Notary Application: IPFSForce Steven Li

[steven004]

Notary Application

To apply to be a Fil+ Notary, please review the Notary Overview here and then fill out the following form.

Core Information

• Name: Steven Li
• Affiliated organization: IPFS Force
• On-chain address to be notarized (recommend using a new address): f1ozt3gaqbnzfic6f2zsj4vppncws36ik5nqofhka
• Country of Operation: PRC
• Region of Operation: [Greater China Region (GCR)]
• Use case(s) to be supported: [Professional Services, Developer Tools, Decentralized Applications, Public or Open Data]
• DataCap requested for allocation (10TiB - 1PiB): 1PiB
• Are you applying on behalf of yourself or an organization?: [Organization]

Please respond to the questions below in paragraph form, replacing the text saying "Please answer here". Include as much detail as you can in your answer!

Long Term Network Alignment

Time Commitment

Describe the nature and duration of your affiliation with the Filecoin network. Please include relevant GitHub handles, Storage Provider IDs, significant projects or contributions (with links).

As an individual, I have been deeply cultivating distributed storage for over 10 years in multinational and startup companies.

I was the head of Cisco (China) Cloud Object Storage and the core developer of China's first-generation security routers. With my knowledge and experience in networking, security, and storage, I feel perfectly aligned with Filecoin's vision as a DSN infrastructure for humanity's information storage.

As an advocate and practitioner of distributed storage and Web 3.0, I have focused on IPFS study and development since 2017. In early 2018, I joined in Filecoin Community and worked as Co-Founder & CTO of IPFS Force. Since then, all of my working time is on IPFS and Filecoin ecosystem buildup.

At present, I am committed to the design and ecological construction of key modules such as Filecoin's consensus algorithm, proof of replication, economic model, and mining cluster architecture.

More information:
- GitHub handles: steven004
- IPFS Force Miner ID: f02438, f02425, f02731, f020604, f02726, f03266, f03287, f02610, f02721
- Slack: @steven
- Participating in DevNet/ TestNet/ HackFS/ SR1/ SR2/ Slingshot 1(as reviewer)/Filecoin Community activities as one of the top testers, core developers, and storage providers

Stake Exposure

Please cite total token at stake (currently available, locked as collateral, vesting over time) and any substantiating evidence (i.e., addresses on chain with their corresponding FIL amounts).

Total stake: 285,943.5114 FIL with Miner ID f02438, f02425, f02726, f03266, f03287, f02721, f0144547, f0218283, f0397561 as collateral(viewed on November 3rd, 2022).
Substantiating evidence: https://filscan.io/address/general?address=f01817492

How did you acquire the FIL cited above?

SR1/ SR2/ Filecoin Storage provide service

Industry Reputation

In-protocol Reputation

Please describe (in detail) your activity and tenure as a member of the Filecoin community. Please note (with links where possible) any contributions made to implementations of Filecoin, the spec, documentation, or to substantially help the Filecoin ecosystem grow.

As an Individual, I have been working as an IPFS/Filecoin ecosystem advocate and builder:
- Weekly IPFS/Filecoin/Web3 technical or marketing articles (over 400 articles in Chinese/English published)
- Speaker of IPFS/Filecoin/Web3 conferences
- Organizer and lecture of Protocol School Shanghai Chapter
- Contributor of Filecoin protocol and code development via issues/PRs commitments

Recently Filecoin Community activities
- FIL-Singapore Summit, Sep. 26-27th, 2022
- Filecoin Mainnet Anniversary Cloud Summit, Oct. 19th, 2021, https://www.huoxing24.com/live/24312878
- HyperDrive Upgrade - Data Analysis of ProveCommitAggregate Usage by Steven Li, Aug. 18th, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJWm8H85teI
- FIP-0029 Author: https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs/blob/master/FIPS/fip-0029.md
- Miner Financing: Putting Filecoin Tokens to Work - Steven Li, Dec. 17th, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_jmDVfDRY
- Filecoin Core Devs #35, Feb. 3rd, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kVQ5qwegok&list=PL_0VrY55uV1-9t74K-eFQN7Bc7ROG06hT&index=26
- How We Won Space Race, Oct. 21th 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QVa48Eela8
- Filecoin Protocol Implementation: What's next?, Oct. 21th 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmvQ0F1qtYQ
- Filecoin Chain Explorers, Oct. 21th 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2sk2WqrIjs
- Space Race Miner Show & Tell, Spe. 4th 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHi85ZNs3AY

As the technical lead and co-founder of IPFS-Force, led and helped the team: 
- Established and lead IPFS/Filecoin activities in China: 
	- Protocol School Shanghai & Chengdu
	- EOS & IPFS HackFS
- Published IPFS/Filecoin related reports and articles:
	- whitepaper translation
	- IPFS/Filecoin Ecological Report
	- SpaceRace Report
	- Filecoin Mining Guidelines (1-3 series)
	- 100 Questions about IPFS/Filecoin
	- Filecoin Annual Report
	- and other reports and articles wrote by our researchers and analyzers

In-protocol Security

Please describe your contributions to the security of Filecoin and the duration over which you've made contributions. Please also include any links or references that can substantiate your contributions.

