The long road to the Web3 wisdom
There is a belief that Web3 will revolutionize our online interactions enabling a more democratic way to exchange value. The blockchain technologies making it possible are still in early stages but it looks like the potential value they bring is here to stay in one way or another. New technologies, especially when they involve a change of paradigm, require time to evolve and mature. Processes need to be adapted, new tools need to be created, usability and robustness need to be there allowing for everybody in any situation to benefit from what the technology brings.
Having in mind the potential benefits of Web3, in Keyko we have been working on the tools allowing us to make better use of blockchain. One of the lines of work we created is Web3 Insights. In Keyko we are “data geeks”, we have some good experience dealing with data problems and one of the recurrent questions we have is: How can we get value from this Web3 stuff?
So are we talking about data?
To me a blockchain network is a beautiful system where I can find immutable data, and from a pure data point of view, this is awesome. But a blockchain network is a small universe that sometimes can’t be understood only with the on-chain data, it needs to be understood with the right context. Many times data without context brings no value is irrelevant…it’s mostly noise.
One of the classics I love and will help us here is the DIKW pyramid. It represents the relationship between Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. It’s based in fixed building blocks where data comes first as the base, information is next, then knowledge and finally wisdom is on the top.
Each step up the pyramid answers questions about the initial data and adds value to it. At the bottom of the pyramid we have our massive amount of disjointed data, and at the top we have turned the knowledge and insights into a learning experience that guides our actions.
Coming back to Web3 ecosystems, nowadays there exist a few fantastic tools giving us useful information about blockchain networks (block and transaction explorers, network stats, token balances, etc.). All this data, in conjunction with the network context, gives us some information about what’s going on in a blockchain network. However, it is difficult to have a clear understanding of what is happening in the reality within your Smart Contracts. It is even more difficult to get insights of that information in combination with a broader picture.
Keyko Web3 Insights
To move up in the our Web3 DIKW pyramid, Keyko identified that we need to work in different areas:
- Blocks and transactions are nice data, but in Web3 we can better understand the business logic of a network fetching the Smart Contract events and their public state. So we want more relevant data & information.
- Individual indicators are useful, but to have a real understanding of what’s going on, we need to be able to join & enrich information augmenting the context.
- Everything happening on-chain is important, but many times information coming from the outside world (off-chain) is crucial too. Think about exchanges, custodian services, oracles, etc. These all add more context to the loop.
- We need to join all this information together (on-chain & off-chain) when it is relevant and on top of that be able to identify patterns and alert us when something is happening. Here we are climbing in the DIKW pyramid.
- How we use the above stream of information to create actionable insights is our final goal. This is when we can react automatically to something happening and answer our original question of How can we get value from Web3 data?
All these pieces fit together allowing us to provide and end-to-end architecture totally oriented to get value from the Web3 data:
Oookay, but show me the code …
With all of this in mind, we have created or improved some tools on our path to Web3 wisdom:
- Web3 Monitoring Agent — Open Source software (based in the fantastic Eventeum from Consensys) augmenting it with some extra features like adding the possibility of fetching the public state of Smart Contracts via contract calls.
- Web3 Event Streamer — Open Source framework that using Kafka Streams facilitates to build data pipelines getting more value from the data.
- KeyKontrol Panel — Visual tool where users can create dashboards and get the insights generated by the platform.
But what can I do with that?
We think there are many possibilities here, and we are working to augment the capabilities of the system to fetch more relevant information and generate actionable insights. Here are a couple of interesting use cases we enable:
- Monitoring of your network or Smart Contracts is critical. You are running your logic on top of an unstoppable machine but if you have a bug or someone finds a way to attack your contracts in an unexpected way, you need to be aware of it ASAP. Keyko tools can help set up the monitoring rules applying to your business logic and notifying you if something wrong happens.
- Combining on-chain and off-chain information you can understand how tokens are performing across different exchanges. You can use those insights to take more informed investment decisions.
The next few months and years are going to be exciting in the Web3 ecosystem, a new family of tools will open great opportunities to improve the possibilities of creating value and interaction. So if any of this is interesting to you, we are here to help. So don’t be shy and drop by our dojo. ;)
References
- DIKW pyramid — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid
- Web3 Monitoring Agent — https://github.com/keyko-io/web3-monitoring-agent
- Web3 Event Streamer — https://github.com/keyko-io/web3-monitoring-agent
- Keyko Github — https://github.com/keyko-io
- Keyko — https://www.keyko.io/
