Horizontal Explorer Scaling: A Subnet-Driven Approach

Editor's Notes

1. Hey there everyone, so happy to be here today. This is the best place to talk about what we’ve been doing at Avascan, and what comes next.
2. So, who knows Avascan? [Waiting a few seconds for a show of hands] BTW do you like my new PFP? It’s an OOPA with limited edition Avascan traits. We will giveaway some of them nex week, follow our Twitter account to know more.
3. For those of you who don’t know Avascan, we build the most complete and advanced block explorer for the Avalanche network. ‘Complete’ means that we index every subnet, and ‘advanced’ means that we build features that go beyond what you normally expect from a block explorer.
4. We think that the ‘block explorer’ definition is not completely suitable for us. See, to understand what I’m talking about, it’s necessary that I talk to you about a couple of things: first, what a block explorer is and how it works. And second, what’s the history of the block explorer.
5. This is instrumental in telling you about what’s next for the block explorer, and how and why it starts from Avalanche.
6. First: what’s a block explorer? Let’s look at some definitions on the web. This is from the Binance Academy. In short, a block explorer is an analytics website that let users view data about one blockchain.
7. But how does it work exactly?
8. There are different types of explorers. We can categorize the majority of block explorers by saying they’re either a light explorer, or a Full Index explorer. The basic difference is that the former connects directly to the blockchain node, while the latter uses an intermediary software, called the indexer, to store data in a specific way.
9. Each explorer has some basic functionalities: the light one has at least a basic address dashboard, maybe only showing the amount of gas token held, a transaction tracer and a block viewer. Sometimes, it may even feature a staking page or section and one about the mempool.
10. This, and much else, is part of the full-index explorer, like contract verification and interaction, some other useful developers tools and even some basic financial tools.
11. Here’s when the breaking news: next-gen blockchain networks like Avalanche render some features obsolete, and we need to rethink the block explorer. For example, the mempool page doesn’t make much sense on a network such as Avalanche: since time-to-finality (i.e. the time it takes for a transaction to be completed and not reversible) is 0.7 seconds on average, this page will be empty 99.9% of the time. What’s the use of a page that’s always empty? Thst’s why there’s no such page on Avascan. It wouldn’t make sense.
12. Now let’s see how the block explorer evolved over time.
13. The first block explorer that’s still active is most certainly blockchain.info, now blockchain.com, the bitcoin explorer. It was all pretty basic, raw: just a list of latest blocks with indication about how many transactions in them, some general stats and a list of resource links. Notice where the search is: it’s not prominent.
14. From 2013 to 2015 then, bitcoin gained popularity in what we can call the Bitcoin Forks Era: Litecoin, Dogecoin and other were born during this period. As a consequence, the block explorer gained more popularity and a revamp was needed: the raw UI leaves space to a more friendly UI. Since Bitcoin started to get exchanged, there’s a new Markets page, along with a Charts page to help traders get a sense of the macro. The stats get their own page as well, and a list of transaction comes along, but it’s not prominent. The search bar it’s in the same place, but there’s another one in the top.
15. From From 2015 to 2018 there’s a swap: the bitcoin explorer is not the only kid in town, because there’s a new type of blockchain, Ethereum. Etherscan is the most prominent explorer, and it makes blocks and transactions equally important. Transactions are even somewhat more important, due to a 14-day transaction volume chart that's very prominent. The attention moves from blocks (that make more sense in a UTXO-based blockchain) to transactions (that make more sense in an account-based blockchain).
16. Enter 2019. The 2017 bull run has ended, there’s a bear market. Some applications get into the scene, unlocking what was once called Open Finance (OpenFi), the prototype of current-day DeFi. In the Ethereum block explorer, the attention moves to more financial-focused data: ETH price and Market Cap are more prominent, and the search bar is now the most visible object in the web page. The block explorer has truly become a search engine. This is also when Avascan started, on September 1st, 2020, 20 days before Avalanche mainnet.
17. In 2021, a new bull run starts, and Ethereum is at its center. But along with it are a lot of next-gen blockchain platforms. Avalanche is one of the key players here. Who remembers the Avalanche Rush? [waits] But did you notice? Every screenshot I showed you here as one basic thing in common: it’s a single-chain experience. But Avalanche’s not a single-chain platform. It’s a multi-chain platform.
18. During the first conversations with Emin Gun Sirer when discussing the grant for Avascan, Gun said to us what quickly became our mission as Avascan: I want to see everything happening on Avalanche in one single place. This is what drove us from the beginning and what drives us now.
