SubQuery Releases Network Roadmap for 2024

SubQuery is a fast & flexible blockchain indexing toolkit that powers thousands of developers over a hundred different blockchain networks. Our goal is to pioneer fast, flexible, and scalable decentralised infrastructure, in order to help power web3's transition to an open, efficient and user-centric future.

Our major roadmap shows the key events that we recently summarised in the next phase of SubQuery’s evolution, our quest to revolutionise both RPCs and data indexers. Web3 middleware services like indexers and RPC providers are pivotal in blockchain dApp development, but in reality, they rely significantly on centralised components, posing a substantial threat to the envisioned unstoppability of web3.

Our mission has expanded, and so has the opportunity space we’re going to be working in. We need to decentralise these services, without compromise. We’ve already delivered breakthroughs in decentralised data indexing, but our next steps will focus on enhancing the performance of RPCs with the SubQuery Data Node, and then to bring RPCs to the masses, with SubQuery’s Sharded Data Nodes. These steps together, will help unlock the next level of performance increases in web3.

No other team today is better equipped at working to provide a holistic approach to solving this problem. In summary, our vision goes beyond data indexing; it's about revolutionising how data and infrastructure services are organised and accessed. With SubQuery, it's not just about building for today, but architecting a decentralised, inclusive future.

Public Token Sale

Starting with our highly anticipated SQT token sale on January 30th, 2024, we’re quickly getting ready to launch our mainnet and kick off the revolution of decentralised data infrastructure.

The Public Sale is the first opportunity for our community to purchase the SubQuery Token (SQT). Following the Public Sale, SQT will be minted and distributed to all successful participants. You can find more about the token sale at https://subquery.foundation/sale and make sure you subscribe to our social media to get updated on key announcements and milestones if you want to be involved.

Mainnet Launch

From a technical perspective, Kepler Network (our pre-mainnet) has paved the way for a smooth transition to mainnet launch of the SubQuery Network. At the time of mainnet launch, we expect to also launch some of the following features for the first time:

Pay in Fiat: Users will already be able to define query fees and plan costs in fiat via common stablecoins.
Delegator Service Improvements: Delegators are key members of the SubQuery Network ecosystem, providing delegation to Indexers to encourage them to compete harder. SubQuery will roll out improved documentation and tools required for Delegators to succeed and potentially receive more rewards.
Improved Indexer System Architecture: Indexers will be able to connect a separate database for the coordinator service to each of their indexed projects, allowing them to run more projects in more efficient ways
Improved Indexer Admin App: With a new branding and style consistent with the Network Explorer app and updated navigation layout and UI to make things easier than ever for Indexers and future RPC providers.

Decentralising RPCs

This will come soon after the mainnet launch, we’re already putting the final touches on this right now!

RPC services are still the main interface to the blockchain, under the hood of your favourite dApp, dozens of requests are passing through RPC providers to query and submit transactions to the network. This phase will update our SubQuery Network contracts to enable support for RPC providers to price and serve requests through our network. It will provide the following three services:

Reward and pricing rails: Including transaction-based pricing, subscription pricing, and one-off payment. With automated token conversion from fiat-denominated stablecoins to ease user experience
Dispute resolution: When things do go wrong, automatically fall back to alternative RPC providers and provide a dispute resolution process
Verification of service: Verify work done and service quality and consistency across multiple RPC providers

We will launch this service on our mainnet with node operators and professional RPC providers.

Enhancing RPCs - SubQuery’s Data Node

The performance limitations of data indexers and many other applications have long been limited by the RPC endpoint. Developers have long focussed on building nodes to ensure efficient validation to ensure the safety of the network. As a result of this sacrifice, RPCs are extremely costly and they’re not at all optimised for querying.

This is compounded by the rise of L2 chains where, with higher throughput, the query performance and cost are major outstanding issues to address. With limited querying capabilities, many don’t support complex querying languages or operations, making it inefficient to retrieve specific data.

In Q2 2024, we will deliver the SubQuery Data Node, an enhanced and heavily-forked RPC node that is perfectly optimised for querying, especially on endpoints like eth_getLog, and the ability to filter transactions in a single API call.

The Data Node will be open source, allowing people to contribute, extend, or fork the implementation in any way. It will support leading layer-2s and other EVM networks initially, and they will be optimised to run on the SubQuery Network in a decentralised way.

Working together, the SubQuery Indexer and SubQuery Data Node will provide the most performant indexing performance possible and in a completely decentralised way thanks to the SubQuery Network.

Our node runners will be able to run these data nodes on the network, bringing powerful and cost-effective RPC access to all, cementing SubQuery’s position as the fastest decentralised data indexer in web3.

Democratising RPCs - SubQuery’s Sharded Data Node

Towards the end of 2024, SubQuery will work to democratise RPCs (and solve EIP-4444) in the process by delivering the Sharded Data Node, which will make RPCs cheaper to run and operate by node providers.

In many networks (in particular Cosmos) small scale RPC service providers are the only operators. Unfortunately for cost reasons, these RPCs are usually heavily pruned and rate limited and have no upsell options for unrestricted access. One of the key reasons for this is the sheer size of the node - an Ethereum archive requires about ~12 TB on Geth, an Osmosis archive is at least the same. This is an incredible cost that limits these nodes to large centralised infrastructure providers.

SubQuery recognises that in order to decentralised RPCs correctly, you need to be able to make running these nodes easier and more accessible to everyday users. Currently the storage is made smaller by “pruning” data, which is intentionally discarding older information while cryptographically confirming that the recent data that is valid. This works fine for writing transactions, but means that indexers and other services are unable to query old data.

SubQuery will extend its Data Node to support sharding, that is making each Data Node smaller by splitting up block ranges between node operators. Since SubQuery’s Data Node only runs within the boundaries of a specific block range, it does not need to constantly sync new data, allowing it to optimise further for query performance rather than validation and verification.

The SubQuery Sharded node won’t just shard historical data, but also shard the historical state within the node. By itself, this won’t change much, but these sharded nodes will be optimised to run on the network, and the network will be designed to combine all these shards to expose a single unified endpoint that appears to cover the entire historical state of the chain. Developers will benefit from the entire historical state of the given network, and node operators will benefit from significantly lower running costs, creating a more cost-efficient network.

This is a revolutionary step forward for the RPC industry, and a potential solution to one of the great challenges facing older and larger blockchains with their state bloat size. This solution has the potential to help scale Ethereum, solve EIP-4444, and greatly support proliferation of Layer-2’s and rollups, while further democratising and decentralising the SubQuery Network.

Read more about how the sharded data node solves EIP-4444.

About SubQuery

SubQuery Network is innovating web3 infrastructure with tools that empower builders to decentralise the future. Our fast, flexible, and open data indexer supercharges dApps on over 125 networks, enabling a user-focused web3 world. Soon, our Data Node will provide breakthroughs in the RPC industry, and deliver decentralisation without compromise. We pioneer the web3 revolution for visionaries and forward-thinkers. We’re not just a company - we’re a movement driving an inclusive and decentralised web3 era. Let's shape the future of web3, together.