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SQD (fka Subsquid) - Public Data Indexing Infrastructure for Polkadot and Kusama (Q4 2024)
Summary
Proponent: Subsquid Lab Official - 13bfKSQXoBn3AMLtZaW6BKv797fqZzsD3PYF6xpJDir3tdoE
Beneficiary: Subsquid Lab Official - 13bfKSQXoBn3AMLtZaW6BKv797fqZzsD3PYF6xpJDir3tdoE
Contact Details:
Subsquid Labs GmbH
6300 Zug, Switzerland
Short description: Ongoing development and maintenance costs for public SQD Archives, providing critical data infrastructure for Polkadot and Kusuma and other public Substrate-based chains in Q4 2024.
Archive raw data: Archive Infrastructure metrics - October, November, December
Requested amount: $308,704
Previous proposals: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/1526
Motivation
A) Archives
SQD Archives are a vital component of the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem’s data infrastructure, offering scalable access to historical on-chain data for public Substrate-based chains. These archives serve as performant data pipelines for major dApps, APIs, and developer tools, supporting critical ecosystem projects such as:
- Tanssi Network
- Talisman Wallet
- Polimec
- Polkassembly
- Apillon
- Hydration
- Giant Squid API (maintained by LimeChain, see details below)
- SubWallet
- FiDi
- KodaDot
- RMRK
- ChainSafe (in particular the Multix multi-sig, as well as other projects)
- Phala Network
- Stellaswap
- Polkascan
By providing free indexing services for the following public chains, SQD lowers barriers for developers and projects building on Substrate, fostering innovation and adoption:
- polkadot
- kusama
- asset-hub-kusama
- asset-hub-polkadot
- bridge-hub-polkadot
- collectives-polkadot
- Westend
Despite transitioning to a fee-based model for private data services to ensure sustainability, SQD remains committed to covering infrastructure costs for public archives, ensuring open access to indexed Substrate Events, Extrinsics, Storage Items, and EVM logs. This commitment aligns with Polkadot’s vision of a decentralized, accessible ecosystem.
B) Contribution
During Q4’2024, we made significant contributions to the Polkadot ecosystem:
- Infrastructure Scaling: Expanding archive capacity to meet growing data demand.
- Squid SDK Enhancements: Introducing advanced indexing features, including support for new Substrate pallets and improved error-handling mechanisms.
- Decentralized Network Growth: Increasing SQD Worker Node participation to enhance network resilience.
Achievements
Growth in Archival Data Demand, Network Expansion and Further Decentralization
In Q4 2024, demand for archival data grew steadily, rising from 11.35 TiB to 11.68 TiB. At the same time, the number of active Worker Nodes in the SQD network increased from 1,139 in October to 1,600 by the end of December—a 40.47% increase. This expansion strengthens the SQD network’s infrastructure, contributing to greater decentralization and resilience across the Polkadot ecosystem.
By the end of 2024, the SQD network had scaled to approximately 1,600 active Worker Nodes, securely storing around 900 TB of data and serving roughly 11 TB daily. This robust, decentralized infrastructure significantly enhances data processing and storage capabilities, delivering improved security, fault tolerance, and scalability for the Polkadot network.
Squid SDK improvements empowering Polkadot Developers:
- Additional unique support for Revive pallet: Enabling the tracking of contracts deployed to the PolkaVM.
- Indexing efficiency upgrades: Implementation of a novel mechanism to skip and log problematic blocks-those containing invalid or non-decodable data on Substrate based chains, ensuring uninterrupted indexing and improved resilience of the data pipeline.
Statistics and data
Over the course of Q4 2024:
- Served a total of 11,668,177,888,249 (~10.06 TiB) of data from substrate based chains.
- Served 2,336,249 archive requests from substrate based archives.
- The highest daily total data transfer recorded for Substrate was 382.57 GiB within a single 24-hour period (2024-10-05).
Cost Breakdown
This proposal encompasses the combined costs for running Archives for Polkadot, Kusama, and other public chains, along with the development contributions, amounting to a total of $308,704 Raw data can be seen here
The proposal is submitted towards the Polkadot treasury. Here is a summary of the running costs for Archives, in a tabular format:
| Service | Cost | VAT 8.1% | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute Engine (GCE) | $92,630.90 | $100,134.00 | $100,134.00 |
| OVHCloud | $28,419.03 | $30,720.97 | $30,720.97 |
| Networking | $2,963.02 | $3,203.02 | $3,203.02 |
| Kubernetes Engine (GKE) | $436.23 | $471.56 | $471.56 |
| Cloud Storage (GCS) | $63.21 | $68.33 | $68.33 |
| Cloud SQL | $396.38 | $428.49 | $428.49 |
| Cloud DNS | $18.01 | $19.47 | $19.47 |
| Cloud Logging | $13,506.84 | $14,600.89 | $14,600.89 |
| Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) | $2.99 | $3.23 | $3.23 |
| Artifact Registry | $336.01 | $363.23 | $363.23 |
| Engineers & Maintenance* | $144,000.00 | $155,664.00 | $155,664.00 |
| Total | $305,677.20 |
Contribution costs:
| Service | Cost / h | Quantity | VAT 8.1% | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revive pallet support | $100.00 | 16.00 | $1,729.60 | $1,729.60 |
| Indexing efficiency upgrades | $100.00 | 6.00 | $648.60 | $648.60 |
| Product management | $100.00 | 3.00 | $324.30 | $324.30 |
| Project management | $100.00 | 3.00 | $324.30 | $324.30 |
| Total | $3,026.80 |
- Subsquid Lab is asking for $308,704 to support public data archives for Polkadot and Kusama.
- These archives help many projects like Talisman Wallet and Polimec by providing free data access.
- In Q4 2024, they improved their tools and grew their network to 1,600 worker nodes.
- They served over 11 TB of data and handled 2.3 million requests.
- Costs include cloud services ($100,134) and engineering work ($155,664).
- New features were added, like tracking PolkaVM contracts.
- The network is now more decentralized and resilient.
- Full details are in their spreadsheet.
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