Proposal: Ledger Investigation for Development and Support (Daml Shell)

Development Fund Proposal Submission

Proposal file: rfps/developer-experience-tooling-education/2026-08-DA-daml-shell-open-source.md

Applicant

Organization: Digital Asset

Author / Primary Contact: hrischuk-da (Curtis Hrischuk)

Champion: Curtis Hrischuk, Digital Asset

---

Proposal Classification

Proposal Type:

• RFP-aligned proposal
• Individual initiative

RFP / Roadmap Area: RFP 20 — Indexers, under Developer Experience, Tooling & Education in the 2026–2028 Strategic Roadmap.

Label: daml-tooling

---

Funding & Timeline

Total Funding Request: 1,050,000 CC

Project Duration: 8 months

Maximum Amount: N/A — RFP 20 does not specify a maximum amount.

Maximum Duration: N/A — RFP 20 does not specify a maximum duration.

---

Summary

Transaction debugging and observability is the weakest-rated area of the Canton builder experience in the Foundation's Q2 2026 DevRel Survey, and the tool that closes that gap — the Daml Shell — is production-proven but not open source. This proposal relicenses the Daml Shell under Apache 2.0, publishes it, and automates its inclusion in minor Daml SDK releases, giving validator operators and dApp teams a node-local forensic tool for historical ledger investigation via the Participant Query Store. 9 of 35 survey respondents already use it and 4 more were unaware it exists, so open-sourcing addresses roughly 37% of the surveyed ecosystem without building anything new.

---

Submission Checklist

• Full proposal file is included in this PR
• Organization and primary contact identified
• Champion identified or Needs Champion selected
• RFP / roadmap alignment identified, if applicable
• Total funding request provided
• Project duration provided
• Proposal is within any RFP maximum amount
• Proposal is within any RFP maximum duration
• Milestones and milestone funding are defined in the proposal
• Acceptance criteria are based on ecosystem value
• Architectural alignment is addressed