AEP Support Services Q4 2025 / Q1 2026 Funding Proposal Part I

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AEP Support Services Q4 2025 / Q1 2026 Funding Proposal Part I

Summary

This proposal secures funding for the ongoing support and maintenance infrastructure required to operate the Akash Network beyond any single AEP development initiative. It covers Console operations, provider DevOps, customer support, core codebase upkeep, community coordination, financial governance, and the trial program that drives new user acquisition.

Motivation

With Mainnet 14 complete and the BME testnet live, Akash is entering its most operationally demanding phase to date. The network's support infrastructure must scale alongside the protocol itself. This proposal secures funding for the ongoing support and maintenance that keeps Akash running beyond any single development initiative — spanning Console operations, provider management, core codebase upkeep, community coordination, financial governance, and the trial program that drives new user acquisition.

This proposal represents Part 1 of a two-part funding request covering the Q4 2025 / Q1 2026 period. Overclock Labs is requesting approximately 50% of the total budget for these AEPs in this initial proposal. A second proposal for the remaining balance will be submitted in the May–June 2026 timeframe. This phased approach reduces the single-proposal draw on the Community Pool.

These support services are distinct from AEP-specific engineering work. They represent the operational baseline required to maintain a production-grade decentralized cloud platform and are grouped into the programs and cost centers described below.

Total Costs

For the Q4 2025 / Q1 2026 AEP Support Service Proposal, Overclock Labs is requesting $605,334.11 from the Community Pool, representing approximately 50% of the total $968,534.58 budget covering labor costs and operating costs directly attributable to AEPs for this period, alongside a 25% volatility buffer.

The remaining balance will be requested in a follow-up proposal (Part 2), anticipated for May–June 2026.

	Request from CP
Estimated engineering hours	2,559.14
Engineering rate per hour	$147.97
Engineering total cost	$378,680.36
Estimated support hours	5,481.71
Support rate per hour	$80.12
Support total cost	$439,172.27
Labor Subtotal	$817,852.63
Additional Operating Support Costs*	$150,681.95
Total	$968,534.58
50% Request	$484,267.29
AKT Volatility Buffer (25%)*	$121,066.82
Total Request (Part I)	$605,334.11

*Additional Operating Support Costs

Represent recurring or semi-recurring expenditures that support the administration, coordination, and continuity of Akash Network operations across fiscal periods. They include professional services, software subscriptions, compliance support, and financial operations essential to sustain on-chain governance, accounting, engineering, and client-facing functions.

**AKT Volatility Buffer

Prior proposals calculated the volatility buffer using a 28-day trailing average of daily AKT price volatility. Due to recent periods of heightened volatility that fall outside that historical window, a 25% buffer has been applied to this request to ensure adequate coverage during liquidation. All unused AKT will be returned to the Community Pool.

Cost Breakdown (Total)

	Hours	Cost
Core/Client Enhancements & Support	1,040.00	$173,760.64
As a percentage of total labor budget	12.86%	21.25%
Product/Customer Support	416.00	$61,398.43
As a percentage of total labor budget	5.14%	7.51%
Provider Support	1,015.20	$118,203.62
As a percentage of total labor budget	12.55%	14.45%
Administrative Support	1,248.00	$192,856.37
As a percentage of total labor budget	15.43%	23.58%
Community Support	4,368.00	$271,633.56
As a percentage of total labor budget	54.01%	33.21%

Supported Programs

Core/Client Enhancements & Support

Akash Console is the primary interface for deploying workloads on the network and has grown significantly with credit card payments, auto escrow top-up, billing dashboards, and the onboarding flow. As Console usage scales, so does the infrastructure, backend, and observability footprint required to keep it reliable. Key support areas include:

1. Infrastructure: Scaling, redundancy, uptime monitoring, and performance optimization to handle growing deployment volume.

2. Observability: Maintaining the tooling customers need to troubleshoot and manage workloads, including the log forwarding integrations delivered in AEP-34.

3. Analytics: Capturing business intelligence to drive Console enhancements and measure the effectiveness of paid acquisition strategies and trial-to-paid conversion.

With the Mainnet 14 upgrade to Cosmos SDK v53 complete, the core codebase requires ongoing post-upgrade support, maintenance, and stabilization. This workstream covers the day-to-day operational upkeep of the network's largest and most complex repository:

1. Post-Mainnet 14 support including bug fixes, performance monitoring, and stability improvements on the SDK v53 codebase.

