With better solutions already available, dfuse services will end on September 25, 2024.
TL;DR: dfuse services will be discontinued on September 25, 2024, as Pinax transitions to more advanced, efficient alternatives like Substreams and Firehose for Antelope blockchain data sourcing.
With the EOS Network’s Spring 1.0 upgrade happening on September 25, 2024, EOS Nation has announced the discontinuation of all dfuse services on EOS and WAX networks, effective on the same date.
Jungle4 testnet dfuse services have already been discontinued. This closure occurred on August 21, when Jungle4 successfully upgraded to Spring 1.0 and the Savannah consensus algorithm. Services for the Kylin testnet will stop when Kylin upgrades on September 5. EOSQ and other dfuse-based tools will also stop working with the upgrade on September 25.
Pinax, the organization behind EOS Nation, has contributed to both dfuse and the Substreams/Firehose stack.
Substreams and Firehose feeds will remain available for Kylin, Jungle4, and EOS. Pinax also offers feeds for WAX, WAX testnet, Telos, and Telos testnet. Access these in the Pinax app and see the blog post on Pinax’s new foundational modules for more details.
Pinax’s suite of Antelope services is prepared for the new era of Antelope software. Pinax provides both hosted and decentralized solutions for WAX, Telos, and EOS blockchain data.
What is dfuse?
The dfuse software stack is a comprehensive suite of blockchain developer tools. The software is large, complex, and inextricably interconnected, with complete indexing of all possible blockchain data for the entire blockchain. However, it is legacy software with no active development.
The bulk of dfuse was necessary to provide basic functions like transaction retry. Many of these features are now natively available directly from blockchain nodes.
For years, dfuse provided powerful tooling. With one tool, developers could submit transactions, read data, ingest data, index data, and store it. Despite its capabilities, dfuse has always been resource-intensive, leading to higher costs.
Why stop running dfuse?
Since dfuse was released, Antelope blockchain technology and tooling have improved. Many of the resource-hungry features are now unnecessary, but dfuse still requires the entire stack to run.
The dfuse software is untested with Antelope Spring 1.0, so running it presents a risk.
The bulky, monolithic dfuse stack is unprepared for the large RAM tables of WAX and exSat. This heavy RAM use necessitates efficient, modular solutions.
EOS Nation’s decision to sunset dfuse comes in response to these factors. With modern blockchain development demanding leaner, more scalable technologies, dfuse has served its purpose.
For those interested in running dfuse, the open source software is still available. However, it has no active maintainers and is not recommended for production use.
Although dfuse services are ending, Pinax already has cheaper, more advanced alternatives.
Welcoming the future: Pinax’s Substreams and Firehose
Pinax offers a suite of services that streamline how developers interact with blockchain data. At the forefront of this offering are Pinax’s Substreams and Firehose feeds. These two technologies provide a lightweight, modular alternative to dfuse’s monolithic structure.
Substreams is a read-only data streaming service that allows developers to filter and index blockchain data. Unlike dfuse, Substreams doesn’t handle transaction submission or native data storage. Instead, it excels at streaming filtered and indexed data into the database of your choice, making it an ideal component in a scalable tech stack. Substreams leverages the power of Firehose to extract data from blockchain nodes.
Firehose, another key piece of the Pinax suite, acts as a data ingestion engine, feeding raw blockchain data into flat 100-block files. Firehose is the raw data source for most high-quality Substreams implementations. For example, Pinax built Antelope Substreams with a fully implemented Firehose.
Pinax has developed foundational modules that plug directly into Substreams. These modules provide developers with easy, dfuse-like data streaming syntax. Developers can simply install Substreams CLI and input a query to get a blockchain data stream starting from an arbitrary block. Like this:
substreams gui -e eos.substreams.pinax.network:443 <https://spkg.io/pinax-network/antelope-common-v0.4.0.spkg> filtered_actions -s 370000000 -p filtered_actions="code:atomicassets && action:createcol" --production-mode
See more about these foundational modules in Pinax’s recent blog post!
Transition from dfuse
For developers concerned about transitioning away from dfuse, Pinax wants to make the process as smooth as possible. Substreams modules are designed to use dfuse syntax. The module queries will be familiar to many Antelope developers. This design choice ensures that developers can quickly adapt to these new tools.
In the coming week, before the sunset of dfuse, Pinax will release a new Antelope API to help facilitate this transition. This API is designed to serve block and transaction queries for Antelope chains.
The Antelope API will provide transaction-related information, like transaction and action traces. It will also provide detailed block data, including block numbers, hashes, and timestamps.
The API will integrate with existing Pinax services, providing an easy toolkit for Antelope developers.
There are other data sourcing options for those looking for alternate chain history solutions. Robo from Greymass and Hyperion from EOS Rio are actively maintained and compatible with the Spring 1.0 upgrade. Greymass runs Robo endpoints, while EOSUSA has Hyperion endpoints available.
Embrace the future with Pinax
As the sun sets on dfuse, the sun simultaneously rises to a fresh dawn in a greener pasture.
The end of dfuse signals the beginning of a new chapter of blockchain data sourcing. Pinax’s Substreams and Firehose are not just replacements for dfuse. They represent a step forward, offering greater efficiency, modularity, and scalability.
As we bid farewell to dfuse, the future of Antelope development looks brighter than ever.
Try Antelope services from Pinax—log in to the Pinax app with GitHub to get your free API key.