Clr.fund round 4 is live! 🎉️

And the matching pool has doubled again, from ~$2,000 to ~$4,000.

Updates

Along with the increased matching pool, we’ve made a couple of really nice UI updates.

• Updated the design of the round information block.
• Implemented the withdrawal of funds when a round is cancelled.
• Enabled synchronization of cart contents and MACI keys between different devices.

Previously clr.fund dapp stored cart contents and MACI keys locally in the browser, so if you access the dapp from another device or by a different domain name (for example clrfund.eth.link instead of clr.fund) the cart would appear empty. We now use the distributed database Gun to sync this data. The data is still stored locally in the browser, but any changes are synchronized with the remote Gun node (we are using a single node now, but there can be many of them). When you log in to clrfund dapp from a new device, the contents of the cart and MACI keys are automatically loaded from the remote node. This also helps to restore everything if the site’s data is cleared in the browser.

If the remote node goes down temporarily, the operation of the dapp will not be disrupted, only the synchronization will stop working. And it is still possible to run the clrfund web interface by yourself: you can use any Gun node, no specialized backend is required (in the same way that you can use any IPFS gateway and Ethereum node). All data is stored encrypted and only the Ethereum wallet’s owner can access it. The encryption key is generated from the signature that is created during login.

We chose Gun because it does a good job of storing frequently changing data, it is fast and easy to use (although it has certain shortcomings). Other technologies that we already rely on are less suitable for this task: IPFS is more appropriate for storing static immutable data, and blockchain is very expensive for storage, so we only use it to store the most important data that is needed by smart contracts. There are other distributed databases capable of running in the browser (e.g. PouchDB or OrbitDB), but they are either more difficult to use or lack some of the features we need, but it is worth keeping an eye on their development.

ETHDenver

This week, ETHDenver, the largest, longest running, and pinkest Ethereum event in the world, is using a whitelabelled instance of clr.fund to allocate the 15,000 Dai prizepool for its Open Track.

This is a huge milestone for clr.fund as it represents both the largest funding round run on clr.fund’s protocol to-date and the first third-party project to spin up an instance of clr.fund.

ETHDenver’s QF round will be much shorter than our typical round, a matter of hours rather than weeks. So if you want to participate, make sure to keep an eye on ETHdenver’s twitter account for an announcement of when the round goes live.

---

To learn more about or to contribute to clr.fund, check out our constitution and join our forum or Telegram.