19. This is what we think is the future, what’s gonna be from now on: the Multi-Chain Era. It awaits to be written, and we as Avascan we’re front and center.
20. We’re the pioneers of the world’s first truly multi-chain explorer. We’re all in on this.
21. We’re called the Google of Avalanche because of this: we’re not just the Google of C-Chain or DFK. We’re the Google of the whole Avalanche network of subnets.
22. We think that app-chains are the future of blockchain scalability.
23. We know that Avalanche pioneered the concept with subnets in 2020.
24. We also know that there will be a future with thousands of app-chains across different networks
25. Hence, we know that the blockchain needs to adapt, from a single-chain experience to an integrated multi-chain one.
26. Remember the types of block explorer I told you about in the first slides? See that’s exactly why we don’t feel the block explorer definition is suitable for us. It’s because we don’t identify in any of these categories. But we’re changing this. We don’t think there’s just two types of explorers, but three: that’s the Full Index Ecosystem Explorer.
27. That’s different from the Full Index Single Chain Explorer, because it aggregates data across app-chains under a single ecosystem network, like Avalanche. It’s not like multi-chain explorers like Blockchair, that has different websites from each blockchain. It doesn’t make much sense to display just DFK data, or just Shrapnel data. They all use the same node, hence they’re in the same network, just different subnetworks. Avascan is the world’s first Full Index Ecosystem Explorer.
28. Now, what’s next from this?
29. So, we developed a front-end that is built natively to present data at a network ecosystem level, we have an indexer that is built from scratch for a multi-VM, multi-chain future, handling thousands of transactions per second across thousands of app-chains. And in our experience with last year’s support with subnets on Avalanche, we understand that app-chains developer need out-of-the-box tooling to launch an explorer that’s integrated at the network level, and not as an isolated sandbox.
30. In short, we think that launching an explorer should be as easy as launching a new subnet from the command line, like Avalanche is doing with hyperSDK or subnet-evm.
31. This is why I’m proud to introduce ICE, the next chapter for Avascan.
32. ICE stands for 1-Click Explorer, and Ice is also what crystallizes what’s inside it, like explorers do with on-chain data. It’s a concept for our innovative indexing technology, a command-line program to launch a subnet explorer inside Avascan in seconds. For now, we only support EVM.
33. We can’t be any more proud of this. We could do a lot of things with ICE. First, we could index every subnet effortlessly. And in fact, we’ve already been doing that for a few months now. ICE has been our internal tool to fully index new subnets in a few hours and light index them in seconds.
34. We could potentially bundle any kind of front-end on top of it.
35. We could potentially index any blockchain with this system: if it’s a light explorer, we’ll just use our front-end, while if it’s a full index single chain or ecosystem explorer, we also use our indexer.
36. This of course is the potential perfect companion for Core, the Ava Labs' made wallet that now supports Bitcoin and is the hub of Avalanche users outside Avalanche.
37. By bundling ICE-made explorers with Core, this could be a key tool to unlock visibility for Avalanche outside of the ecosystem (Ethereum, but even Polkadot, Cosmos or elsewhere).
38. ICE is a tool made inside Avalanche. It was possible because of Avalanche’s unique multi-chain architecture that scales horizontally.
39. Like other Made in Avalanche technologies (see Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book), it can be exported outside Avalanche to highlight the power of Avalanche as an blockchain innovation hub.
40. Did you like what you saw? Is that enough?
41. Actually, there’s just one more thing..
42. In one of our conversation with Kevin Sekniqi about the power of our indexer, he said: why don’t you add an etherscan front-end on top of your powerful indexer? You could give Etherscan a run for their money! So we thought: “yeah, we could do that. And we could bundle the explorer as a combination of a single indexer and a number of front-ends, depending on the use! There could be DeFi-oriented front-end, NFT-oriented ones or even ones dedicate to GameFi app-chains!” So we’re doing this.
43. I’m proud to introduce Avascan Standard Mode. Standard Mode is the first step in the new chapter of Avascan. It is a whole new front-end that users and developers can choose to use in addition to the existing Avascan interface.
44. It’s the design that all Ethereum-born developers and users know and love, available for C-Chain and all subnets starting today.
45. I’m now gonna show you how all this works
46. Do you like what you saw? Are you excited for the mulit-chain future? ‘Cause we are. Thank you.