TL;DR

• GoldRush is evolving to meet new blockchain demands with a three-phase plan.

  • Phase 1: Chain Classification & Prioritization

    • Status: Imminent (2024)

    • Foundational Chains: Top chains with full feature support and ecosystem resources.

    • Frontier Chains: Innovative chains with core API access.

    • Community Chains: Core live data and some historical data support for archived chains.

  • Phase 2: Growth Enhancements

    • Status: Nearly complete with multichain APIs and spam filtering. In-progress with advanced filtering and notifications.

    • Multichain APIs for wallet balances and transactions.

    • Advanced trace data, real-time notifications, spam filtering, and GraphQL-based filtering.

  • Phase 3: Frontier Features

    • Status: In-progress with infra improvements to support these frontier features.

    • Focus on cutting-edge tools like embedded wallets, real-world asset support, and advanced data pipelines.

• Overall Goal: Maintain GoldRush's position as a leader in multichain data solutions for developers.

Status Quo

The GoldRush API emerged as a beacon of innovation during the DeFi summer of 2020, leading the industry with its robust offering of core onchain data primitives. Through a highly scalable architecture powering the Unified API, GoldRush became the go-to solution for accessing data across several emerging blockchains. Wallets, crypto taxation tools, and early DeFi dApps relied on GoldRush for accurate and comprehensive onchain data. At the heart of GoldRush’s strategy was the belief in a multichain future. This vision, coupled with our scalable architecture, enabled us to effectively support the long tail of chains easily and help bootstrap various blockchain ecosystems.

Changing Landscape

The blockchain world, however, evolves quickly. The rise of Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) rollups and the establishment of a few other core ecosystems around Solana and Bitcoin have changed the playing field. While foundational chains like Ethereum, Polygon and Base have hit escape velocity and solidified their place, many of the long-tail chains have struggled to find market fit or widespread adoption.

Onchain data has also become more complex, with DeFi protocols introducing bespoke staking and reward mechanisms, factory contracts spawning entire families of token contracts, and price discovery increasingly occurring directly onchain. Moreover, L2 rollups have introduced blobs leading to a massive growth in input data and overall chain size.

Finally, with the growth of L2s and onboarding mechanisms such as account abstraction, more data is being handled off-chain and requires more nuances to accurately combine and decode with onchain data. These shifts in the landscape demand that GoldRush evolve in order to maintain its position as a leader in the blockchain data space.

Adaptation

To meet these new challenges head-on, GoldRush is undergoing a comprehensive transformation, broken into three key phases:

• Phase 1: Chain Classification & Prioritization

  GoldRush is reorganizing its support for various chains by grouping them into three distinct categories:

  • Foundational Chains: These are the top EVM-compatible chains that have achieved wide adoption. For these chains, GoldRush guarantees product parity across its entire suite of features. This includes tracing enhancements, historical token balances, token holders, and cached NFT assets. In addition, we'll provide ecosystem support in the form of API credits, hackathon bounties, workshops, guides, and co-marketing activities.

  • Frontier Chains: These chains, both EVM and non-EVM compatible, represent the cutting edge of blockchain innovation. While not all product features will be available for Frontier Chains, GoldRush will continue to offer its core APIs at an enterprise level, along with ecosystem support.

  • Community Chains: These chains include those with passionate builder communities as well as chains that are entering an archival phase. For these, GoldRush will maintain historical data access while limiting live data support.

• Phase 2: Growth

  With the new landscape mapped out, the next step is focused on expanding GoldRush capabilities to power the established use cases. These capabilities include:

  • Multichain APIs for Wallet Balances and Transactions: In a multichain world, users interact with assets across multiple networks. GoldRush will provide wallet apps and portfolio trackers with seamless access to balances and transactions across chains, making it easier for users to navigate the multichain future. Our multichain and multiaddress transactions API is already live with multichain balances being released soon.

  • Trace Data: We are introducing tracing enhancements that capture internal transfers, state changes, and input data, giving users deeper insights into onchain activity. This requires us to backfill large volumes of data and also handle edge cases such as internal transfers for this transaction which is not even displayed by popular block explorers.

  • Data Streaming and Notifications: Timely data is critical in blockchain, and our new streaming and notification features will ensure that applications can respond in real-time to blockchain events.

  • Advanced Spam Filtering: GoldRush is rolling out advanced filtering to handle spam transactions, enabling users to sift through data with greater accuracy.

  • GraphQL for Advanced Transaction Filtering: We are leveraging GraphQL to allow users more control over transaction filtering, offering a powerful tool for building custom queries.

• Phase 3: Acceleration

  In this phase, we’ll dive even deeper into frontier features that will push the boundaries of what blockchain data can do. Embedded wallets, real-world assets (RWAs), complex onchain verification, forensic investigations, and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) pipelines are all on the horizon. These advanced features will help to not only refine existing use cases but open entirely new frontiers in blockchain adoption.

New Normal

As GoldRush navigates this evolving landscape, one thing remains constant: our commitment to leading the way. As web3 pioneers since 2017, we are not going anywhere and are positioned to continue delivering cutting-edge tools and services in this new normal. By continuously adapting to changes in the blockchain ecosystem, we will ensure that GoldRush remains the premier solution for accessing onchain data across the most important chains.

This new chapter of GoldRush will be marked by greater flexibility, deeper insights, and more powerful tools that empower developers and businesses to thrive in a multichain world. With our eyes on the future, GoldRush is not just adapting to the new normal—we’re helping to shape it.