"Moonbeam Ecology Talk" is a community AMA event organized by the Moonbeam Chinese Lover Community and the Moonbeam Chinese Senior Ambassador. This event provides project parties who have deployed Moonriver or Moonbeam with project information to introduce themselves in the mainstream Moonbeam unofficial Chinese community, including: project introduction, team introduction, technical advantages, etc., to help Moonbeam enthusiasts in the community quickly understand the active High-quality projects within the Moonbeam ecosystem.
This episode of Moonbeam Ecology is jointly broadcast live on BinanceLive by Bitquery and the Moonbeam Chinese community to gain an in-depth understanding of the Web3 blockchain data provider Bitquery. Watch live replay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xoutDBE1bw
The following is the text record of this AMA:
JX : Hi everyone, I'm JX, Moonbeam's ambassador. I worked at Binance before, so I knew Moonbeam and participated in Binance's investment in it. Now my team and I have created a blockchain investment company - Old Fashion Research (OFR). The main business of OFR includes investment & mergers and acquisitions, as well as project incubation. So far we have invested in more than 30 projects (including metaverse, infrastructure, etc.), covering emerging markets including Latin America and Southeast Asia. Such as Nansen, Woo Trade and Genopets etc.
The guest of this AMA is Gaurav from Bitquery. Let’s invite Gaurav to introduce himself first!
Gaurav : Hi everyone, I'm Gaurav, Head of Growth at Bitquery . Bitquery is a blockchain data provider, and most of our business is concentrated in the field of data services, such as big data query. In different vertical fields, including compliance direction, DEX trading, DeFi and so on. We also provide many developer-oriented services, whether it is an individual developer or a professional development team. Our team has been cultivating in this field for 4 years. The team is located in California and currently has about 20 people.
Bitquery is the team going forward, we have supported about 40 public chains, including some testnets. Most of the data planes use GraphQL, but we also have other businesses for enterprise customers.
JX : Very good! I believe the audience present will look forward to specific products from Bitquery. Please introduce what Bitquery is, and what inspired your team to create Bitquery products?
Gaurav : OK. For Bitquery, we hope to solve the lack of data access in the blockchain and make the blockchain data meaningful. The first product we launched was Block C (blockC.info), which is an Ethereum-based block explorer. But unlike other browsers, you can see more analytics on this platform. For example, the information of various Token holders, the degree of correlation between various addresses, and the Gini coefficient. This is based on the results of BlockC, where we see interesting analysis and API composition of different blocks. In 2018, we gradually realized that the future may be a multi-chain world, which will give birth to many blockchains and the accompanying massive data demand.
Data can enrich the new generation of products, and the new generation of products is the basis for building more complex product functions. An excellent data panel can provide users with a higher quality user experience and adoption rate. So, we built Bitquery, and we currently process more than 1PB of on-chain data.
Of course, we indexed different data. We have been working on the data layer and are aware of the practical issues of data accessibility, especially hoping to obtain data from different types of blockchains, such as for building applications, research, analysis and other different cases. There is a threshold for obtaining data. Even if the data is obtained, it will consume a lot of energy to obtain the data. We hope to build data management query products in Bitquery to solve the problem of data acquisition.
JX : You mentioned that Bitquery has been built on different types of blockchains, and now Birquery has also announced the integration of Moonbeam. What is the opportunity to integrate Moonbeam, and who are the target user groups?
Gaurav : We completed the deployment on Moonbeam a few months ago. Prior to this, we had in-depth communication with the Moonbeam team and found that our customers and users also had the need to use Moonbeam, so we started to integrate. The whole integration took more than a month, because we have a standard integration process, use our own infrastructure, run nodes, index data and put it into the data warehouse, and then gradually complete the integration with other Bitquery products, such as the district Block explorer, DEX API, GraphQL IDE, and more.
We found that most people want analytics data on Moonbeam, and many people are interested in DEX transaction data on Moonbeam. There are also some that are of interest to enterprise users, such as compliance-related data, which is why we integrated Moonbeam. Now that we have fully supported Moonbeam, in some vertical fields, you can easily obtain data through API. We will launch more new products for all EVM-based chains and other types of chains.
JX : We have seen a wealth of product introductions from the Bitquery website. What problems do these products mainly solve? What interesting analysis have you found through these products?
Gaurav : Because we have many types of horizontal products, when you obtain blockchain data, you can create many possibilities based on it, such as loan products, pledge products, transaction products, NFT or games and other products . We have defined certain verticals where we have almost complete solutions. For example, Coinpath is a compliance API that can best track the flow of assets on the chain. Through him to find the source of assets, where to go, where the original assets eventually go. For example, if there are assets flowing from certain exchanges to different users, you can trace their traces through Coinpath. Of course, this is mainly applicable to compliance investigations, providing solutions for them.
In DEX transactions, we track DEX data, and we obtain data from their DEX on different chains. For example, if you want to use data to build trading tools and find arbitrage opportunities in the data, even if you want to obtain the data of a certain trading pair on the chain , this transaction pair may not have off-chain data as a reference, then you can use our payment model to obtain these addresses, token conversion, smart contract interaction, etc. whatever you want to retrieve. To be honest, we don't know how our users are using our products, because these products are very horizontal.
