Koios is an open-source, decentralized API featuring elastic infrastructure and built-in complex query solutions to make building on Cardano easier. Koios is seeking to remedy the challenges brought by the increase in block size which have resulted in expensive costs of maintaining query layers leading to inconsistent centralized solutions.
The Current Problem
In the Cardano ecosystem, current minimum requirements for building projects that need to query the blockchain usually include running cardano-node and cardano-db-sync components. This takes significant resources, understanding, and time to set up and maintain as well as incur high financial costs to run this base layer infrastructure if adding failover support. The requirements are getting more expensive with the growth of Cardano.
At the moment, there is no standard on what certain blockchain information sets should represent and what should be included. Therefore, every builder is taking their own approach to querying what should be the same dataset from the blockchain. This leads to re-inventing the wheel with almost every project jumping through similar hoops for working out their queries leading to differences in object representation between builders.
The Solution
The Koios API will be an optimized query layer that qualifies as a flexible Launchpad for builders, removing the overhead costs of setting up, running and maintaining Cardano components, as well as offering API endpoints for both simple and complex data through open-source standardised queries.
Koios is different from other projects in the market as its elastic infrastructure combined with being open-source allows easy scaling and flexibility for both lightweight and heavyweight clients. Additionally, Koios is not controlled by any centralized entity, nor does it have a single point of failure in any aspect. Finally, open-source queries and object standards will encourage knowledge sharing and unified efforts to solve problems common to all builders.
The Team
The team behind this proposal refers to itself as The Guild and is made up of Priyank, Ola, Markus, Michael, Homer and Damjan. They are a collection of Cardano enthusiasts consisting of multiple OGs, current and ex-ambassadors that have continually been making immense contributions to the ecosystem without any additional marketing or financial requests.
The Guild are the creators of some popular tools and resources in Cardano including CNTools, gLiveView and topology Updater. The members also have extensive experience in the technology field, with more than 8 years’ experience across system design, DevOps, system administration, networking, and software development.
The Budget
Koios is requesting $30,000 which will be used to cater for the following:
- Core instances server costs (12 months) – $4000
- Compensation for initial development phase (3 months) + maintenance (12 months) – $24000
- Community incentives (3 months) – $2000
The community incentives will be used to reward top community collaborators on the project during the initial development phase.
Conclusion
With the increase in blockchain size, the costs of maintaining query layers are expensive, leading to inconsistent centralized solutions. Koios is seeking to solve this problem by developing an open-source, decentralized API featuring elastic infrastructure and built-in complex query solutions. The project is spearheaded by a well-known talent pool in the Cardano ecosystem who have demonstrated a deep understanding of the blockchain across guild-ops projects. The team has also developed other popular tools and resources in Cardano, therefore, they have a deep understanding of the blockchain and its components enough to recognize the shortcomings and required solutions. Through the Koios app, it will be easy for projects to configure even their own private Koios clusters. The project promises to be open to contributions from the community including having queries for different data, infrastructure setup scripts, and documentation.
If you’d like to know more information or have questions/comments regarding the Kios proposal, check out the link provided: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Koios-Elastic-Cardano-Query-Layer/369400-48088