Security is the first priority and the most important factor of a chain. As the key engineer of China's first generation of the secure router, I paid a lot of attention to the security of the system and contributed to Filecoin via publicly submitted issues or privately discussion due to the sensibility of some security issues.

Some of the issues submitted related to security: 
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/issues/559
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/venus/issues/3308 
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/venus/issues/3349
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/venus/issues/3523

There are some discussions in the private Slack channel or via email, too, e.g. 
- Nondeterministic signature of round winner calculation
- Owner change proposal from the security perspective
- deterministic winner of big miners, to drive the winning algorithm change

Organizational Reputation

Please describe the nature of your organization, including the country of registration, size of the organization, and time since inception.

IPFS Force started in May 2017, is a technical team dedicated to decentralization storage with the vision of building Web3 infrastructure, based in Shanghai, China.

IPFS Force has been sponsored by Shanghai Kunyao Network S&T Co., Ltd. since Kunyao was set up in July 2018 as a company. 

IPFS Force regularly conducts meetups and events and supports the industry in developing applications, contributing to the Filecoin ecosystem, and providing technical services.

Currently, IPFS Force has nearly 100 core members and hundreds of thousands of participants in hosted events via on-site or online events.

Please share any relevant details to help substantiate information about your organization (website, named officers, links to social media profiles).

Website: https://forcecommunity.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/force_ipfs
WeChat Oifficial Account: 焜耀科技
Telegram: @Ipfsforce
TikTok: 原力区

Please share any relevant external information regarding your organization (e.g. news articles, social media profiles, etc.)

https://www.jinse.com/lives/200205.html
https://36kr.com/newsflashes/973370131575041
https://36kr.com/newsflashes/669046320289795
https://www.jinse.com/lives/175039.html
https://cointelegraphcn.com/news/cointelegraph-hub

Individual Reputation

Please share links to at least 2 of your (personal) social media profiles (or accounts that you are able to use) and the approximate size of your audience (i.e., followers, subscribers) for each one.

Twitter: @Steven004_Li, 75 followers
WeChat Oifficial Account: 胡飞瞳, 176 articles, 2000 subscribers

Please share any additional relevant information regarding your presence (e.g. news articles, interviews, podcasts, videos, awards, etc.)

Opening Remark at FIL-Singapore Summit
- https://youtu.be/y8F46p9NTTU

Allocation Plan refer to the Rubric to see how this impacts your Notary score

Concreteness of Allocation Plan

Allocation Strategy

How do you plan on allocating the DataCap requested above? Please describe your allocation strategy with as much specificity as you can. This includes the target amount per client and rate at which you'll allocate DataCap.

The purpose of allocating the DataCap is to make sure clients use these DataCap in the right way.
For new clients, there will be offline investigation and discussion regarding who they are, what they will use Filecoin as storage to save, and how to do it. Based on that, I would have the first judgment to qualify or not as verified clients.
For qualified clients, my allocation strategy emphasizes historical reputation and also the plan for new-required data investigation.
We plan to allocate DataCap with a small incremental amount(<10%) and build a reputation mechanism.
Each allocation will be considered an assessment of clients' reputations with score accumulation and corresponding trust degree.
For example, if a client applies for DataCaps, provides valid data, and spends these DataCap responsibly, his reputation credit will increase. With higher credit, Clients can apply for more DataCaps in the future.
We are also willing to use tools, such as Filecoin Plus Registry and filplus.info to make all allocations public.

Internal process of allocation strategy:
Referring to the Filecoin Plus Client Rubric & Allocation Draft, I edited a draft of the credit and scoring mechanism of clients and communities or individuals behind, with the limitation of minimum 1GiB and maximum 100TiB DataCap. See the details from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zy7TLZN1dEqYNWubgMUdnog_c885-1KB/view?usp=sharing
At this moment, I think it's a good time to attract more external data providers to come into the Filecoin Network, become verified clients, and store valuable data. For this reason, my audit mechanism will evaluate the value of data as well. Clients with high-value data can prioritize allocation and a larger amount of DataCap. The initial rules are listed in the table: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13w0H3DMrKMeXFP4x1COFWx03Ohhhk0Ap/view?usp=sharing.
Basically, the more value the data can bring to the network, the more can be granted.
Besides, there will also be a 10% incremental allocation strategy.
For example, suppose clients(applied DataCap from me) provide valid data without improperly over-allocating as promised, and all checked data are qualified. In that case, when they apply for DataCap allocation from me the next time, their allocation could have a maximum 10% increase.