JX : It sounds like it would benefit a lot of teams. The next question is about Bitquery's development roadmap. What product features are you looking forward to in the next 2 years?
Gaurav : At the moment we will focus on two things. The first is to deploy more datasets. We currently have a feature-rich and complete dataset, as I just introduced. But we also need more data sets, because existing products are designed to meet the needs of 2 years ago, and now need to meet more standards, such as EIP1155. These new data sets (that is, new products) will be based on GraphQL, which is more comprehensive to meet current needs.
At the same time, we are also developing a data transfer platform. This will allow blockchain data streams to be fetched through multiple interfaces. This is the main work we put our energy into.
Efforts in these two directions can solve many existing problems, and one of the most important problems that can be solved is: how to promote and obtain real-time blockchain data?
This is critical for many application scenarios. For example, transaction-related data, compliance of real-time payment systems, and more application requirements we know. Because there are still technical obstacles to real-time data transmission, we are trying to solve them.
JX : Indeed, more data sets and meet the needs of more application scenarios. I'm still interested in the fundamentals of this space, and there are a lot of competitors being discovered by investors. Compared with similar products, what are the comparative advantages of Bitquery in terms of data feedback and supported chains?
Gaurav : We have seen a lot of similar projects, maybe 1 or 2 years ago there were not many, but now there are some. What is unique about Bitquery is that we are always customer oriented. We're a profitable company building what our customers want, and that's one of the main differentiators.
Second, in the field of decentralized blockchains, our competitors will store data in the network, but we will not do so. Because data is growing exponentially, and the people who use it have different needs and need different models to meet their needs. If coupled with the repeated use of data and the long-term maintenance of data, the entire network will become extremely large. Our point of view is that those who really need the data should store the data, and they can also have professional suppliers for auxiliary storage, but most companies store the data themselves, after all, the amount of data is not large now.
This is a whole new value proposition, blockchain is part of the digital infrastructure just like we have physical infrastructure (roads, bridges) and we need every single one of them. Similarly, we exist in a digital world, such as Facebook, Google or AWS are digital infrastructure.
In the same way, shortening the distance between infrastructures is an important step in the blockchain. Because this is not a unified place, but made up of different parts. Integration needs to be achieved from certain blockchains, while remote facilities need to be connected. We hope to closely connect infrastructures so that data can be seamlessly entered and converted between different infrastructures. Users can build applications through these infrastructures. For example, we can push data directly through MySQL, Redshift, Kafka or other platforms based on AWS. Therefore, developers can directly use it according to their own needs without relying on some unified interface or a single interface. At the same time, based on the access capability and the accessibility of the data itself, it is very convenient to build applications.
I believe that achieving this level of accessibility helps our developers build better complex applications that can even rival current centralized applications in terms of user experience.
JX : Very good. Data accessibility is very important. We are also looking for effective middleware between the application layer and the infrastructure layer. It seems that Bitquery has a satisfactory answer in this regard. Now that Bitquery is in business, what is the pricing model for different users in terms of pricing?
Gaurav : Good question. When it comes to pricing, we don't hide any terms. We open APIs to everyone. In view of our positioning as a data infrastructure platform, we have created a point system for each user, and the pricing is also based on this logic. It's like you pay based on your actual usage in AWS, and it's similar in Bitquery. You can write APIs to query different types of data, and the points system will count how many points your queries consume. This is also the core of the pricing point.
For example, in our premium plan, we give away 100,000 points per month for free. In the higher-level team plan, we provide 3 million points per month, and the highest business plan provides 100 million points. If more is needed, we offer enterprise-level custom plans.
JX : Where can I subscribe to the latest Bitquery progress or browse the usage guide?
Gaurav : We have Telegram and Twitter, and most of the updates can be seen on the above channels. If you have registered on the Bitquery website, you will also receive the Newsletter. Whenever we have an update, these developments can be checked through the Newsletter. In general, join our Telegram, you can search all the content.
JX : OK. Thanks for the information. I believe that many people will explore the story behind the start-up company, I am curious what made the founding team set up this company, what is their background?
Gaurav: Bitquery was co-founded by Dean and Aleksey. Dean is a veteran technologist who has started and sold companies to large companies like BlackBerry. He is a serial entrepreneur and owns 3 companies. In 2016, Dean entered the blockchain field and joined hands with Aleksey to engage in auditing business in the industry. Gradually, they realized that all audits are inseparable from the acquisition of data. So there was a follow-up to building this company.
Aleksey's experience is similar to Dean's. He has a strong technical background and has more than 20 years of code development experience, focusing on the construction of large systems.
Bitquery was inspired by the massive need for data in today's society. The world produces a large amount of data every day, and people also need this data. And we happen to have a good resource background in data, and building a data platform is a matter of course.
