Prometheus Watchdog: An Autonomous QoS & Energy Governor for Filecoin/FVMÂ #2029
Description
Open Grant Proposal: Prometheus Watchdog
Project Name: Prometheus Watchdog: An Autonomous QoS & Energy Governor for Filecoin/FVM
Proposal Category: Research & protocols
Individual or Entity Name: Entity/Organization - Team Prometheus
Proposer: Tarpsprad1
Project Repo(s): GitHub Repository (to be created):
https://github.com/Team-Prometheus/prometheus-watchdog
Status: Repository will be created and made public at project kickoff. All grant-funded work will be developed in this repository under an open source license.
Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?: Yes
Project Summary
Prometheus Watchdog addresses a fundamental inefficiency in Filecoin’s execution layer that currently limits network throughput, increases operational costs for Storage Providers, and exposes compute infrastructure to energy waste. Two issues dominate this problem space: sealing livelocks caused by resource contention across the sealing pipeline, and futile or malicious compute workloads executed through FVM that consume real resources without delivering meaningful results.
Current scheduling systems are blind to these failure modes. They cannot distinguish between active but stagnant processes and productive execution, nor can they differentiate computationally difficult but useful jobs from mathematically futile ones. As a result, Storage Providers experience low hardware utilization, long sealing delays, excessive energy consumption, and unnecessary exposure to abusive compute workloads.
Prometheus Watchdog introduces an open source, autonomous governance layer that operates alongside existing Filecoin tooling. By monitoring entropy, execution velocity, and causal structure, it detects these hidden inefficiencies in real time and intervenes through safe, protocol compatible actions. The result is dramatically improved sealing efficiency, reduced energy waste, and stronger protection for Filecoin’s emerging compute ecosystem.
Impact
This project directly addresses critical pain points for Filecoin Storage Providers and FVM operators. Sealing livelocks currently suppress effective hardware utilization to a fraction of capacity, forcing providers to over provision infrastructure and absorb unnecessary energy costs. At the same time, FVM compute nodes face increasing risk from futile or malicious workloads that waste energy and delay legitimate jobs.
Getting this right materially improves Filecoin’s economic and environmental sustainability. By restoring throughput without additional hardware, Prometheus Watchdog lowers operational costs, shortens sealing latency, and improves provider margins. On the compute side, early detection and termination of null topology workloads protects providers from abuse while preserving capacity for high value applications.
If these issues are not addressed, Filecoin risks long term inefficiency as scale increases. Rising energy costs, degraded performance, and unmanaged compute abuse would undermine provider incentives and slow ecosystem growth. Success looks like higher sustained utilization, lower energy intensity per sector, and a compute environment where useful work is prioritized and waste is actively suppressed.
Outcomes
The final outcome of this project will be a production ready, open source governance sidecar compatible with lotus miner and bacalhau. Prometheus Watchdog will provide real time observability into sealing and compute execution states, autonomous intervention capabilities, and safe mode operation for providers who wish to evaluate recommendations before enabling actuation.
Key functionality includes detection of sealing livelocks through Glass State analysis, autonomous queue reordering to break stagnation, early stage causal analysis of FVM workloads, and termination of jobs identified as null topology waste. The software will include clear documentation, configuration options, and benchmarking results validated on Filecoin compatible hardware.
Project success will be measured using objective metrics including sealing throughput, sealing latency, GPU and CPU utilization, energy intensity per sector, and accuracy of null topology detection. Benchmarks will compare default scheduler behavior against Watchdog assisted execution under identical conditions.
Data Onboarding
This project does not directly onboard user data to the Filecoin network. As such, projected data onboarding amounts are not applicable.
Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies
The primary audience for Prometheus Watchdog is Filecoin Storage Providers and FVM compute operators. This audience includes professional operators managing resource constrained sealing pipelines and compute workloads at scale, where efficiency and energy cost directly impact viability.
Initial adoption will focus on technically engaged providers willing to deploy the software in safe mode to observe recommendations without risk. Early adopters will be onboarded through documentation, example configurations, and published benchmark results. From there, adoption will scale through community visibility, word of mouth among providers, and direct relevance to cost reduction and performance improvement.
Because the software operates as a sidecar and does not require protocol changes, barriers to entry are low. Success is expected to spread organically as providers observe measurable gains in throughput and efficiency.
Development Roadmap
Milestone 1: Sensor Suite and Observability
Dates: Month 1
Funding: $15,000
This milestone delivers the core sensor daemon written in Rust. It will collect process entropy, execution velocity, and resource contention metrics using system level interfaces. A real time dashboard will expose Glass State indicators for sealing workers.
Personnel:
One core systems engineer
Deliverables:
Open source sensor daemon, metrics pipeline, and observability dashboard.
Milestone 2: Governor Logic and Safe Mode
Dates: Month 2
Funding: $20,000
This milestone implements the governance logic layer. It will include BridgeFlip scheduling interventions for sealing pipelines and the null topology classifier for FVM workloads. All actions will operate in recommendation only mode to ensure safety and transparency.
Personnel:
One core systems engineer
Deliverables:
Safe mode governance engine, integration with lotus worker and bacalhau APIs, documentation.
Milestone 3: Autonomous Actuation and Validation
Dates: Month 3
Funding: $15,000
This milestone enables closed loop automation and validates performance through integration testing on a Filecoin compatible test environment. Benchmarks will be collected and published.
Personnel:
One core systems engineer
Deliverables:
Prometheus Watchdog v1.0 release, benchmark report, deployment guide.
Total Budget Requested
| Milestone # | Description | Deliverables | Completion Date | Funding |
|===|===|===|===|===|
| 1 | Sensor Suite | Metrics daemon and dashboard | Month 1 | $15,000 |
| 2 | Governor Logic | Safe mode governance engine | Month 2 | $20,000 |
| 3 | Autonomous Actuation | v1.0 release and benchmarks | Month 3 | $15,000 |
Total Requested: $50,000 USD
Maintenance and Upgrade Plans
Following completion, the project will be maintained as an open source repository. Ongoing maintenance will focus on compatibility with Filecoin client updates, performance improvements, and community reported issues. Future upgrades may include additional classifiers, expanded observability, and provider requested features.
Team
Team Members
Dr. Ron Spradling
Jeff Butcher
Team Member LinkedIn Profiles
(Provided upon request or during due diligence)
Team Website
https://team-prometheus.ai (coming soon)
Relevant Experience
Team Prometheus specializes in algorithmic governance, scheduling optimization, and computational efficiency. Our work spans resource constrained scheduling, cryptographic workloads, and control theory applied to complex execution environments. This project builds directly on prior research identifying structured stagnation and futile computation across multiple domains.
Team code repositories
Public repositories will be created at project kickoff. Relevant prior work is available upon request.
Additional Information
Filecoin community resources and Protocol Labs grant documentation. [email protected] This proposal introduces no protocol changes and is designed for incremental, opt-inGrant Proposal - FileCoin.docx
adoption by Storage Providers.