As Terminada DRep I voted No on this withdrawal with the following vote context:
nftcdn.io is not a decentralised solution for content delivery.
Today I received a private Matrix message from “NFTCDN” which contained some extra information about this proposal. Rather than talk in private, I would prefer to have a public discussion about the merits of the proposal. I have therefore replied to “NFTCDN” asking that he/she re-post his/her arguments for public discussion on this forum.
@Terminada I am grateful for your bringing these conversations out into the open and would look forward to hearing what they have to say about this & other aspects of the proposal.
Hi all - thank you for the opportunity to discuss in public!
Post-Ekklesia vote, we are not able to modify the content of our proposal, and a key aspect of the long-term strategy could not be communicated to the DReps. Hence why we have been trying to reach out to DReps to clarify. I have provided a summary of our proposal’s key points
Exactly as Terminada’s says; NFTCDN is not a decentralised solution, today - but we want it to be. This is one of the options on our future roadmap. I have elaborated on this in the section titled “What happens after 18 months?” below.
Displaying native assets on Cardano requires robust, scalable backend infrastructure that can query blockchain data, retrieve media via middleware, and handle challenges such as metadata errors, evolving standards, and protocol updates while maintaining performance, efficiency, and reliability.
While this is achievable at a small scale, to build a professional, scalable solution requires around 9 months of development effort (c. ~1,590 dev hours) and c. $100k of investment. NFTCDN solves this problem.
Our service simplifies the display of Cardano native assets by providing end-to-end infrastructure; including media fetching, optimization, metadata analysis, CDN delivery, protocol change management, and security protections - all the while supporting all major CNA standards and all multimedia file types - delivering high performance, and offering easy plug-and-play integration with direct 1-to-1 support.
If Cardano developers are too focused on building an infrastructure from scratch and then also maintaining it on a daily basis, they will never get around to building their own product. NFTCDN streamlines Cardano Native Assets display integration allowing developers to focus on the success of their core products.
We are an Infrastructure-As-A-Service, providing API gateways for developers to fetch Cardano native asset multimedia content and metadata using a SaaS model ($/API call) to make costs predictable. We established our service in December-2022 and have served over 880 million API requests since launch.
We are currently being used actively by 14 Cardano projects (e.g. Eternl Wallet, Vespr Wallet, Tokeo Wallet), have had 9 former projects use us (either no longer in the ecosystem, or can not afford to use NFTCDN) and are engaged with a number of developers who would like to use NFTCDN for their new usecases.
Only well-funded team have been able to integrate and retain use of NFTCDN to date. Low/Non-revenue generating projects, or non-profit projects cannot afford the cost of NFTCDN. Projects like pool-pm, adastat-net, cexplorer-io, eutxo-org, all wallets, etc, are community-good projects who will benefit from NFTCDN’s services being made free to use.
We propose funding NFTCDN to make it free for all Cardano developers for 18 months. The costs are to cover operational salaries ($60,000 x 2 per annum for two FTEs & $6,800 per month for infrastructure scale-up).
If our proposal passes, it will allow us to gather valuable data:
This would enable us to evidence how critical NFTCDN is as an infrastructure for Cardano developers and then bring forward to DReps 3 possible proposal choices for signalling:
Cardano needs a strategic infrastructure solution for native asset display integration - a significant feature of the Cardano blockchain. The three future pathways detailed require DRep signalling & support with meaningful data. Supporting our proposal today will enable delivery of a permanent free (or low-cost) native asset display capability for Cardano, lifting financial barriers and eliminating development complexity which is turning away developers today from the ecosystem - an incentive that does not exist in any other blockchain ecosystem today.
We require your support. We hope this post elaborates on our value proposition and the long-term strategic roadmap we are embarking on to solve a real problem for Cardano developers today. Please do support us with your vote. If you have any questions, please do post here!
Thank you for taking the time to read our post, and for your consideration. 
Hey @Terminada, @COSDpool - hope the content was able to clarify things? Would you happen to have any further thoughts or additional feedback?
I am concerned that this business proposal has the potential to replay the BigTech “Web 2.0” playbook to cause enshittification on Cardano, and here is how:
I am not saying that NFTCDN has this playbook in mind because I don’t believe the individuals involved have dishonourable intentions. But, Google’s motto was “don’t be evil” and look how they are now enshittifying the internet.
My view is that if the Cardano treasury is going to pay for something then the Cardano community needs to own it. IE: The service needs to be open source with no patents or proprietary business processes that have the potential to be leveraged against the community in the future. I would prefer to see Cardano treasury money used to fund the clear pathway to community ownership when that is proposed.
I think @Terminada has explained perfectly why this proposal is a trap. Additionally, I think the use of the word “free” in the proposal title is disingenuous: since the plan is to make the service chargeable after 18 months.
Hi both - thanks for the feedback!
I would prefer to see Cardano treasury money used to fund the clear pathway to community ownership when that is proposed.
To clarify any misunderstanding, here’s the timeline of events we’re proposing:
Each route has pros/cons and none of them are straightforward, but they all serve the long-term goal; ensuring Cardano’s native asset display capability is accessible, resilient and easy for developers.
since the plan is to make the service chargeable after 18 months.
There is indeed a possibility that DReps do not support any of the 3 follow-on options in our roadmap. This scenario will only occur if no one sees a need for or uses NFTCDN - and we would then revert back to our current paid model of working ($/API) which is being used by projects such as Eternl, Tokeo, Vespr, and many more. The impact would be to non-revenue generating community goods projects who are also today unable to afford it and then therefore also in the future after 18 months.
Given we’re working on the front lines and have an acute awareness of the pains developers are facing on the ground in their day-to-day, we’re very confident in the help and value that our current proposal will display for the ecosystem.
Once again, thank you for your feedback and hope this clarifies any misunderstanding.