2. Managing and funding testing and staging environments across core and client engineering teams.

3. R&D efforts to evaluate the viability of new initiatives before they become formal AEPs on the roadmap.

Product/Customer Support

A key effort from Overclock Labs the past six months has been ensuring satisfactory customer experiences across all Console touchpoints. As the network onboards an increasingly diverse tenant base — from individual developers to enterprise teams running production workloads — these efforts are directly attributable to user retention and trial-to-paid conversion. Key functions include:

1. Direct deployment support, billing inquiries, and escrow management assistance across Console and CLI.

2. Proactive identification and resolution of user friction points before they escalate to churn.

3. Onboarding guidance for new tenants, including environment configuration, resource selection, and provider matching.

4. Feedback aggregation from support channels to inform product roadmap prioritization and Console UX improvements.

DevOps and Provider Enhancement Support

The Provider Console is now the network's native provider management platform, and HomeNode MVP (AEP-60) will soon open Akash to a new class of residential providers. Scaling the provider base — while maintaining quality of service — requires hands-on DevOps support across onboarding, upgrades, and troubleshooting. The bulk of these resources go toward the Core Team's DevOps function:

Akash Provider Console: https://console.akash.network/providers

1. Technical administration, support, and troubleshooting for PIP providers and community providers alike.

2. Sandbox environment management for testing new provider configurations and features.

3. Resolving open issues from the Console repo, Discord, and direct community feedback.

4. Supporting providers through network upgrades — including the Mainnet 14 transition and upcoming BME-related changes — to minimize downtime.

5. Maintaining and updating provider documentation as new capabilities ship.

6. Close collaboration with providers testing new functionality such as lease termination reasons (AEP-39) and event forwarding.

Administrative and Community Support

Running an open-source, community-governed network at Akash's scale requires significant operational coordination. As the ecosystem grows — more AEPs, more providers, more community contributors — the administrative surface area grows with it. Key functions include:

1. SIG, Working Group, and User Group administration, program management, and meeting facilitation.

   • Community Groups: https://github.com/akash-network/community

2. Community development spanning insider office hours, the Akash Club program, and the Student Ambassador Program.

3. Managing relationships between the Decentralized Cloud Foundation, legal counsel, and market makers for the benefit of the Akash Ecosystem.

FinOps functions are equally critical: budgeting, forecasting, cost optimization, financial reporting, and transparent tracking of Community Pool expenditures to maintain accountability. As the network scales its funding proposals, these functions ensure that spending aligns with community objectives and governance standards.

Together, the administrative, community, and FinOps functions form the operational backbone of Akash Network and represent a significant share of the overall support budget.

Trial Credits

Akash Console offers new users $100 in free trial credits to experience the platform before committing to paid usage. These trials are a critical part of the user acquisition funnel — they give developers and teams a risk-free way to test deployments, evaluate GPU performance, and validate that Akash meets their production requirements before spending their own money.

Trial credit usage has grown substantially as Console adoption has increased. Every new sign-up that activates trial credits incurs real compute costs on the network. Maintaining a funded trial program is essential to:

1. Drive top-of-funnel user acquisition by removing cost barriers for first-time users.

2. Enable hands-on evaluation of Akash's GPU compute, pricing, and deployment experience before conversion.

3. Support the onboarding improvements delivered in AEP-72, which expanded trial credits to $100 with a 30-day window and credit card validation to drive urgency and conversion.

4. Provide the data needed to measure trial-to-paid conversion rates and optimize the acquisition funnel over time.

The recent BME Testnet, which successfully wrapped up in early March, represented a significant, high-value testing initiative crucial for network stability. This comprehensive testing phase required dedicated infrastructure provisioning and coordination, incurring costs of $9,150 over the trial duration. Securing funding for this essential pre-launch stress testing ensured BME was robust and ready for Mainnet deployment, minimizing risk and maximizing success. The technical scope of the BME testnet is outlined here.

Included in operating costs is $30,000 to fund trials and $9,150 for BME incentive testnet costs incurred by Overclock Labs.

Note: AkashML — the managed AI inference layer running on the Akash Supercloud — is a separate Overclock Labs product. AkashML operating costs are funded entirely by Overclock Labs and are not included in this Community Pool request. AkashML is mentioned here only for context, as it runs on the same infrastructure and demonstrates the network's production capability for AI workloads.

For Q4 2025 / Q1 2026, trial operating costs are captured within the Additional Operating Support Costs line item in the total costs table above.

Conclusion

These support services are what keep Akash running between milestone releases. Console infrastructure, provider DevOps, core codebase maintenance, community coordination, FinOps governance, and the trial program that brings new users in the door — none of this is optional at the network's current scale.

With BME approaching mainnet, CosmWasm going live, and HomeNode expanding the provider base, the operational load on every support function is increasing. Continued Community Pool funding ensures the network can absorb that growth without compromising stability or user experience.

Limited Market Impact & Transparent Reporting

Overclock Labs will custody the requested funds in a new, distinct wallet so that funds from any other source are not commingled.

All funds will be liquidated and managed to minimize market impact. These funds will be handled with the same care and attention as all previous Community Funding Proposals, with liquidations done in a fashion that will not adversely affect the market. In practice, the effort of this liquidation will add depth to the AKT market for buyers looking to enter.

In some cases, Overclock Labs will use structured market-making (MM) activity to manage funds responsibly. Conversions will take place gradually over defined trading windows rather than through large sell transactions. Spreading activity over these longer windows helps ensure that each trade reduces the likelihood of noticeable price movements and helps maintain a stable market for all participants. This measured approach allows Overclock Labs to meet operational needs while minimizing market impact and supporting steady liquidity within the AKT ecosystem.