Milestones Presentation (Half-Year to Dec-2025): Waku

🧭 Key Outcome(s) of Vision you are supporting

Developers can use a Chat SDK to enable secure conversations, for one-to-one chat and private groups, that scales over Waku, including RLN.
Onboarding on Waku is improved by simplifying the API of the Waku SDK, including RLN, as well as other developer experience improvements.
Several applications PoC are built over Waku to demonstrate how to use Waku to developers.
Progress on privacy and sustainability tracks with research on mixnet and incentivisation.
Deliver nwaku in mobile as the last step to deprecating go-waku.

Strategy changes:

New Chat protocol over adapting existing code and protocol (justification)
Prioritized simplifying Waku API, to enable Chat SDK but also "make it easy to integrate"
Prioritized RLN SDK, to use with Chat SDK and have early RLN integration in the Chat stack (this time)
De-prioritized nwaku on mobile in favour of Waku SDK and RLN SDK
Increased commitment to build applications over Waku (Web and Logos Core), to "teach them how to hunt"
Introduced Developer Experience items: to support Chat SDK, and "make it easy to integrate"
Nim Usage Improvement: increased priority to support new chat sdk, and "make it easy to contribute"
De-scoped any Communities or existing Status chat protocol work, apart from e2e reliability as it is a re-usable block for Chat SDK.
RLN Mainnet is a long term goal, focus instead of smaller, achievable items that enable integration and dogfooding of RLN.

🚩 Proposed Milestones(s)

Milestone Headline	Strategic Objective	Capacity✱	Business Val (0/10)	FURPS
Define Incentivisation for RLNaaS	Logos Vision: Core Values Alignment	0.4	7	FURPS_
Improve DevEx: API, TWN, Metrics, Docs	Logos Movement Community Enabling via Dev-X + Telemetry	2.1	10	FURPS_
Introduce mixnet for message sending	Logos Vision: Core Values Alignment	0.7	4	F___S_
Formalize and Expand Waku Web Apps	Logos Movement Community Enabling	2.1	7	FURPS_
Create Chat SDK MVP	Logos Movement Module Build Out	2.1	8	FURPS+
Integrate RLN with Waku API	Logos Movement Module Build Out	1.7	9	FUR_S+
Streamline DevEx: Mobile, Rust and Web dev	Logos Movement Community Enabling via Dev-X	1.2	7	FU__S+
Extend Chat SDK with Group Conversations	Logos Movement Module Build Out	1.4	8	F_RPS+
Incentivisation Follow-up Outline	Logos Vision: Core Values Alignment	3	7	TBD
Nim Usage Improvements	Logos Movement Community Enabling: Dev Journey	0.5	5	FU____
BD - Acquire first 10 customers	Logos Movement Community Enabling: Growth	2.1	7	N/A

✱ Capacity: How many people assigned in a 6 months window.

3.5 are applied across all milestones (Franck, Aaron, 1/2 Hanno, Tanya), 1 core research cc is awol.

🧩 Strategic Benefits Realisable from coming Half-Year (Top 5)

Logos Vision - Core Values Alignment: Progress on making Waku sustainably scalable, resilient, private and censorship-resistant. Increase anonymity properties.
Logos Movement Community Enabling: Simplify APIs to reduce cost of onboarding and deliver them in demanded languages, build application as examples and demonstrations of the technology, provide telemetry to track success and improve Dev-X for contributors.
Logos Movement Module Build Out: Deliver a Chat SDK that can scale over Waku, supporting secure one-to-one and group chats, with early integration of DoS protection.