How do you plan on securing the DataCap to ensure your organization (and its delegated members) are the ones allocating the DataCap?

The offline wallet had been developed and verified for the accounts associated with the Datacap allocation.
And multi-sig wallet is to be used when more clients are coming in.

Client Due Diligence

How will you vet the clients that are applying for DataCap? What questions will you ask to ensure your trust is placed well and that clients can properly handle the DataCap you intend to allocate to them?

In general, the higher the DataCap thresholds are, the more restricted the client scrutiny would be. 

All clients have to go through a strict process to be qualified in the early stage. Firstly, I need to collect information including:  
1. Entity Information
 - Formation documents: includes certificates of registration/incorporation/information
 - government-issued identification number for the entity
2. Authorized Signatory Information
 - evidence of the authorized signatory's authority to act on behalf of the application entity (evidence include written consent of the company board of directors, or a secretary's certificate, a signed letter from the applicant's CFO, or may be included in the company operating agreement); 
 - close-up photo of the signatory's face next to the visible passport or other government-issued photo-bearing ID
3. Beneficial Owners
If there are any 25%+ shareholders, we need a document, such as a capitalization table, operating agreement, or similar to verify the ownership, and also the following information for each of them: 
	 - legal name;
	 - date of birth; 
	 - street address (P.O. box number is not acceptable); 
	 - a government-issued identification number, which shall be either an SSN, ITIN, passport number and country of issuance, alien identification card number, or number and country of issuance of any other government-issued document evidencing nationality or residence; 
 	- a copy of an unexpired passport or other government-issued document evidencing the individual's nationality or residence which bears a photograph of the individual. 

With this provided information, an interview and data source checking process need to go through. After that, an agreement should be signed for the next step: gradually allocate DataCap and let the client gather more credit. 

Question for clients:
1. Introduction of yourself/ your organization(with links)
2. Use case
3. Location
4. Max DataCap Allocation
5. Filecoin address
6. Miners you intend to allocate DataCap with allocation proportion
7. Specific requirement of miners and storage service
8. For-profit or not

What processes will you employ when granting additional DataCap to a client that has previously been verified? This includes confirming that the client is not improperly using the DataCap they were previously granted, i.e., making deals with a single SP entity.

Periodical inspection and audit of DataCap usage
- Use incentive mechanism: encourage clients to report unfair allocation
- Audit of DataCap usage: filplus.info is a useful tool to check the usage of DataCap and the flow of verified deals. After call-back, I'll retrieve stored data to verify whether clients stored data as they mentioned. At the same time, I really value the clients' services for their users and how the data stored in Filecoin can benefit others.

Bookkeeping Plan

Do you plan on conducting all your allocation decisions in public (e.g. Github repo), private (e.g. over email, Telegram, etc), or both?

The record of my allocation decisions will be accessible and in public(tentatively on GitHub) to be supervised by Filecoin Community.

Where do you plan on keeping a publicly accessible record of all your allocation decisions?

GitHub
All allocation decisions will be guided by the rubric publicly on Github.  
Since all interactions are intended to occur publically, most allocation decisions should be self-explanatory. 
Any challenges raised regarding allocation decisions should be discussed publicly, e.g., the Github repo.
If convincing justifications can't be given by the Notary, a dispute resolution application can be filed to the Notary Governance after 14 calendar days since its original challenge date. 
Once the dispute resolution application is filed, the Notary Governance can assign an arbitrator among the Root Key Holders in order to resolve the dispute. 
Depending on the arbitrator's decisions, a hearing may be given within 30 calendar days of the dispute resolution application. 

Service Level Agreement

Engagement in Program

Which level (1-5) of service commitment are you willing to dedicate to participating in the Fil+ program? This includes making DataCap allocations (direct and/or Large Datasets), joining working groups, adding comments on discussion/issues, attendance in governance calls, messages in Slack, etc. For a full list of the service levels and time commitments please review the rubric

L4
- Maintain a ranking in Leaderboard in the top 10% of Notaries.
- Attend 2 Governance calls a month.
- Join 2 working groups
- Respond to SLACK inquiries within 2 days
- Vote/Comment on >2 proposals a month

Track Record

Past allocation

Have you previously received DataCap to allocate before? If so, please link to any previous applications.

YES
The 1st round:
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/14
The 2nd round:
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/158
The 3rd round:
- https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/issues/412

Disclosures

Do you/your organization have any relationship(s) with other existing notaries or their organizations? If yes, please list the names of the Notary individuals or organizations you may be related to.

No.

