#DeathToDataAsymmetry
It’s time to make Cardano easier to understand!
How many times have we heard ‘Blockchains are a free public ledger and anyone can confirm what’s happening onchain’?
Since the start of the Alonzo era, accessibility to onchain analytics has largely been limited. Understanding these analytics has been left to developers who built the infrastructure or dApps. The common, non-technical user of a blockchain often faces disadvantages. This is not exclusively a Cardano issue. There are so few tools for analyzing what’s going on onchain. We need to change that! Support our project catalyst proposal here: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/cardano/idea/132034
Blockchains are optimized to write, not read
Most engineers and developers in the blockchain world focus on scaling. They are working to increase the amount and manner of information recorded on a blockchain. This makes tooling to understand what is going on very limited and not for the faint of heart. Cardano does has some tools to help get data on-chain, but it’s not nearly as easy as other chains. There is still a long way to go.
The Infra Overhead
A major challenge to having easily accessible data is the cost and complexity involved. Building a good dataset requires at least $750+ in hardware. It also needs technical knowledge of the chain and DevOps. Additionally, robust testing and validation are essential. Running a local setup requires spinning up a Cardano node and DB Sync. More boutique options utilize custom indexers. These are technically more complex. This complexity makes it difficult for the average blockchain “user” and non-dev to spin something like this up. Abstraction of the blockchain is vital. It helps create an intuitive data tool. This is useful for someone who doesn't need to know how a node functions.
Iceberg Project Roadmap
This project began as an organic grassroots effort. Two guys with backgrounds in engineering and data science started it as they wanted to model onchain data. Trying to get the data needed highlighted how hard it is for someone who doesn't speak "Cardano-infra". The project plan is to start small by making some of the existing solutions easier to use and accessible. Users shouldn't have to worry about encodings, cbor, or other technical jargon that a blockchain/dApp dev would normally be working with on the daily.
- Table Curation
- Build on top of Koios and Blockfrost tables to allow more insightful and readily accessible views such as DEX transactions, DeFi-based tables (ie Lending/Borrowing), dRep tables
- Having tables that get people into the data that they want to see is the most important part of the project as this will help drive the adoption of Iceberg
- Simplify Existing Infrastructure
- Utilize Cardano Node and DB Sync to expose an SQL engine with common and custom-curated tables
- Research and Partner with infrastructure builders
- There are some promising things being built that would be suited for the backend of a solution like Iceberg. This includes Dolos and its gRPC endpoints simplifying hardware needs drastically and exposing endpoints for data directly from node using the UTxORPC standard. This would also include the Node API work done by Blink Labs as well as leveraging Demeter by Tx Pipe as an alternative to self-hosting the infrastructure to power Iceberg.