Is Hicetnunc down? What to do and info about indexer
Sometimes I see people saying Hicetnunc is down. New mint not showing up, can’t swap Objkts, just collect an Objkt but not showing in the collection … etc. In fact, Hicetnunc is rarely down. All these problems are related to indexer lagging.
If the indexer is lagging, the Hicetnunc website displays old data. So the collect fails (because the Objkt might have already been bought) and the swap doesn’t show up (exists in new data, not in the current data).
And currently, there are three marketplaces with different indexers. So the chance that all three indexers are all lagging is quite low. So I would say collecting and swapping Hicetnunc NFTs is pretty stable now. Just you got to know where to go and what to do when a certain indexer is lagging.
So, in this article, I’m going to talk about indexers, and how to do when you face indexer lagging.
What is an indexer?
You can think of an indexer as a translator. The Objkt’s name, how much is the price, who owns the Objkt … etc. All the data stores on the blockchain, but it stores in a strange language. And indexers translate it into a human-readable language. So the websites can display these translated data to the user.
Indexer plays an important role in blockchain applications. All transaction data stores on the blockchain. But the raw data on the blockchain is very hard to read. To speed up services development, the indexer came to help, analyzing raw transaction data and store them in a human-readable way. And application developers can easily make services like websites and apps with the help of a indexer.
So if you call mint or swap, the transaction is sent to the blockchain. If it’s been confirmed (you can check with tzkt.io) then it exists on the chain. But when the indexer is lagging, those new mints and swaps might not be analyzed and store in the indexer yet, so the website will not show your new mint/swaps. But you don’t have to worry, everything is fine, you just have to wait until the indexer catches up.
Why is the indexer lagging?
Sometimes if there are too many transactions happen in a very short time, it might cause the indexer to lag. For example, yesterday the launching of a collab work between Matthew Plummer-Fernández and OMGiDRAWEDit crashed all three indexers. Too many collect requests happened in a very short time.
But usually just because the indexer system crashes. There are many reasons an indexer would crash. For example, some weird blockchain data that the analyze system didn’t know how to process, and it would make the indexer stop analyzing new blocks.
What to do when the indexer lagging?
Just wait for indexer processing or wait for the system to be reboot. Usually, it just takes a few hours, and it will be all fine.
But since there are three different indexers available at the same time, the chance that all three indexers are down is very low. So if one indexer is lagging, you can use alternative services to collect and swap.
Different websites and different indexers: Hicetnunc, Objkt.com, Henext
Currently, there are three marketplace websites you can collect and swap, and these three websites use different indexers. Hicetnunc.xyz has its own indexer (teztools, currently managed by @Manictor), Objkt.com also has its own indexer, and Henext.xyz uses the public indexer hicdex.com (create and managed by @marchingsquare).
So if you found one site is not working correctly, just use the other two instead. There are at least one working. And from my observation in the past few months, Objkt.com is usually the most stable.
But there is a thing to notice here: Objkt.com has its own smart contract. If you swap Objkts from Objkt.com, it would not be showing on the other two websites. But if you swap Objkts from Hicetnunc or Henext, they would also be displaying on Objkt.com.
We have to give credit to Objkt.com on this. The smart contract decides where the fee goes (2.5% platform fee). And Objkt.com decided to show Hicetnunc swaps as well. That means, if someone swaps from Hicetnunc and got collected on Objkt.com, the fee goes to Hicetnunc and Objkt.com gets nothing. We should all appreciate their sacrifice for the greater good.
And besides the main three marketplaces, NftBiker also made several nice tools on nftbiker.xtz, and he runs his own indexers! So if you still facing issues with the main three websites, you could try his tool instead.
And a little about Pocket H=N
Pocket H=N is an application developed by myself. And I would say it’s extremely useful if you do collecting on Hicetnunc a lot. It stores the Objkt’s thumbnails and metadata on your device, so it can load and display the entire collection fast. It also has “follow artists” feature and can put particular Objkt into tracking list. And in the latest version it shows the current indexer (hicdex) status and offer alternative indexers for you to choose. And it also monitors the market data from both Hicetnunc and Objkt.com.
There are too many things to introduce and is hard to explain purely with words. I might make a video explaining how to use this app recently. For now, if you’re interested, you can check #PocketHEN on Twitter and there’s some demo videos I posted before. And if you like it you can refer to Pocket H=N website to collect and download the software.