Bitquery was a natural progression and didn't make money in the first place. Last year we hoped that the company would be profitable. We listened to our customers and understood their development needs. Of course, as a data-centric company, we are always collecting user opinions and focusing on incorporating these user opinions into our products.
Now the whole team is about 20 people. We are still open for jobs! So, if you happen to be watching AMA and are also interested in our company, please send your resume.
JX : It sounds like Bitquery's team is very streamlined, with technical backgrounds and business capabilities. How do members of the team work together? How many people are in the technical direction and how many are in the business direction?
Gaurav : Generally speaking, we are still a technology-based team, about 90% of whom are technical members, mainly for development and maintenance. BD is mainly me and Dean, mainly doing inbound marketing and developing business around user needs. We continue to recruit talents with different backgrounds such as BD, data, and blockchain.
At the BD level, our inound business has achieved good results, and we have contacted many customers. Of course, when we find interesting landing scenarios, we will also contact potential customers directly. In terms of marketing, thanks to our block explorer, there are millions of views every month, which is very helpful for our Google SEO, which makes us always appear on the first page of Google search. It is also the reason why we maintain a good development state.
JX : This is really impressive, a strong technical background, and an efficient operation team. In addition to the questions I raised just now, there are also some questions left in the community at this time, and some questions are worth reading.
First community question: What are the differences between Bitquery and The Graph?
Gaurav : The Graph is a very good product, they are solving the problems encountered by different Dapps. The Graph has built a middle layer for Dapp, which is like Dapp at the front end.
Take Crypto Kitty as an example, they were deployed on AWS to extract the data on the chain, and then display the data to users to optimize the user experience. The Graph creates an intermediate layer, and developers don't need to build a specific index state sorting, just use a decentralized index service. The Graph saw these needs and provided solutions for these specific needs.
Bitquery is different. We hope to create a solution for real-time data transmission, and this solution is not limited to one case. Second, we hope to build more BitTorrent-like structured data that consumers can transform. Currently, BitTorrent does not have the function of transferring data, but this function can make the data more meaningful and earn rewards. Third, to be honest, data streams can be delivered to anyone, anyone who needs the data. We are building a general protocol that can be deployed on other blockchains if users want to transfer data (this is also one of our characteristics).
If you want to deploy a The Graph node, The Graph has its own node, which has all its indexing needs built in, but this type of deployment requires high hardware standards. Bitquery is lightweight, but very efficient. At the same time, if there is a professional node provider, whether it is Infura or others, they can easily run our modified node. First, it can improve their work efficiency, and second, they can transmit data to Bitquery's network. This is a win-win for both of us, and the other side can also gain profits.
In terms of design, we have our own data channel as the underlying infrastructure. This channel is built to transfer data to various places, mainly in the infrastructure. Of course, if dapps or certain browsers need these data, they can also be obtained.
JX : The Graph makes the index into a protocol layer, which is different from Bitquery's business. The next question is how to ensure the accuracy and security of the data while in transit?
Gaurav : That's a good question. We are looking for ways to safeguard the accuracy of the data. Because only from the internal technology is unable to verify the accuracy of the data. It is possible to think about the solution from the perspective of entropy (information theory). To put it simply, we need to know what the original data is, how it is transmitted, and what the output is, and then we can compare them.
We are currently trying to solve this problem through algorithms. Instead of focusing on the source of the data, we want to query the fidelity of the data in transit. In addition, based on some technologies, it is also feasible to incentivize people to transmit accurate data.
In terms of data security, we do not store data on the chain. Our focus is to transmit these data to various networks as soon as possible, rather than to save these data, so the state security of data is not a big problem.
JX : I'm glad to hear that someone cares about security and data accuracy. Next question, what do you think of Bitquery's current profit model?
Gaurav : It is more appropriate to compare it to a SAAS company, but Bitquery also has its own uniqueness. Our infrastructure is growing rapidly, and we have no intention of controlling it. Bitquery currently processes more than 1PB of data, and its speed is very fast. Once we enable new data sets, the size of the infrastructure doubles again. We hope to replace the existing infrastructure with the protocol. We hope to become the largest customer of our own protocol, but we will also maintain this SAAS product so that some users who do not want to integrate the protocol can get effective support when using our services. Users can use our data, which comes from the data transmitted by Bitquery's own protocol. Of course, developers can integrate directly with the protocol layer if they wish. We will maintain this model, but also build the protocol layer as an alternative solution to replace the infrastructure.
JX : The last question from the community, what are Bitquery's short-term and long-term plans?
Gaurav : In the short term, our focus is to deploy new products, which involves 2 products. One is our own protocol layer, and the other is to expand the data set in the direction of SAAS. In the long run, we are committed to making it easier for developers to access blockchain data, promoting more excellent applications to appear in the decentralized world, and providing them with a more friendly user experience.
JX : Is there anything else you would like to say to the audience before we wrap up the AMAs?
Gaurav : I would like to say that the infrastructure product layer in this market has a broad scene, especially the investment in infrastructure, please stay tuned, because this is very important for the development of the industry.