HiveDevs

Hive Global API Node Infrastructure DHF Proposal

Deathwing@deathwing (73)1917d

What is this?

Currently, there are only a handful of public API nodes that are mostly based in Europe with one or two nodes being in North America.

My plan is to have global coverage with several servers located in different parts of the world.

I don't want to bother reading, give me a TL:DR!

Global HIVE API nodes, resulting in a faster, more stable and decentralized blockchain experience. Costs are 1650 HBD per month (55 HBD per day) and the proposal will continue for 180 days and reevaluated then. Please do read the proposal though.

Why should you support this proposal?

As a witness and node operator, I have been operating api.deathwing.me and have developed various other projects on Hive. Currently, taking the average DAU and traffic usage on api.deathwing.me it is safe to assume that it is one of the most popular API nodes on the blockchain.

While there are several other nodes, depending on the nodes' hardware and optimizations a node can perform better or worse. api.deathwing.me, as of the creation of this post runs on state of the art Ryzen 9 5950X with 128GB RAM. According to different tests and benchmarks, it is a fast, if not the fastest public API node currently out there.

However, there is one big caveat. The server is hosted in European data centers. What does this mean? It means that if you're living in North America, South America, Asia or Southeast Asia, you'll interact with the chain considerably slower due to latency. Since the node is located in the EU, your actions have to be routed. This will result in a "slower" experience while browsing the chain, broadcasting transactions and depending on your ISP and internet connection, even inability to do transactions from time to time.

This is not the only issue, unfortunately, majority of Hive nodes are located in Germany as well. Even looking further, we can observe that most of the witnesses and node operators run their nodes under one hosting company. While that hosting company has its reputation for being one of the most trusted datacenters/hosting company, as crackdowns on cryptocurrencies continue to increase, we'll never know what they'd think of Hive nodes later down the road. This is also a risk as any sudden downtime in their datacenter may result in nodes being unable to operate or forking off (this has happened before.)

If this proposal is funded, I will be looking to maintain and rent at least 3 servers (depending on the pricing) from 3 different server providers located on 3 different continents. The plan is to have one server in Europe, one server in North America and one server in Southeast Asia. By doing this, the blockchain becomes more decentralized and less prone to hosting company outages, whether deliberately or on accident. As well as providing a more stable and faster experience to the users.

All of these servers will be connected under one domain api.deathwing.me and it will be able to automatically detect your location from your IP address and re-route your connection to the nearest server. For example, if you are in the EU, you will be routed to the European node. If you are in Asia, you'll be rerouted to the Asian node. This will yield better performance in most cases due to low latency and less load per node.

In summary, having more servers in different parts of the world will result in a faster, more stable and more decentralized blockchain experience than ever before. Especially for users and future users in North America and Asia, where, unfortunately, we currently lack broad coverage in terms of low-latency nodes with high uptime and stable operation.

What happens if the proposal loses DHF support?

If there are funds in savings, they will be used to continue global coverage. In the worst-case scenario that there are no funds in the savings, api.deathwing.me will continue to operate under one server in Europe as it is now.

How much will you need for this and for how long?

At the moment, the proposal is for 55 HBD/day from DHF. This equals 1650 HBD per month spent from the Hive Fund. The proposal will run for 180 days initially. If funded throughout those 180 days, I am planning to recreate the proposal for another 180 days and will continue on.

What are the costs associated with this proposal?

Unfortunately, hardware costs are quite expensive. Even when the hardware is covered, colocation (having servers running 24/7 in a datacenter) is expensive as well. Especially in North America and Asia.

The plan is to have a budget of at least 350 HBD per month for each server in each continent. So basically, 350 HBD/m for the NA, 350 HBD/m for the EU and finally 350 HBD/m budget for the Asian server.

Out of the remaining 600 HBD, 300 HBD will be saved for emergency situations (such as the datacenter burning down and taking down all the servers with it,) backup servers before hardforks (in those cases, during hardforks, an additional fully-capable node will be on standby and switched to in a moments' notice if there are any problems and/or until the stability of the hardfork is confirmed) and finally long-term savings to look at potentially obtaining hardware and colocating it. The remaining 300 HBD is for maintenance and other costs such as GeoDNS load balancers and monitoring servers.

