WHAT IS AN INDEX ENGINE? AND WHY IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR A WEB3 PROJECT LIKE DEPOCKET?

What is an Index engine?

Index engine is software that converts data in each block into queryable data.

Not only the number of projects but also in terms of data and history, blockchains have developed by leaps and bounds. But there are hundreds of thousands of blocks in a developed blockchain like Binance Smart Chain. That makes it difficult to collect data from the current block because software tends to extract data from the genesis block. So that every project will need software like Index engine now more than ever to speed up the search and utilization of the analytical data accessible on the various blockchains.

The Index engine gives developers a quick overview of the information and allows users to skip to the pages they wish to look at. Database indexes help to speed up searches for data needed to operate software in the same way they help to speed up searches for data in the field of computing.

How does it work?

In the early dawn of blockchain technology, there weren’t many private blockchains. So, retrieving data from the block was completely fast and did not take much time. However, the number of blocks has been increasing over time, leading to data retrieval taking longer because software tends to start reading data from the genesis block to the current block.

With a Defi tracker project that updates wallet information in real-time like DePocket, updating data quickly becomes a dilemma that needs to be solved. And the Index engine is the answer!

DePocket’s Index engine can be understood as software that extracts data and turns it into searchable indexes. From there, these data will be used for different Dapps. The indexes of these Dapps are independent of each other, so they are not dependent on the servers of other Dapps and improve data retrieval speed.

For example, there are 100 million blocks on a blockchain that have been created. To display the data at the time of the last block, a common software will decode from block 0 to block 100 million. Therefore, it will take a lot of time and resources. Index engines are the opposite. Index engine has already decoded 99.999.999 blocks and writes that data to its own database. So it only needs to process the last block to get real-time data and takes just milliseconds.

In addition, this data has also been decoded. Therefore, it is suitable even for general users without specialized software.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Save time and resources.
• Speed up dApps with responding time in milliseconds.
• Improve user experience.
• dApps work separately, so if a server dies, others will not be affected.

Cons

• Data is partially centralized.
• dApps are dependent on servers.

Why Index engine is essential for a web3 project?

As you know, dApps, or decentralized apps, are Web 3.0 applications. The data is kept in peer-to-peer networks and the codebase will be spread around the blockchain. More problems arise as a result of this model:

• The application will be dependent on direct decoding from a certain blockchain, which may have some flaws.
• Slow development
• Relying on third-party tools to create the app
• Hard to scale up

DePocket, a Defi tracker that monitors digital assets in real-time, is different. For a web3 application, the speed and accuracy of data are so important that affects directly on the success of the project. The Index engine allows DePocket to take the initiative of its database and keep dApps working stably, smoothly as well as quickly. Based on that, DePocket can improve user experience!

In terms of developers, an internal Index engine facilitates developers creating their own indexers, even for those who are newbies in the blockchain industry. Moreover, taking the advantage of Index engine, DePocket can be horizontally scaled without restriction, including servers that run index data or the number of dApps to be integrated. That makes a significant difference and superiority for DePocket while a huge number of blockchain projects can’t expand explosively because of poor scalability.

Everything is two-sided, so a good project is the one that can balance both sides to gain the best profit for users. And DePocket is doing that well with its Index engine!