Towards a Transparent & Accessible Decentralized Future
Introducing the Alethio API & Analytics Suite
From our inception, Alethio has rooted everything we’ve done in two things: data science and a mission to promote transparency and equitable access to meaningful data on Ethereum. We’ve spent countless hours studying Ethereum to truly understand what’s happening on the blockchain and what things matter most to its users. Our data science team has published a number of deep analytics pieces to further these efforts. We’ve looked at things like whether mining pools are centralized, a topology of the major accounts on the Ethereum network, a visualization of the Gnosis token auction, a retrospective of the EOS token sale, and activities happening on decentralized exchanges, among others (check our Medium page for more).
The State of Ethereum
We’ve learned so much during this period of Ethereum introspection. Two learnings stand out in particular that are especially relevant to how we’ve approached building our products:
First, Ethereum continues to evolve and grow, not just in size, but complexity (just take a look at the growth in smart contract function calls over Ethereum’s history below). One exciting example of this evolution is the recent emergence of decentralized finance — DeFi, or Open Finance, as some have started calling it. Open Finance has led to the introduction and growing adoption of Ethereum-based financial products that require no trusted intermediary and can be executed for fees at a fraction of what the current financial system requires. Yet with these exciting developments comes a lot of noise. Noise, often in the form of tough-to-access data, makes it exceedingly difficult for users to realize the true benefits of what these products can offer. From our standpoint, the tools available to users to examine this noise and extract actionable meaning have not evolved sufficiently. This has remained a substantial shortcoming of the ecosystem and a barrier to more widespread adoption.
Second, and relatedly, information asymmetry persists in varying forms across Ethereum. The underlying structure of raw Ethereum data makes it very difficult for most users to access, decipher, and understand on-chain information. This is only compounded as the network grows. As it currently stands, certain actors in the space have the expertise and custom toolsets to derive insights and meaning that continues to remain a mystery to large segments of the Ethereum’s user base. Put frankly, the onramp to truly understand what’s happening on-chain — understand enough to make informed decisions — is too high and runs the risk of advantaging certain users over others. Current tools do little to level the playing field and facilitate equitable access to the meaning behind blockchain data. For onchain applications to truly and sustainably engage a user base and achieve needed adoption, the barriers to data equality must be broken. Information — and more importantly, the meaning of that information — must flow accesssibly for this decentralized network to evolve and realize its incredible potential. Information asymmetry is the antithesis of Web3 and the decentralized future — this ecosystem will not succeed if it is allowed to persist.
Combating Information Asymmetry and Empowering Intelligence On Ethereum
Introducing the Alethio API & Analytics Suite
The Alethio team has set out to confront the Ethereum ecosystem’s need for powerful analytics and equitable access to data head on. We have built a powerful Ethereum data, analytics, and visualization platform. At its core is a robust, stable data pipeline of synthesized, real-time Ethereum data. This pipeline operates as a platform on top of which a growing number of analytics and intelligence tools are being created.
We’re incredibly excited to announce that we’re opening up our stable, robust pipeline of synthesized, real-time Ethereum data via subscription API access. We believe this will help accelerate dApp development and enable substantially easier access to meaningful on-chain data.
We’re also excited to announce the next products in the Alethio Analytics suite of blockchain intelligence tools and services after our Explorer: Alethio Monitoring and Alethio Reporting. Based on our data pipeline, these intuitive tools provide new ways for teams to quickly and proactively access digestible, real-time ethereum data in formats can be better tailored to user and business needs. We realize that, while powerful, a block explorer cannot be the only means through which teams can access blockchain data. Different use cases and analytics needs require a range of dynamic means to optimize access to meaningful blockchain data. These new tools, deeply rooted in on-chain data, will complement our Explorer to empower the ecosystem to operate more intelligently on-chain and unlock more value from each on-chain interaction.