Vote For the Proposal

You can vote for this proposal on PeakD, Hive.Blog or Ecency

Feedback

Feedback is always welcome. Please let me know if you have any inquiries.

P.S.

I am also a witness on Hive! If you would like to support my endeavours feel free to vote me as a witness :)

Comments · 22

@darkflame(71)· 1878d
I am in Western Canada and really would like to learn how this all works.
@forykw(71)· 1892d
With 55 HBD this is quite ok for me, although I will support this one, I think the best would be for individual witnesses to come up with the same strategy all along.

Until blockchain databases becomes decentralized, this is going to always be a problem of blockchain technology (with big databases).

There will be needs to start looking at decentralized databases in the near future, and that's what I will fully support (including becoming witness if by then I still have my gear).
@mysilenteyes(35)· 1895d
morning
@whiteboy1234(25)· 1910d
Im already proxied to you in voting can I delegate my unused HP to you or to this proposal to help out more?
@antisocialist(75)· 1914d
Can you look at teaming up with theta edge nodes? Perhaps we can stream our data through their mesh net and get paid for doing so. If this were possible we could have nodes literally everywhere.
@poshtoken(88)· 1915d
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@sorin.cristescu(74)· 1915d
If we consider that financial resources are scarce (when aren't they?), then choosing their allocation carefully is paramount. As Michael Porter said, "Strategy is choosing what NOT to do".

I believe the highest priority of the Hive community is currently to develop attractive and highly functional front-ends and use them to increase the number of daily transacting users.

I would support a proposal for developing and running a proper search engine on Hive content for instance.
@urun(69)· 1916d
what is the reason there a less in north America?

How many are in Asia?

A list would be super cool to with the placement :)
@hivebuzz(74)· 1916d
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@finguru(74)· 1916d
Is it just me or there is someone else who voted before reading the whole proposal? ;)

Done @deathwing. It's not much but I hope it helps. Let's make the chain more decentralized.
@eroche(69)· 1916d
The more nodes and the more geographically spread the better.
We also need more individuals creating nodes to spread the decentralisation of the network.
@khan.dayyanz(64)· 1916d
Supported. Nodes are really key things for dapps to perform better. We need to attract more devs as well so they can use these utilities and build more.
@igormuba(72)· 1916d
South America is important, there are many many Venezuelans using hive, but no powerful and open API nodes here in South America....
@igormuba(72)· 1916d
My witness node API is open to whoever wants to consume Hive data, need further testing, but I am here to help, and I prepaid for 1 whole year so I kinda don’t have to worry about making more money to pay it for 1 year. Want to use? Go ahead..

Click here and vote me for witness
https://hivesigner.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=igormuba&approve=1
@brianoflondon(77)· 1916d
I believe this is very important too. I'm about to start up my own API server for @podping because having used Hive for Podping over the last couple of months I've come to understand that the API servers are massively important and agree that significant Dapps should run their own API servers but the more decentralised options we have the better and API servers is the list on Hive that scares me the most from a centralisation and censorship point of view.
@tobetada(77)· 1916d
supported! This is key for the future of Hive 👌
@mysilenteyes(35)· 1917d
morning
@johnsdowie(58)· 1917d
Are you thinking about throwing a server in south-america?
@davedickeyyall(79)· 1917d
#SUPPORTED
@nonameslefttouse(77)· 1917d
I'm considering it.

Estimated profit margin?

Also I'm not a fan of the portion of funds being set aside for emergency, though of course I do understand your reasoning. But it does say, in so many words, what's being offered could be done for that much cheaper. With no 'emergency', ever, over a long period of time, that's wasted money. I'd feel more comfortable supporting a proposal requesting the actual cost of emergency, in the event of an emergency, after the fact, once the emergency and costs have been established.
@mahdiyari(73)· 1917d
I appreciate it.

IMHO our apps shouldn't depend on a third-party public API node. Each app should have its own API node.

I don't think we should charge the whole community for somebody's bot or script that may use one of these API nodes.

The public interfaces like hive.blog, peakd, and ecency should have their own API node. Which two of them, hive.blog and ecency, already have each an API node.

In the end, I'm not against it 100% but felt it's worth putting my opinion here.
@rishi556(72)· 1917d
More nodes by the person with the current best node, count me in.

(such as the datacenter burning down and taking down all the servers with it

Always have backups kids. Another datacenter by a different provider.