Analyzing Blockchain Data Could Get a Whole Lot Easier Thanks to New Tools
Currently, a handful of recent projects are aiming to make it a lot easier to access and query blockchain data. One benefit of these new projects is that they could show us how far cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has come and how far it still needs to go
Of course, the biggest company to enter the realm of blockchain is Google. The company revealed that through their BigQuery cloud platform, they had made the full data sets from eight of the most popular blockchain networks available. This includes Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Zcash, Dash, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.
Although data regarding transactions for each of these cryptocurrencies is already public, Google is now offering it in a way that is more easily accessible for data scientists.
Before Google’s project, researchers would need to connect to a node (a network of computers on the blockchain) on the peer-to-peer networks that run them and employ that connection to download and analyze the raw data given to them from other nodes on the network.
However, as Yaz Khoury, the director of developer relations for the Ethereum Classic Cooperative explained the average data scientist doesn’t have enough time to run their own node or write their own code to analyze that node and get the needed data out of it. Plus, even if they did do that, it’s something that would need to be done again and again every single day to access the latest data.
Thus, another option was to use a browsing service known as an explorer. These explorers are primitive search engines, which publish blockchain data online. There are several explorers presently available for all the significant cryptocurrencies, but they each have their own limitations. First, it is hard to analyze the data on these websites, and even though some have charts to help visualize the most basic economic trends, the insights gleaned from these sites are mostly only of interest to those who own the website.
Thus, if you want to perform a straightforward analysis, Google is now positioning itself as the place to go. By using BigQuery, researchers can remotely access blockchains structured in a relational database that is updated every day to Google’s cloud. In this form, it’s possible to analyze with Standard Query Language (SQL), which is commonly used by data scientists.
When it comes to specific cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, where the primary function of the network is to move value around, this is effective. But when you’re trying to analyze more complex blockchains like Ethereum, for example, it can be a lot more difficult.
Not only does Ethereum run standard transactions but it also runs smart contracts, which is a code that remotely performs complex applications, known as Dapps. Before one can perform an analysis of these operations, the applications need to be decompiled to their source code, which is something that BigQuery does not do.
However, the tools to do this are now being made available by developers outside of the BigQuery platform. For instance, a developer working on the Ethereum blockchain, Tomasz Kolinko, has made his own decompiler known as Eveem, which he’s been using to load data from contracts back onto BigQuery, where data scientists can perform a basic analysis.
Thus, BigQuery is working as a place for sharing data past what Google itself can provide.
According to Kolinko mixing this decompiled data from Ethereum with BigQuery’s search abilities, will be especially empowering for researchers trying to examine the Ethereum network security.
Kolinko has used the two tools together to search for security bugs that are known to be present in certain contracts, as well as to measure their ubiquity across the entire network. Kolinko added that when the results are moved into the cloud, it’s much more likely that auditors will discover the issues before they result in massive user damage.
Moreover, Kolinko explained that this is a good thing because if many more people can look over the data…there’s more of a chance that they can find the contracts that are affected before the issue gets worse.
However, as of now, BigQuery works best for studying data on public blockchains and not private blockchains, where participation is restricted to a group of certified users.
That’s where another company called Hacera comes into play. Hacera is pushing to make these private blockchains at least partially transparent.
Currently, the company is developing a project titled Unbounded where they offer a registry for the administrators of private blockchains to list their networks with a description of what functions they provide. Those in charge of private blockchains can also use Unbounded, which is built on blockchain technology itself by using Hyperledger’s Fabric, to selectively publish details about their networks, making operating data public sphere that otherwise would only be available to a select team of participants.
Many people develop private blockchains; most are used for businesses who have regulatory obligations to keep their client data private. But, by using Hacera, these companies can opt to publish parts of the data, like the total volume of transactions or how many participants are on their network. By doing this, it offers some indication of their rate of adoption without crossing any regulatory lines.
Jonathan Levi, the creator and head of Hacera, explained that even this small amount of transparency could help people in the industry understand more about which technologies are available and how they are working.
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