Subsquid and Aleph Zero Join Forces on Data Tooling and WASM

The Subsquid team is happy to announce a new partnership with Aleph Zero, a layer-1 privacy-enhancing blockchain that ensures scalability, low transaction fees, and maximum security guarantees for developers. We have already provided indexing support to Aleph Zero’s community of builders for some time, and we are looking forward to continuing to collaborate with the blockchain’s core team on data tooling and infrastructure.

Subsquid is the team behind squid SDK, an open-source framework that enables Web3 builders to create scalable and performant indexers which extract, transform, and present blockchain data as GraphQL APIs or in virtually any other format. Squids can be hosted for free using Subsquid’s hosted service, the Aquarium, and receive data from what will soon be a decentralized network of Archives. The Subsquid framework can be used to retrieve data from well over 70 EVM, Substrate, and WASM-based networks.

Aleph Zero is a layer-1 blockchain platform based on AlephBFT, a novel, peer-reviewed consensus protocol. Utilizing a Directed Acyclic Graph architecture as an intermediary data structure, AlephBFT results in rapid time to finality and is integrated into Substrate as a solo chain. The Aleph Zero smart contract pallet takes advantage of ink!, a Rust-embedded domain-specific language (eDSL) that compiles to WASM. In 2023, Aleph Zero will introduce Liminal, a software-based privacy layer based on zero-knowledge proofs and secure multi-party computation.

Getting started with Subsquid on Aleph Zero

In order to get Aleph Zero ecosystem builders off to a running start when building their first squid indexers, we have prepared a step-by-step tutorial. Developers should use the substrate template, which can be auto-generated using the init command. They may then take advantage of Subsquid’s additional tooling for dealing with ink! smart contracts. This includes:

• @subsquid/ink-abi — A performant library to decode the binary contract data using the contract ABI
• @subsquid/ink-typegen — A tool to generate type-safe TypeScript classes and interfaces for the contract event and call data from the contract metadata

For technical questions and in-depth conversations, builders are invited to join our developer community on Discord. We update the Learn squid SDK category in our server with new tutorials and content on a regular basis. Our full documentation can be found here.

Improved Web3 DevEx with WASM

Among many other benefits, one main advantage of Ink! is that it provides a more open ecosystem for developers. Instead of creating a novel language from scratch, Parity’s WASM implementation expands on Rust, allowing developers — even those who might be new to Web3 — to use a larger ecosystem of familiar tools. The Subsquid and Aleph Zero teams have agreed to pursue a number of marketing and growth initiatives to onboard new builders to Web3 through this powerful framework.

About Aleph Zero

Aleph Zero is an enterprise-ready, high-performance layer 1 blockchain platform with a novel, peer-reviewed AlephBFT consensus protocol. Besides providing near-instant transaction finality, the platform offers privacy-preserving features on a public blockchain through the combination of Zero-Knowledge proofs and Multi Party Computations (MPC).

About Subsquid

Subsquid is the team behind squids, a new standard for Web3 data extraction and transformation. Squids already power hundreds of applications across dozens of EVM, Substrate, and WASM-based chains. With modular architecture and a host of advanced features, Subsquid offers the most resource-efficient and developer-friendly way to build, test, and deploy customized GraphQL APIs and ETLs for blockchain-facing applications.