Blast support for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya (Q4 2023 & Q1 2024)

Astar Initiatives
1

Date: May 27, 2024

Requested allocation: 173711.301 ASTR

ASTAR Account: Wwfs24NNBLsdN9BHHj29spDsq5vkjk771dxPvMrXwraLywn

Short Description: Ongoing costs for supporting Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks in BlastAPI (https://blastapi.io). These costs are ongoing for as long as the Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya ecosystems need this service. The costs requested are for Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 (from October 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024).

Project Overview

Blast is Bware Labs’ API provider platform that aims to solve Web 3 infrastructure issues related to reliability and latency, by employing geographically distributed blockchain APIs.

Blast offers a multi-region architecture that, along with a series of clustering and geo-location mechanisms, ensures optimal routing of user requests to the closest point of presence relative to where a call is generated.

The development and maintenance of the Blast platform are provided by a highly technical team of engineers with proven experience in both Web3 and Web2 projects.

Specifications

On our multichain, subscription-based, API platform, Blast we support Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks with the following services and specifications:

  • Expose RPC and Websockets APIs for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya;

  • The Service availability is at least 99.9%;

  • 24/7 Monitoring and alerting for reduced downtime.

  • 24/7 On-call engineering support.

  • Developer support on Bware Labs Discord Channels.

  • The incoming traffic is Geo-load balanced over three regions: North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific, with smart traffic routing for optimal response times.

  • The Clients that use the Public API free version of Blast are limited to 100 API Calls/second.

  • 12 Million API calls/month with a throughput of 40 API calls/second offered for free to Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya users on each dedicated Blast account

  • Total traffic supported on all subscription plans and Public API: 3700 calls/second per region per network.

  • Multi-region node hosting: Astar(EU, US, and APAC), Shiden (EU, US, and APAC), Shibuya (EU, and APAC)

  • Support for Trace methods

  • Security ensured through continuous integrity monitoring coupled with a smart routing mechanism significantly reduce the risk of malicious behavior from bad actors within the ecosystem

At the beginning of Q2 2023 we initiated the decentralization of BlastAPI. Third party nodes can join the protocol for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks, and earn rewards for their contribution. More details about this can be found here: Blast protocol - Blast Documentation 1

Public APIs:
astar.public.blastapi.io

wss://astar.public.blastapi.io

shiden.public.blastapi.io

wss://shiden.public.blastapi.io

shibuya.public.blastapi.io

wss://shibuya.public.blastapi.io

Dedicated APIs:

https://blastapi.io

The total Free usage (Public, Free Dedicated Endpoints, Subscan and Blockscout on Astar and Shibuya) in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 is 6.61 Billion total API Calls.

Average subsidized monthly API calls: 1.1B

Average subsidized daily API calls: 36.6M

Rationale

We support Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks in Blast API platform so blockchain developers that are building their dApp on can bypass all the hurdles involved in running their own infrastructure thus reducing both their outage risks and infrastructure costs.

We’ve been supporting Shiden and Shibuya networks since 2021 and Astar network since January 2022. We will continue our support as long as the Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya ecosystems need this service.

Use of Funds

The funds will be used to pay for the infrastructure and maintenance of the Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya nodes between October 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024.

These funds will be directed to cover the costs from the infrastructure providers that are used for the Blast backend like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Hetzner, OVH, Servers.com and Digital Ocean and our internal resource cost for the support provided by our engineering team to have high quality infrastructure services for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks.

Overall Costs

A monthly cost breakdown, including infrastructure and support costs for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya networks, is as follows:

Monthly Infrastructure costs:

  • Astar 6 nodes(2 on EU, 2 on US, and 2 on APAC) $ 1250
  • Shiden 6 nodes(2 on EU, 2 on US, and 2 on APAC) $ 1000
  • Shibuya 4 nodes(2 on EU, and 2 on APAC) $ 400

Support Monthly Cost:

  • Account maintenance and on call engineers - $1000

Total monthly infrastructure costs: $3650

dAppStaking Rewards

We can point out that we earn an average amount of 8490 ASTR per month from the dAppStaking Rewards, meaning 50940 ASTR in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 that would be deducted from the requested funds. Using an average USD price of 0.114563424 for ASTR from October 2023 to March 2024, the rewards from dAppStaking amount to $5835.86.

