progress is handled automatically by the real-time GitHub monitor.
  • Narrative updates are simplified through the direct Discord submission channel for grantees.
• Improved Scalability: The Project Creation Form prepares the platform to handle a much larger volume of proposals and projects without requiring complex manual database manipulation.

For an ecosystem like Nervos's, which funds over 40 third parties like d.ID, this simplified way allows partners to provide regular updates to the Nervos community from their own social channels

4. Funding Usage Report