akash

Prop 290: AEP 62, 63, & 64 - New Features and Quality of Life Improvements for the Akash Network

Overview

This discussion is to seek Akash Community Pool support for three (3) Akash Enhancement Proposals (AEP) — AEP-62, AEP-63, and AEP-64—that together form a collection of comprehensive upgrades to the quality of life experience for Akash Network users. These three AEPs have been combined in a single discussion for brevity.

These AEPs were developed, tested, and implemented by the Overclock Labs’ Product and Core Engineering teams to address long-standing limitations around flexibility, interoperability, and developer experience when deploying workloads to the Akash Network on the Deployment Console, in addition to enhancing the flexibility and scalability of the Akash Provider Console.

Why This Matters

While individually meaningful, these three (3) AEPs collectively provide significant quality-of-life improvements for both new and existing users on the Akash Network. Many of these features have been asked for by existing users and new users alike. These AEPs will improve user experience for client integrations with Akash, managing providers, and beyond.

Budget: $161,225.08

AEP Cost Breakdown of costs Due Date
62 $71,900.69 AEP-62 costs April 17th, 2025
63 $50,450.91 AEP-63 costs May 30th, 2025
64 $38,873.48 AEP-64 costs April 30th, 2025

AEP Summary

AEP-62: Provider Node Management

Problem Addressed:

With Akash Provider Console now generally available and new and existing providers onboarding to it, Akash Console needs to add support for a key feature, which is the ability to easily add new nodes or remove one or more existing nodes from a cluster. In addition, providing a dedicated page (and side menu item) for providers to visualize their deployments at a node level to better manage the clusters they operate.

Key Features Introduced:

  • Will introduce a new "Node Management" page and side menu for provider visualization of key details relating to individual nodes of the specific provider to which they are connected.
  • Will introduce a set of onboarding steps in the UI to add more nodes to the provider.

Budget: Itemized list of labor costs can be found here.

AEP-63: Console API for Managed Wallet Users

Problem Addressed:

The original deployment CLI implementation required an understanding of crypto and the Cosmos SDK. Some developers who were less familiar with crypto found attempting to deploy workloads via the Akash Network challenging. This AEP aims to alleviate the existing obstacle for developers and promote ease of use by establishing clear API endpoints for managing the complete lifecycle of applications and deployments for users paying via credit card.

Key Features Introduced: All features can be tracked via Console Milestones.

  • API Endpoints
  • UI for managing API keys
  • Documentation of the APIs

For a more in-depth briefing on high level specification for AEP-63, please view here.

Budget: Itemized list of Overclock Labs costs can be found here.

AEP-64: JWT Authentication for Provider API

Problem Addressed:

There are a number of limitations to the current mTLS authentication mechanism. Issues include blockchain dependency, limited access control, and certificate management. AEP-64 aims to improve the reliability of client API communication with leases during blockchain maintenance periods and provide more granular access control capabilities.

There are several notable benefits to utilizing JWT (JSON Web Token), including: the enabling of granular access controls, more flexible token management, a reduced dependency on blockchain availability, and JWT is an established and widely adopted and understood authentication mechanism.

Key Features Introduced:

  • Enables JWT (JSON Web Token) based authentication for more robust and secure communication between providers and tenants
  • Enables observability of leases during network upgrades due to public key caching
  • Allows for more granular access control, great for organizations that don't want to give employees access to every deployment.

Budget: Itemized list of Overclock Labs costs can be found here.

Implementation & Rollout

All three (3) AEPs have been approved via the Akash open framework at meetings including sig-support, sig-chain, sig-providers, and the OCL core team has been working on implementation. After extensive testing, all three AEPs will be complete, and rollout will be announced on social media, via Akash’s discord, and any other public facing channels. Documentation will be updated in Github as well on Akash Network Documentation site to reflect the changes made by these 3 AEPS.

Feedback Welcome

The Overclock Labs core team is opening this discussion to:

  • Answer any additional questions about the new features and implementation
  • Gather additional feedback on usability
  • Discuss potential future enhancements building on this foundation

Feel free to comment below with any thoughts, issues, ideas or support.