**Proponent:** esnXpmeRBVMqbaFoY5bbFi9Lapuh85jnDkN8QQtoh3k4jBXxV

**Date:** 18th December 2023

**Amount Requested:** $5,610.00 (PDEX TBC)

**Short description:** Ongoing & advanced costs for the running of high performance, scalable, and reliable public infrastructure in Q1 and Q2 of 2024  for Polkadex.

**Full Proposal:** [https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KTjA4nDmGqtOLHvfyy066x5GhadtUoGwpjb80zSOcI/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KTjA4nDmGqtOLHvfyy066x5GhadtUoGwpjb80zSOcI/edit?usp=sharing)

* * * * *

Why are Public RPC Services Needed for Polkadex
===============================================

Setting up blockchain infrastructure is difficult, time consuming, and expensive:

-   It requires a level of server development expertise that many do not have

-   It's costly to run a full node nearly continuously, especially when your dApp's traffic is low and inconsistent. 

-   Running production level infrastructure is especially tricky. You need to autoscale quickly to handle bursty traffic, and you want to provide services in different regions around the world to provide low latency services - all of this is incredibly costly, but comes with significant economies of scale for a provider.

-   DevOps requires constant attention - time that would be better spent elsewhere building.

A shared node API service helps mitigate these barriers of entry to trying accessing a new protocol by reducing all these costs to near zero. We manage all the nodes for our users and distribute them across the world (with intelligent routing) to achieve global scalability from day 1, we monitor each node and ensure that they meet certain service levels, and we have the expertise and scale to handle production workloads and high peak traffic.

In summary, we try to reduce the pain of getting started on Polkadex and minimise the costs of accessing secure nodes while traffic from your dApp is low. When you grow, you can continue to use our shared API service, or we also [provide access to one click deploy dedicated polkadex nodes](https://onfinality.io/dedicated_nodes)  to any cloud of your choosing. 

OnFinality's RPC Service
========================

As Polkadot's largest and most cost efficient infrastructure provider, this proposal will support OnFinality's free public API services for the Polkadex community. Since our inception in November 2020 we have a long track record focussing on three key areas; performance/reliability, providing more value from our Ultimate API service, and cost optimisation.

### Performance/Reliability

OnFinality is operationally striving for a minimum of 99.99% reliability, which means less than an hour of downtime each year. We are the only RPC provider to guarantee this with actual financial penalties (see appendix A). We proudly display and share our [90 day uptime statistics](https://status.onfinality.io/) for each network publicly [here](https://status.onfinality.io/uptime/r40wwpclbwzm).

We have invested hugely into a team dedicated to optimising our application gateway and caching layer to ensure that we provide the fastest possible service for our customers. We run clusters in 5 different regions (North Virginia, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore, and Australia) and across 4 different cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Alicloud, and our own dedicated hardware) to ensure that we are fault tolerant to any single region or cloud provider ceasing service.

### Providing more value from our Ultimate API service

For customers that do sign up for API keys, we've been adding more and more features to provide a better experience. [Geolocation insights](https://blog.onfinality.io/onfinality-adds-geolocation-insights-for-dapps-and-api-apps/) provide statistics about where in the world communities are to help influence decisions around where to expand infrastructure and to view the effectiveness of regional BD initiatives.

OnFinality is the only provider with [Trace API](https://blog.onfinality.io/onfinality-launches-trace-api-for-unprecedented-visibility-into-your-dapps/) support, a huge and essential enhancement allowing unprecedented visibility for dApp builders. Trace API captures and records vital information otherwise not available through regular RPC methods and extrinsics (such as complete XCM transfer records and complete list of balance changes). These APIs are essential in order for [developers like Polkaholic](https://blog.onfinality.io/onfinalitys-new-trace-api-helping-colorful-notion-get-trace-data-from-over-40-substrate-chains/) and Parity's data team to parse and understand XCM transactions.

We've recently added support for 14 more Polkadot parachains as well as Osmosis, Evmos, Harmony, Arbitrum, Optimism, Fuse, DFK Chain, Celo, and Klaytn from outside the ecosystem. With over 100 supported networks, OnFinality is now the largest RPC provider worldwide (in terms of networks supported), and our ongoing expansion helps to bring more and more developers  into the Polkadot ecosystem.

### Cost Optimisation

From January 2024, OnFinality's Polkadex Solochain will run entirely on OnFinality Cloud - Hong Kong, our own private hardware and self service cloud

This allows us to support the decentralization of the Polkadex Network while delivering exceptional performance at a competitive pricing.

Service Details
===============

In the last 5 months (2023-07-01 and 2023-11-31) our Polkadex API service has:

-   Served a total of 312 million (311,972,614) responses

-   Accumulated over 5,000 GB of data egress 

-   The highest daily total was 22 million responses (21,902,488)  in a single 24 hour period

-   Our rolling 7 day average at the end of this period was over 2 million responses each day

-   All time totals for Polkadex is 1,114 million (1,144,478,333) since March, 2022

Recently, Polkadex's rolling average has increased to 5 million per day. As such, we are proposing a larger service in Q1 & Q2 2024 to manage the increased load.

At the end of this period the 90 day uptime for Polkadex was 99.9%. You can always see live data of our API service on our public [status page](https://status.onfinality.io/).

Costings
--------

We are using a fixed price to allow us to bill in advance and to simplify the administration of this proposal, as well as provide cost clarity to both parties. This proposal includes combined running costs for our infrastructure for Polkadex for all of Q1 and Q2 2024. By paying 6 months up-front we will apply a 15% discount to our services.

The total combined running cost is USD $5,610. This is all inclusive of capital and operating expenses, administration time from OnFinality DevOps, onboarding costs, backup costs, and all other monitoring and right-sizing by our team.

**Read the Full Proposal Here:** [https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KTjA4nDmGqtOLHvfyy066x5GhadtUoGwpjb80zSOcI/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KTjA4nDmGqtOLHvfyy066x5GhadtUoGwpjb80zSOcI/edit?usp=sharing)

**Problem Statement and Audience:** 
- The problem is the difficulty, cost, and time-consuming nature of setting up blockchain infrastructure, especially for running a full node continuously and managing production-level infrastructure.
- The intended audience is the Polkadex community and dApp builders who want to access secure nodes and reduce costs.

**Significance:** 
- Setting up blockchain infrastructure is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, requiring server development expertise and continuous monitoring.
- Running production-level infrastructure is costly and requires quick autoscaling and low latency services.
- OnFinality's shared node API service reduces barriers to accessing new protocols, manages nodes, ensures service levels, and provides expertise and scale for production workloads.

**Proposed Solution:** 
- OnFinality proposes to provide free public API services for the Polkadex community, offering performance/reliability, value-added features, and cost optimization.
- They guarantee a minimum of 99.99% reliability, optimize application gateway and caching layer, and run clusters in multiple regions and cloud providers.
- They provide geolocation insights, Trace API support, and support for multiple networks to bring more developers into the Polkadot ecosystem.

**Expected Outcomes:** 
- OnFinality's proposal includes the running costs for their infrastructure for Polkadex in Q1 and Q2 of 2024, with a 15% discount for paying 6 months upfront.
- The total cost is $5,610, inclusive of capital and operating expenses, administration time, onboarding costs, and monitoring.
- The proposal aims to manage the increased load of Polkadex's API service, improve reliability, and provide cost clarity to both parties.

#2384 High Performance Public Infrastructure for Polkadex Solochain (Q1 & Q2, 2024)