New API features and associated Analytics Suite
Alethio’s API and associated Analytics Suite are meant to offer a flexible range of dynamic access pathways that make it easier to access and interact with the data you need, more directly and efficiently.
Alethio API
Our API is designed to help users build robust, reliable Ethereum-powered products faster and get access to synthesized, indexed data in real-time. We provide a full annotated history for any account, reveal the entire network of smart contract interactions, show analysis of value flow of on-chain asset transfers, and is all backed up by Alethio’s enterprise-grade REST API big data infrastructure. The API is designed around the frequent needs and pain points of the Ethereum developer community and features a powerful data model with interlinked, aggregated responses, in line with best practices and standards such as EthOn and JSON:API. Access to the free tier of our API is now available — try it out! Check out docs as well!
Alethio Analytics Suite: Our First Applications
Alethio Explorer and Ethstats Network Health Monitor (Ethstats.net v2!)
EthStats is our advanced, UI focused block explorer. We’ve also released and open sourced an updated version of ethstats.net: net.ethstats.io to provide a real time monitor of Ethereum network health and activity. These two combined tools provide a comprehensive lens into what’s happening on Ethereum, both at the network level as well as the block, transaction and account level.
Alethio Monitoring
Alethio Monitoring enables you to actively monitor any external account or smart contract. Set custom threshold or behavior based alerts based on what matters most to you and your business. Receive push notifications via the medium of your choosing. From actively tracking competitive activity to ensuring the security of your deployed smart contract, Alethio Monitoring helps you sift through the noise and ensure you stay ahead of important on-chain activity to enhance your decision making. Monitoring is live — give it a spin! Check out the demo video below!
Alethio Reporting
Alethio Reporting provides users access to structured, semantic Ethereum data sets that are tailored to their specific business and research needs and in an easily consumable format (Excel, Google Sheets, .CSV). The queries are customizable and available on-demand; they satisfy a wide variety of use cases and serve as a foundation to generate recurring reports on a designated schedule. Users may integrate visualization and business intelligence tools in conjunction with Alethio Reporting data to realize diverse analytical solutions for Ethereum. Alethio Reporting is Live — check it out here! Check out the demo video below!
These applications are intimately linked by Alethio’s underlying data pipeline. They will continue to evolve and coalesce into a modular, holistic blockchain analytics and intelligence solution. We will be releasing more detailed information on each very soon, but please head over to aleth.io for access today and for more information on use cases and key features!
Importantly for enterprises, Alethio has architected these tools to be fully deployable on private, permissioned, and semi-permissioned Ethereum networks. Alethio is also actively working to integrate with Pantheon, Kaleido, Viant, and Adhara, among other Enterprise-focused partners.
Alethio’s Commitment to Open Source
In furtherance of our mission to promote transparency on Ethereum, we’ve accelerated our open source efforts in recent months. We will continue to evolve and expand these efforts. For now, please check out a few recent releases and updates we’re excited about:
Deployable Network Health Monitor: ethstats.io (ethstats.net v2!)
Github repos:
- https://github.com/Alethio/ethstats-network-dashboard … webapp
- https://github.com/Alethio/ethstats-network-server … server app
- https://github.com/Alethio/ethstats-cli … client app
Ethereum Lite Explorer: https://lite-explorer.aleth.io
- A free, powerful lightweight explorer that users can spin up via any RPC enabled node
- Github repo: https://github.com/Alethio/ethereum-lite-explorer
Eth-On
- An open source Ontology that we’ve integrated into our data platform: https://media.consensys.net/ethon-introducing-semantic-ethereum-15f1f0696986
We will be releasing more details in the coming weeks. Look for us at EthCC this week in Paris and South by Southwest next week for additional detail. These products are live (beta) and ready to support your data needs on Ethereum. Please visit aleth.io for access today! Follow us on Twitter @AlethioEthstats! Interested in exploring an integration? Drop us a note at partnerships@aleth.io — we’d love to work with you!
Transparency to the blockchain!
