Seven years on from the spate of next-generation Ethereum-killer blockchains and potential fears about blockchain interoperability going forward, and we’re further away from a consolidated on-chain ecosystem than we’ve ever been. Layer-1s are all vie for developer mindshare through a profusion of grants, combative marketing, and aggressive roadmap promises, but it’s not only liquidity that’s needed.

Fragments Shored Against Ruin

New applications are often faced with Sophie’s choice before they’ve even begun writing their first few lines of code (and work out whether they’re using Rust, Solidity or Plutus). New utilities are mothballed behind the seesawing state of the marketplace and the lingering potential for failure inherent in what are essentially novel distributed software computers battling to be seen as the architecture of the future (because Ethereum won’t do, it’s too slow and always will be).

Add in Layer 2s that seek to augment their parent chains, and even Layer 3s - application layer blockchains which rely on inherited consensus, and it’s obvious to most fragmentation is one of the key roadblocks to any widespread onboarding of blockchain into the systems administration of our digital life and social structures. 

Why Data Siloing Stops Apps from Becoming Truly Killer

How do we build killer apps using blockchain security and consensus when the data we need to power those apps is sashayed here, there and everywhere, inscrutably carved into the blocks, inexpertly archived and indexed - if indeed indexed at all? Accessing blockchain data involves querying node APIs, which are often slow and inefficient, and extracting all smart contract events sometimes requires scanning each block sequentially, massively harming latency to the extent of rendering potential application unviable. 

When indexers do exist, they act as services - and those services centralize all too easily. We have suddenly introduced a new link in the centralization chain with these indexers - and we are trusting them to provide accurate block data through their API, but their API is something of a ‘block box’ as we can’t actually verify their data. Even a decentralized indexer like The Graph (despite storing and serving data verifiably) has a non-public indexing engine that external observers have no way of authenticating. Plus, these indexers cost, putting them out of reach for smaller development teams building L2 and L3 blockchains.

So, how can we build powerful applications that pull, manage and push data to all the possible blockchains that exist - both now and in the future - allowing for the creation of truly comprehensive applications that embrace all the on-chain potentialities? How can we organize the vast swathe of blockchain data, query it quickly, access it fast, aggregate it properly, and make it truly interoperable - all while never breaking the core principles of decentralization?

Solving Data Management for the Multichain

Well, no prizes for guessing the answer is Source Network. Source Network’s stack is the answer to the fragmentation that plagues current blockchain development. Let’s be exceptionally clear here, though, we’re not talking about transactional bridges. We’re not talking about sending $SOL tokens to Algorand or $ATOM to Ethereum - that’s a different problem and a different issue. Bridges don’t address the need for applications to read and write data cross-chain. We’re talking about something much more important. Developers need mechanisms to verify states, query data and trigger actions based on cross-chain events. 

We’re talking about giving developers the tools they need to build indexers that can collate all the information held on multiple chains, manage it, and then make it usable and accessible for the daily functioning of their application. We’re talking about smart contracts on one blockchain being able to verify data in another smart contract on a different chain and then using that data to execute its given function. Managing data across the interchain is the real Rubicon we need to cross for mass blockchain adoption, and that’s exactly the functionality that Source Network helps developers create. The IBC has done much to help build the internet of blockchains, but this internet of blockchains only works when data can be freely accessed efficiently across it by the application-layer that sits on top

How Developers Can Use Source Network to Create Interoperability

Using our stack, developers can pull and index smart contract data using DefraDB nodes. These nodes can then be stored or hosted locally, across decentralized infra or even an incentivised network of their own. Once in DefraDB nodes, which normalizes all data into a unified schema regardless of the blockchain from whence it came, any smart contract a developer is using (from any blockchain) can then query that data for its own processes and functionality, with full verifiability offered by the Source Network stack, including use of the SourceHub trustlayer. The data can then be easily queried using our GraphQL based DSL.

In this way, a developer can easily manage data across multiple blockchains when building their application, whether it be a cross-blockchain NFT auction house, naming services like ENS that make Web3 accessible and legible to the standard retail user, a price-aggregator for Real World Assets (RWAs), a Forex marketplace for multi-chain stablecoins - or anything else imaginable. On an NFT auction platform, for example, that lists NFTs from multi-chain - DefraDB could easily index the NFT metadata and ownership details and present a unified marketplace, and the data behind the bids and purchases could be comfortably handled by DefraDB - without any need to resort to some centralized database handling this information.

Source Network is the nexus of data interoperability that can make all applications thrive, without having to laboriously construct bespoke custom tools for every new blockchain under the sun. DefraDB’s modular design co-exists both with existing tech stacks and the new blockchains being spun up. Using our tools, developers can overcome blockchain fragmentation like never before. They can build perfectly modular indexers that can interface with any new environment thanks to DefraDB’s modular construction.

Freeing Data is More Important than Freeing Liquidity

The siloing of blockchain data is a greater threat to the future of the sector than the siloing of liquidity - and think about how much marketing and press that problem has received. Once we move past purely economic understandings of blockchain’s value, the true problem of interoperable data solutions will rear its head violently and everyone will scramble to work out how to overcome it. Decentralized applications are only going to evolve to require more complex interactions - real-time data feeds, identity management, cross-chain state synchronizations. Verifiable data is the very crux of our online systems, and the on-chain migration of these systems requires powerful data management tools that are decentralized and truly use blockchain tech for what it is and not just as some expensive inefficient appendages to normal centralized data paradigms.

A Problem We Have Already Solved

And it’ll be okay, because we, at Source Network, have already solved the issue - and our tools will have already given developers who use them the headstart they need to build powerful decentralized applications - and will already be pulling, pushing and managing their multi-chain data. It’s through this functionality they can offer non-crypto native users the ultimate seamless cross-chain experience that will ignite the masses to really adopt crypto, and Source Network’s tools will be the backdrop, the infrastructure superhighway - and the traffic lights to run it - sending data and value roaring to every corner of the blockchain globe, to the shore of every new digital continent. 

Safe, secure, permissionless, trustless, locally-hosted and decentralized at the source.