Feature Fridays: TrueBlocks

Welcome back to Feature Fridays! This week, we explore the cutting-edge world of blockchain indexing with a spotlight on TrueBlocks, steered by the insights of Jay Rush, affectionately known in the web3 community as tjay, the Founder and Lead Architect of TrueBlocks.

Tjay's journey is as diverse as it is fascinating, spanning roles from an oil-well roustabout to a pioneering researcher at IBM's Thomas Watson Research 3-D Graphics Lab, and even a poet. His foray into the crypto space has been driven by a steadfast commitment to the ideals of openness, decentralization, and collaboration that underpin the internet. TrueBlocks stands out as a unique account-based indexer for EVM chains, designed to offer users the freedom to access blockchain data directly, without intermediaries.

Q & A with TrueBlocks 👇

Could you introduce yourself by sharing your name, prior experience, and current role within your company? Additionally, please briefly explain your company's mission and what it offers to its customers.

I'm Jay Rush. People in the web3 space call me tjay.

I'm the founder and lead architect of TrueBlocks. I’ve worked variously as an oil-well roustabout, a researcher at IBM's Thomas Watson Research 3-D Graphics Lab, a poet, and a crypto enthusiast. As an early Internet entrepreneur, I've remained dedicated to its ideals of openness, decentralization, and collaboration.

TrueBlocks is a unique account-based-indexer for EVM chains, offering users the flexibility of direct access to a blockchain’s data without intermediaries. TrueBlocks’ primary mission is best captured in a recent tweet from a fellow Ethereum Foundation grantee: 

“...I was listening to @tjayrush present on the @ethereum grantee workshop and…I think they are trying to make sure Google doesn’t do to Ethereum what it did to the Web.” ~@miroyato [Sep 20, 2023 12:12 pm] 

How has your company grown and changed since its inception, and what do you have planned for its future?

Since its inception, TrueBlocks has remained committed to serving the public good by producing and disseminating the Unchained Index through local-first software, aligning with the decentralized principles of web3.

We are now making our index accessible through Key, an AWS-based API. Our unique solution was designed to work on small, local machines, focusing on accounts rather than blocks. Why does this matter? We find more appearances for a given address than typical block explorers like Etherscan or Covalent. TrueBlocks ensures you never miss a transaction. 

What inspired you to develop TrueBlocks, and how did you conceive of the idea?

I was deeply involved with “The DAO” in 2016 when the concept of Radical Transparency captured everyone's imagination. The idea of an organization operating with perfect transparency, where anyone could access its accounting ledger without permission, was revolutionary. However, the DAO hack changed everything.

In the aftermath of the hack, three individuals published blog posts describing what had happened. Despite having the same, near-perfect accounting ledger the reports differed significantly. This discrepancy, coupled with the realization that it took four days to retrieve the data from a one-day hack, sparked the inception of TrueBlocks.

I was inquisitive about why the data extraction was so slow and why the analysis was so inaccurate. These two things spurred me to create TrueBlocks.

Our solution lies in indexing what we call “appearances” directly from the node, enabling more efficient and accurate identification of addresses. Our solution was also laser-focused on ensuring users could run the code on consumer-grade hardware rather than through 3rd parties.

Can you provide insight into TrueBlocks’s progress by sharing any metrics or milestones indicating its traction?

Please find the progress reports we prepared as part of our Ethereum Foundation grant. We've successfully developed a fully decentralized indexer tailored for those who operate nodes and prioritize data integrity, privacy, and permissionless data retrieval. With the release of the fully decentralized version 1.0 in June 2023, we are now expanding our offerings through TrueBlocks Key.

• Quarterly Report 1 fully decentralized
• Quarterly Report 2
• Quarterly Report 3
• Quarterly Report 4

Can you provide insight into the target market for TrueBlocks and what types of clients you work with?

Our target market encompasses a wide range of Ethereum users, including individuals and institutions, who require or appreciate access to comprehensive blockchain data in a Web 3.0 native way.  For example, over the years, TrueBlocks has been used by DAOs, RPC providers, data scientists, investors, and individual users.

What benefits does TrueBlocks Key on QuickNode’s marketplace offer? 

• Access to a superior (more complete) index 
• Cost-effective and customized RPC queries 
• Flexibility, resilience, performance optimization as the index is decoupled from the node provider (see next question and response)

How do you see the partnership evolving the landscape of web3?

TrueBlocks Key offers the Unchained Index through a conventional Web 2.0 API on QuickNode’s Marketplace. Unlike most other data solutions, Key empowers users to detach the index from their RPC node provider. This presents several advantages:

• Flexibility: Users gain the freedom to select their preferred RPC node provider without being bound to a specific indexing solution.
• Resilience: By decoupling the index, users ensure uninterrupted data retrieval and indexing operations in the event of downtime or issues with the RPC node provider.
• Performance Optimization: Detaching the index empowers users to independently optimize their indexing solution, leading to enhanced performance and efficiency tailored to their specific requirements.
• Cost Efficiency: The separation of the index from the RPC node provider can yield greater flexibility, resilience, cost savings, as users have the flexibility to choose more cost-effective options for each component of their infrastructure.

About QuickNode

QuickNode is building infrastructure to support the future of Web3. Since 2017, we've worked with hundreds of developers and companies, helping scale dApps and providing high-performance access to 29+ blockchains. Subscribe to our newsletter for more content like this, and stay in the loop with what's happening in web3!