Date Issued: 2025-09-17
Issued By: Livepeer Foundation
Contact: Rick Staa
1. Objective
Restore the Livepeer Explorer to a secure, maintainable, and high-performance state while laying the groundwork for new network-wide data and governance dashboards.
2. Problem Statement
The Explorer is the primary entry point for orchestrators, delegators, developers, and gateways. However, since December 2023 lack of ownership has accumulated significant technical debt:
- Outdated dependencies in the Explorer and design system, fragile under Node 20, break on updates and could lead to security risks, undermining long-term maintainability.
- Duplicated/obsolete code and missing contribution infrastructure (guidelines, CI/tests, stubs), making contributions slow and error-prone.
- Inefficient data fetching (e.g. Infura/Graph duplication), creating performance issues.
- A backlog of unmerged PRs and unresolved bugs (e.g., broken migration widget, UI inconsistencies, incorrectly displayed data).
A future roadmap for expanded network data and richer Explorer stakeholder experiences depends on first restoring a stable, secure, and maintainable Explorer. This RFP focuses on that critical first step.
3. Desired Outcome
Success means that within four months the Explorer is:
- Clean, well tested, with automated tests and continuous integration pipelines, providing a healthy, maintainable codebase.
- Free of critical bugs and stale pull requests, with a clearly organized issue backlog.
- Running on up-to-date, secure dependencies (Explorer and design system) fully compatible with the current Node.js LTS.
- Improved in performance, with faster page loads and a simplified, well-documented data layer for developers
- Equipped with a new voting-transparency feature integrated with the voting-tally subgraph.
- Backed by a clear 6-month roadmap and a dedicated maintainer team providing ongoing maintenance and timely support.
In short, the Explorer will be trusted infrastructure and ready to power further iteration of capabilities.
4. Deliverables
Within four months (target completion by February 1, 2026), the selected team will deliver the following milestone-based outcomes.
Each deliverable must be demonstrated in a Livepeer community call, and the team must provide public progress updates at least every two weeks (e.g., forum posts) throughout the project.
Payments are released only after each demo is accepted by the RFP owner.
(i) Establish Healthy Explorer Codebase
Goal: Deliver a clean, maintainable, and well-tested Explorer foundation to enable ongoing community contributions.
Requirements:
- Remove unused and duplicate code.
- Reorganize folder and module structure, where needed, to improve navigation and long-term maintainability.
- Add comprehensive unit and integration tests covering all critical user flows (e.g., staking, delegating, governance), with measurable coverage targets proposed by the vendor.
- Implement CI pipelines for reliable builds and automated checks.
- Ensure all components are fully typed (TypeScript) and all ESLint/TypeScript errors resolved.
- Provide clear contributor documentation and review workflow, with local-development stubs/mocks so the codebase can run without production environment variables.
Outcome: A clean, healthy, well-tested codebase with CI pipelines and local stubs that contributors can run with minimal setup, forming a solid foundation for future improvements.
Demo Day: To be proposed by the team and agreed with the RFP owner, demonstrating the cleaned codebase, CI, tests, and contributor docs.
(II) Improve Data-Fetching Efficiency
Goal: Enhance the Explorer’s data layer to reduce latency, eliminate redundant calls, and ensure responsive, reliable performance for end users and contributors.
Requirements:
- Optimize subgraph and RPC data fetching to reduce latency, avoid duplication, and improve responsiveness.
Outcome: A faster, more efficient Explorer with reduced redundant calls and a simplified, well-documented data layer for easier future contributions.
Demo Day: To be proposed by the team and agreed with the RFP owner, showcasing faster data fetching and improved data-layer developer documentation.
(III) Resolve Critical UI Issues & Backlog
Goal: Eliminate high-impact bugs and stale pull requests to ensure a stable, accurate, user-friendly Explorer.
Requirements:
- Resolve all current critical UI bugs (GitHub bug list), including the delegator migration widget, data inaccuracies, and major UX defects, and triage/fix any new critical issues during the engagement.
- Review and merge, close, or supersede all open pull requests (GitHub pull requests) other than the voting-transparency feature (covered in Deliverable 5).
- Work with the Foundation and Advisory Boards to prioritize any other high-impact feature requests from the backlog that fit within the agreed budget and timeline.
Outcome: A more stable, accurate, and user-friendly Explorer with all critical issues resolved and a significantly reduced bug backlog, ready for ongoing community contributions.
Demo Day: To be proposed by the team and agreed with the RFP owner, presenting a detailed report of resolved bugs and key fixes, along with the cleaned and updated issue board.
(IV) Deliver Voting-Transparency Feature & Subgraph Integration
Goal: Provide clear, real-time visibility into on-chain governance participation.
Requirements:
- Finalize and deploy the voting-transparency feature, incorporating requested UI refinements and migrating data fetching to the voting-tally subgraph for improved performance, using feedback from the Foundation and Advisory Boards.
Outcome: A fully deployed voting-transparency feature integrated with the voting-tally subgraph and refined UI, offering accurate, real-time governance data.
Demo Day: To be proposed by the team and agreed with the RFP owner, demonstrating the live voting-transparency feature.
(V) Establish Maintainability & Roadmap
Goal: Ensure the Explorer remains easy to maintain with a clear 6-month plan.