[filecoin-notaries-onboarding-bot]

Thanks for your request!
Everything looks good. 👌

    A Governance Team member will review the information provided and contact you back pretty soon.

[filecoin-notaries-onboarding-bot]

Thanks for your request!
Everything looks good. 👌

    A Governance Team member will review the information provided and contact you back pretty soon.

[filecoin-notaries-onboarding-bot]

Thanks for your request!
Everything looks good. 👌

    A Governance Team member will review the information provided and contact you back pretty soon.

[Kevin-FF-USA]

Hi @steven004,

Thanks for (re)applying to become a Notary in the Fil+ program!

As we score your application, you will need to verify your contact information and affiliated organization. Since you are applying on behalf of an organization, please email [email protected] from your Organizations email account.
*This cannot be from your personal account. You Must include the address of your Organization.

Subject Line: Notary Name, Application Number
Email Body:

Your First and Last name
Your Organization
Your Country of Operation
Your Slack handle in [filecoinproject.slack.com](http://filecoinproject.slack.com/)
Link to this GitHub application

This step needs to be completed by 28NOV. Emails received after the 28th run the risk of delaying scoring and may result in your application not being completed. Once we receive verification of your email, we will then send you a token code to verify and link your SLACK account.

Should you have any questions, please post them here in the comments section of your application and tag @Kevin-FF-USA and @panges2

Thank you!

[steven004]

Sent

[raghavrmadya]

Thank you for your verification information. At this stage, the Trust & transparency Working Group has flagged your application for further audit. The governance team will wait for guidance from the WG before we can proceed further with your application.

[steven004]

⛈
Please let me know if anything more you or the governance team need, or it's also fine if you want to have a call, just feel free to schedule a meeting. @raghavrmadya

[galen-mcandrew]

Please see attached for initial notary scoring by governance team. Thank you for applying!
667.pdf

[steven004]

Thanks.

…

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 8:38 AM Galen ***@***.***> wrote: Please see attached for initial notary scoring by governance team. Thank you for applying! 667.pdf <https://github.com/filecoin-project/notary-governance/files/10159373/667.pdf> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#667 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACPN5S7IW3VCSG4GKQPGSR3WL2DHVANCNFSM6AAAAAAR5F3ZYE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Kevin-FF-USA]

@steven004
Thank you for applying to serve as a Notary in support of the Filecoin Plus program. After review of your application and a diligent scoring of your past and potential future contributions to the program, you have been selected to onboard as a Notary in this 4th round of elections.

In the coming days you will receive an onboarding training checklist. It will walk you through the steps to verify your ledger verification in https://plus.fil.org/ as well as outline the best practices and responsbilities for a Notary in the Program.

Next steps

1. By 20 December - Complete the CONTACT AND DISCLOSURES form
   1. https://airtable.com/shrjx52lvefitwdq6
2. By 30 December - Ensure that the Governance meeting time is on your calendar and make scheduling plans which allow you to commit to attending per your SLA level expectations. (L1-L5)

Please reach out to Galen, Kevin-FF, or Philop on Slack if you have any questions.

[panges2]

Hi @steven004, this is a kind reminder to get your ledger verified by Wednesday, Feb 8. To connect and set up your account in the Registry, please follow this short guide.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VCksV4_roLSTmaPqZJ8u643rykC0A7Z53YBDUoIY1xc/edit?usp=sharing
For a longer video walkthrough - see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HFvRjjplt4NpRz4P67320D2g3Z42ePzj/view

[steven004]

Sorry, I am not able to complete this by Wednesday since I am OOO this week. I had loggin in the https://plus.fil.org website using my ledger before my travel, but not verified the client yet. I will try to do it once I am back to the office in two weeks.

…

On Sat, Feb 4, 2023 at 5:49 AM panges2 ***@***.***> wrote: Hi @steven004 <https://github.com/steven004>, this is a kind reminder to get your ledger verified by Wednesday, Feb 8. To connect and set up your account in the Registry, please follow this short guide. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VCksV4_roLSTmaPqZJ8u643rykC0A7Z53YBDUoIY1xc/edit?usp=sharing For a longer video walkthrough - see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HFvRjjplt4NpRz4P67320D2g3Z42ePzj/view — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#667 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACPN5S46YSSM7SUB54LNNP3WVV4NRANCNFSM6AAAAAAR5F3ZYE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[panges2]

Hey, @steven004 just wanted to re-ping you on this.

[steven004]

Notary Ledger Verified

Message sent to Filecoin Network

message CID: bafy2bzaceaagwqwrnvwqazptc4mceksobyy5fo4fs3bkzmkfbxl35cisk3t2w

You can check the status of the message here: https://filfox.info/en/message/bafy2bzaceaagwqwrnvwqazptc4mceksobyy5fo4fs3bkzmkfbxl35cisk3t2w