GraphOps Update February 2023

[chris]

Exec summary

We’ve had a strong month of progress on Graphcast and the POI Radio, which launched on Goerli last week. We’ve had sessions with a few Indexers to get the Radio running in their Goerli Indexer stack, and are working on the UX issues identified. Launchpad has been updated to add support for Avalance, Arbitrum and Celo, including new Helm Charts for each chain. We have also continued work within Network Operations to support the L2 migration, as well as MIPs and multi-chain rewards with the Epoch Block Oracle.

We wish everyone a happy and productive February!

Looking back (what was delivered)

Graphcast (GRC-001, Documentation, SDK Crate)

• Published the Graphcast ENR tree for dynamic bootnode discovery via DNS
• Deployed a bootnode fleet to bootstrap peer discoverability for Radios
• POI Radio is now live on Goerli
• Graphcast SDK pull requests merged:
  • PR #68: Fixed dependabot commit messages
  • PR #65, PR #61, PR #63, PR #64, PR #59: Refactored pubsub and improved performance
  • PR #53, PR #56, PR #54: Implemented new features and fixed issues
  • PR #47, PR #39, PR #43, PR #33, PR #34: Updated documentation, prepared for publishing and added examples
• POI Radio pull requests merged:
  • PR #19: Fixed stake query address
  • PR #18, PR #15, PR #14, PR #13, PR #8, PR #2: Improved workflow, setup for integration tests, tracing and Dockerfile
  • PR #17, PR #12: Added default topics based on active allocations and radio-defined message payloads

Launchpad & Infrastructure Tooling

• We recently had a retrospective on Launchpad and the traction it’s achieved so far. While our Helm Charts and Release Orchestration tooling are being used by Indexers, we’re aware that the k0s provisioning layer hasn’t found PMF. We are working on a revised approach to better meet Indexers needs in this area.
• We have moved a lot of what has been in internal trackers into Github, making it easier for community members to follow context and contribute!
• Kubernetes Launchpad (Documentation)
  • Graph Helm Charts pull requests merged:
    • PR #45: Updated version of Arbitrum Nitro chart
    • PR #44, PR #43: Adding and updating Arbitrum chart
    • PR #38: Added Avalanche chart
    • PR #41: Working Celo chart
    • PR #40, PR #39: New versions of Lighthouse and Erigon
    • PR #33: Adding and updating Lighthouse chart
    • PR #36: Fixing extra line in post rendering with Kustomize
    • PR #34: Increased default PVC size for Heimdall
    • PR #31, PR #30: Fixes and upgrades for Erigon and Nethermind
  • Launchpad Core pull requests merged:
    • PR #39, PR #38, PR #37, PR #36: Upgrade chart versions for Arbitrum, Avalanche, Celo chains and updated Heimdall chart
  • Launchpad Starter pull requests merged:
    • PR #26, PR #25: Update arbitrum-mainnet ns and add new chains for MIPS.

Network Operations

• Core network subgraph pull requests merged:
  • PR #206, PR #203, PR #204: Bumped contract versions to support arbitrum one contracts, added tracking of L1 block to L2 deployments, refactored the usage of block number for L2 deployments
  • PR #205: Assisting E&N with PR review and L2 bridge improvements
• QoS Data Subgraph pull requests merged:
  • PR #2: Updated with daily bucketing
• Block Oracle pull requests merged:
  • PR #228: Merged and deployed Arbitrum One EBO subgraph

Indexer Experience

• Indexer Service and Agent
  • WIP - PR #597: Adding additional query data and analytics to Prometheus metrics

Ecosystem Relations

• Recordings and agendas for this month’s Indexer Office Hours are available. Follow updates on Twitter @TheGraphIOH.

Looking ahead (upcoming priorities)

• Graphcast
  • Continue to work with Indexers to validate POI Radio is working well and has an intuitive UX
  • Launch POI Radio on mainnet once it is validated as working well on Goerli
  • We aim to have integrations into Launchpad and StakeSquid’s docker-compose stack
• Launchpad and Helm Charts
  • Explore adding support for LVM-based storage to better support Erigon
  • Investigating orchestration of full upstream Kubernetes and alternative operating systems instead of k0s on Ubuntu
  • Scoping out simplification of UX and removal of complexity where we can
• Network Operations
  • We have begun planning development of core network substreams, with a long term view to replace the current mappings based core network subgraphs
  • Continue work on the L2 migration, core network subgraphs, and the Epoch Block Oracle
• Ecosystem Relations
  • Please join the community for Indexer Office Hours (on Tuesday) and Launchpad Office Hours (on Wednesday) every week at 6pm UTC in the Graph Protocol Discord