Requirements:
- Publish a 6-month feature/bug roadmap aligned with the Foundation’s Data Gap Analysis and community feedback.
- Provide contributor docs, maintenance practices, and an issue-tracking process (including a clean, well-labeled issue board).
Outcome: A documented maintenance framework and forward roadmap enabling smooth ongoing development and community contributions.
Demo Day: To be proposed by the team and agreed with the RFP owner, presenting the final roadmap and contributor maintenance guide.
(VI) Provide Ongoing Support & Post-Delivery Responsibility
Goal: Ensure professional post-launch support and continuity of maintenance, whether the same team continues or future maintainers take over.
Requirements:
- During the project, acknowledge critical bugs within 24–48 hours and resolve or mitigate them within a few business days (or faster per the proposer’s SLA).
- After delivery, provide at least a 60-day support window for critical fixes, security incidents, and knowledge transfer, meeting the proposer’s SLA.
Outcome: Stable post-launch operations with timely critical-issue resolution and clear processes for continued maintenance, regardless of who maintains the Explorer.
Payment: The team must present a support-readiness plan with defined SLA commitments, to be agreed with the RFP owner. Ninety percent of each milestone payment is released after acceptance of that milestone’s demo. The remaining ten percent of the total contract is held until the 60-day support period concludes and SLA commitments and resolution targets are met.
Out of Scope
To avoid confusion, the following items are not part of this RFP:
- A full UI/UX redesign or new visual styling of the Explorer.
- Major new product features beyond the initial voting-transparency integration.
- Broader data-gap mapping (handled by separate workstreams).
- Protocol/client changes or on-chain improvements to surface new data (managed through separate RFPs within the same workstream).
5 Capabilities required
Skills
- Strong front-end engineering in modern JavaScript/TypeScript (React/Next.js), including implementing and refining accessible UI components within an existing component library or design system.
- Proven experience with codebase modernization and maintainability—refactoring, setting up CI/CD pipelines, adding automated unit and integration tests, and enforcing TypeScript and ESLint standards.
- Ability to update and manage complex dependency stacks, including Node.js and modern package managers, while resolving breaking changes and configuring automated update tooling (e.g., Dependabot or Renovate).
- Proficiency in performance optimization and efficient data-fetching techniques, particularly with GraphQL/subgraph and RPC endpoints.
- Experience reviewing, triaging, and merging open-source pull requests and managing a clean, well-labeled issue backlog.
- Familiarity with monitoring and incident-response tools (e.g., Sentry, Bugsnag) to ensure production reliability.
Knowledge
- Understanding of the Ethereum/Web3 stack, including wallet flows, transactions, RPC providers, and common front-end pitfalls.
- Awareness of accessibility (a11y) best practices and secure front-end patterns such as dependency risk management and safe secret handling.
- Experience with open-source project governance, including contributor guidelines, code review workflows, semantic versioning, and changelogs.
- Familiarity with The Graph/subgraph architecture and GraphQL schemas (nice to have).
- Familiarity with the Livepeer protocol and current Explorer repository (nice to have).
Attitude
- Community-oriented and collaborative, engaging proactively with contributors, Advisory Boards, and Foundation stakeholders.
- Accountable and responsive, acknowledging critical bugs within 24–48 hours and working toward mitigation or resolution within a few business days.
- Documentation-first mindset, maintaining clear READMEs, runbooks, and migration notes to enable future contributors.
- Quality-driven and pragmatic, balancing rigorous testing, CI, and security with on-time delivery.
- Long-term stewardship, treating the Explorer as trusted infrastructure and designing for multi-year maintainability.
- Supportive and open, encouraging new contributors and fostering an inclusive contributor community.
- Mission-aligned, motivated to strengthen the Explorer as a cornerstone of the Livepeer ecosystem.
6. Proposal Requirements
Please include in your proposal:
- Executive Summary - give an overview of the proposal and why you are suited.
- Company / Contributor Overview & Capabilities - breakdown of each contributor with bio and relevant case studies.
- Past Work & Experience – examples of large front-end refactors, dependency upgrades, CI/CD setup, performance optimization, or open-source project maintenance.
- Milestone Breakdown – a plan aligned with Section 2 deliverables, with proposer-set milestone dates and demo day schedules, each including clear outputs and payment tied to demo acceptance.
- Support & Maintenance Plan – proposed SLA commitments (e.g., response and resolution times), 60-day post-delivery support approach, and handover/knowledge-transfer strategy.
- Pricing Breakdown - breakdown of payment by milestone with an optional ongoing support.
Though we recommend you use your own creativity in the proposal, an example template is here: Livepeer RFP — Proposal Template.
7. RFP Timeline
Proposal Deadline: Wednesday 24th September 2025
Decision Announced: Friday 26th September 2025
Project Start: Wednesday 1 October 2025
Project Completion: Sunday 1 Feb 2026
8. Proposal Submission Instructions
- Format: PDF or Notion page (share with view access).
- Proposal Deadline: 11:59pm GMT-7, Wednesday 24th September 2025.
- Questions: reach out to
@rickstaaon the Livepeer Discord. - Proposal Updates: if you submit an early draft of the proposal, you are welcome to update your original proposal until the final deadline.
On Track
At Risk (2 weeks behind)