🚩 Key Cross Project Alignments (Top-5)

Project / Community	Specific	Confirmed with Project(Yes/No)
Status Application	Create Chat SDK MVP, Extend Chat SDK, Integrate RLN w/ Waku API	Yes
Logos Core	Formalize and Expand Waku Web Apps: Logos core app	Yes
Logos Movement	Formalize and Expand Waku Web Apps: Forum	Yes
Status Application	Streamline DevEx: Mobile	Yes
Codex	Formalize and Expand Waku Web Apps: More Codex Integrations	Yes
Status L2	Integrate RLN With the Waku API: Deploy SC on Sepolia	Yes

🚩 Key Cross Project/Shared Service Dependency (Top-5)

Project	Specific	Confirmed with Project(Yes/No)
Vac-DST	Proceed with status-backend benchmarks for nwaku and new chat sdk migration	Yes
Vac-QA	Proceed with status-backend non-regression testing for nwaku and new chat sdk migration	Yes
Status Network	Support usage of Sepolia	Yes
Vac-ACZ	Assist with using zerokit in the Browser	Yes
Vac-ACZ	Assist in determining best libraries to use for cryptography in new Chat SDK	Yes
Vac-ACZ	mix protocol development	Yes
Infra	Maintain Waku fleet, apply config changes requests, deploy new nodes for metrics	Yes
Vac-SC	Support of functional extension of RLN Smart Contract	Yes

Funding and Resources (By Strategic Objective)

Rolled-Up By Strategic Objective

https://notes.status.im/E_bcw7cLR36QKI39k-PlMg#

3.5 are applied across all milestones (Franck, Aaron, 1/2 Hanno, Tanya), 1 core research cc is awol. Not full 6 months planned, see above for contingency.

Strategic Objective	People†
Logos Vision - Core Values Alignment	4
Logos Movement Community Enabling	8
Logos Movement Module Build Out	5

† Rounded to express relative allocation to the different objectives.

Budget Consultation

Headline Activity	Status
Financial Review Status	[new,renew,review,approved]
Finance Comments	please add comment rows as needed

By Resource

Resource Headline Item	People	Comment
Present Resource	20
Additional Resource Ask	1	backfill - Logos Movement Community Enabling‡
PeopleOps Informed	Yes

‡ This would enable tackling following deliverables earlier:

Porting new chat protocols to the browser
NodeJS SDK, second most demanded SDK - and stabilizing usage of JS in desktop and mobile
Dev Ex improvement on Web API (e.g. local first message caching)

PeopleOps Consultation

⚠️ Keys Risks Identified & Controls

Risk	(Accept, Own, Mitigation)
Cryptographic primitives in Nim	Expect to nim-wrap existing Rust/C libraries - will consult with Vac to lean towards libraries already used in Nim/IFT ecosystem.
Timeline uncertainties for research items	Focus on iterative delivery of usable deliverables, to get early feedback and direction and lower cost of failure.
Nim ecosystem and tooling maturity	New initiative to foster Nim community within IFT, work closely with Vac/Nim re tooling, block time to migrate to Nimble.
RLN UX	Integrate in web apps, continue dogfooding and iteration, close collaboration with Status.
Readiness of status-go for Chat SDK integration	Weekly sync up on chat sdk and status-go refactoring topics between Waku and Status teams, collaborative planning done to align goals and API.
nwaku performance in Status/Chat context	benchmarks are still wip, we are prepared for potential performance improvement needs in mobile context, as it is a critical point for Status application.

✅ Key Observations

Exciting 6 months ahead with clear path on how to deliver value to both Status and the Logos Community with the same effort.
Improving work tracking with Vac-DST/Vac-QA, discussion is ongoing to better integrate Waku FURPS in Vac planning.
We now have a breaking change strategy for Status items.
Aiming more of a team rally behind milestones, dev milestones are now larger and contain more items that can be done in parallel, so that most of the team work on same milestone together.
Focus on more frequent milestone delivery, by avoiding intra-dependency of items in milestone.
Increasing collaboration between research and engineering teams, to ensure early unblocking and neat wrap-up of items.
The "Waku (Messaging) API" was initially a tidy up task, as Waku was already integrated in Status. With a focus towards Chat SDK and growing a developer community, it became an urgent-important item.
Intent to continue internal hackathon initiative with 2 more occurrences in 2025 (tentatively July and October).
Will attempt to secure one grant with minimum extra commitments (foreseeable commitments are wrapper for a specific language or writing RLN smart contract in non-EVM language).
Moving one js-waku developer to chat/app team to develop Forum/OpChan app and library for H2.

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