Funds requested

The infrastructure costs, from October 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, are $21,900, and after subtracting $5835.86 (dAppStaking Rewards), the remaining costs are $16064.14.

With a 7-day average USD price of 0.092476079 for ASTR, the funds requested through the proposal are 173711.301 ASTR.

Note: Requested amount value in USD decreased from $4700/month in the previous proposal to $3650/month currently

4 Likes
2

BlastAPI is definitely one of the services I use the most within the Astar ecosystem to test things and develop, I haven’t had any problem so far with their service which allows me to give them a 9/10 rating.

I have reviewed the costs they mention here in their proposal and everything seems to be in order, so I don’t see any difficulty to cover these expenses.

3

This proposal for the Blast API platform is essential and well-planned. I’ve been using it for months, and it consistently supports developer needs effectively. The detailed cost breakdown shows transparency and commitment to the community. I fully support it.

4

It is a rather detailed proposal in explaining the numbers. Thank you very much. =)

5

Blast has always been a great help to me.
I support your proposal.

1 Like
6

I support this proposal.

7

Supporting this proposal. Thanks for the work you guys do!

8

Hi Blast team,

First of all, thanks for your continuous support from the infrastructure level.

After reading your previous two support proposals, I have two questions below:

Blast support for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya (Oct 2022-Mar 2023)
Blast support for Astar, Shiden, and Shibuya (Q2 & Q3 2023)

  1. The monthly total infrastructure cost seems decreasing. Mainly it was due to the reduction of the total number of nodes, but I also can see that the montly cost of ‘Account maintenance and on call engineers’ is decreasing from $2k to $1.5k, and now $1k. Reduced cost is good, but curious to know if there is any reason for that.
  2. If I understand correctly, dedicated servers from Hetzner, OVH, and Digital Ocean are being used for nodes. Specifically, the infrastructure cost for Shiden node is reduced by roughly 30%. Is there any specific reason behind of it?
9
Fund 173 711.301 ASTR from the Astar Treasury to Blast
  • Yes
  • No
  • Abstain
0 voters
10

I’m in favor of, let the builders, build… voted YES
Ecosystem must keep growing.

1 Like
11

Hey @pithecus , thank you for your feedback!

Regarding your questions, please find the answers below:

  1. We’ve implemented automatic update mechanisms and testing for the nodes using AI technology, leading to fewer man-hours required for the maintenance of Astar/Shiden/Shibuya nodes.
  2. We have entered a 2-year commitment as part of our partnership with OVH Cloud, which allowed us to receive a sizeable discount on node infrastructure, some of which we have utilized for Shiden nodes, thereby reducing our infrastructure costs.
1 Like
12

Anything that is for the maintenance of the infrastructure is welcome, I support the proposal! It has also reduced costs, I think they are doing a great job.

13

I would like to know the opinion of Astar DevOps Team before casting my vote but Blast is an historic infra partner and I am glad to read that the costs have been reduced.
So I voted yes for this proposal.

14

Maintaining the infrastructure of the network is one of the most important goals , voted YES :star2: :handshake:

15

Maintaining our network infrastructure is a crucial objective, and I voted YES on the proposal. I fully support any initiatives aimed at infrastructure upkeep. Moreover, the fact that it has also cut costs demonstrates that they are doing an excellent job.

1 Like
16

This is fully true; maintaining our network is crucial for our users and developers!

17

Great proposal. The Blast API is very important for Astar zkEVM and it would be beneficial for the community. However, It would be nice to make this proposal to cover for longer term broken into smaller milestones. Thank you.

18

You have my vote AYE on this. All the best :+1:

19

I would like to support this proposal, the service would be important for Astar eco

20

Funds have been transferred. :raised_hands:

https://astar.subscan.io/extrinsic/6374021-2

2 Likes