Highlited Questions
Ghostym:
Tell us a bit about you, when did you join the blockchain world and how did you start at the graph?
Payne:
Hello everyone. My name is Alex, I’m based in Romania. I joined the blockchain space back in early 2017. I have heard of Bitcoin before that, but never had time before to dive into the technical aspects of the blockchain space. Since then, I’ve been all over the place, especially within the research space for different media publications, and eventually settled on working with CryptoCalibur, a decentralized research team of tech-oriented, bright minded individuals. That’s how I met Sebastian (@czarly) and later on, founded StakeSquid.
We learned about The Graph after it was barely formed, if I recall correctly. And since then, we kept a close eye on it and the development behind it. In the meantime, we both built experience in the blockchain infrastructure area, and after last summer’s testnet was announced, we knew that it’s something we should absolutely dive into, knowing the value The Graph brings to the entire blockchain space.
Zuni:
1- How do we delegate to you?
Payne:
You can find one of our node addresses if you search by 0xd22c1c1a1fc452e3312489f1e89676e93c3323f0
We’ll be setting up ENS names shortly, in the next coming days, and you’ll be able to find us searching by “StakeSquid”.
Ghostym:
2- I would like to know, what was his first experience with The Graph and what convinced him to try to do something like this ?
Payne:
The first hands-on experience was the indexers testnet itself. In the beginning, it was a huge challenge, as everything was relatively new, and I wasn’t fully familiar with how the network was supposed to work. But I kept my feet on the ground and focused, for 6 months straight, 12-18 hours a day, to learn how it works in its every single detail, with the purpose of giving back that knowledge to the community once I was ready.
As for what convinced me/us to try something like this? Well, we knew its potential from the very first day we discovered The Graph. It doesn’t take too much convincing when you know that The Graph does something that is needed, and has no real competitors in its path.
Zuni:
3- Hi Payne, I’d be interested in knowing what kind of technical setup and infrastructure you are using for your indexers. Are you an autodidact or do you have a background in this sector?
Payne:
We plan to scale up our infrastructure on the go, depending on the number of query fees that our stake should generate. Our smallest server (that hosts the graph-infrastructure only, so no ETH Archive node) right now is a 24 core Ryzen 9, 128GB RAM and 4TB storage.
Our plans are to have at least one indexing node in every continent, by the time the query traffic becomes relevant. We haven’t yet decided if we would go colo route, or just rent the hardware, but we’ll run down the costs as soon as we have more data to work with.
My educational background, strictly speaking, is industrial engineering, but that didn’t really help me at all in the crypto space. Everything I learned was self-taught, with a hands-on learning approach. I think it’ll always be the best path to take.
Ghostym:
4- Can you explain a bit of what your daily work as an indexer looks like? What types of maintenance and monitoring time commitment is running an indexer after the initial ramp up and setup? Is it a full time or a part time job?
Payne:
It’s definitely a full time job. We automated our monitoring tools to take certain actions when something is needed, and will continue to iterate with more updates and upgrades over time, as we believe this is the best approach going forward.
Zuni:
5- Based on your experience, what advice would you give to someone just getting into this protocol (like myself)? What did you find most helpful when getting started?
Payne:
The single best advice I can give you, is to read all the documentation that is available at least 5 times, and always ask questions whenever you’re in doubt. None of us was born with the knowledge. We all gained it over the hundreds of hours that we spent reading and doing stuff, stuff that we love.
If you want an easy way to dive into the indexing world, I would recommend taking a look at our Testnet Docker guide and repository [Testnet Docker Guide by StakeSquid].
We built it specifically for an easy on-boarding experience and requires low-medium DevOps experience compared to compiling from source and installing the software in a more traditional fashion.
If you have questions or need help, you’re always welcome to write us in the #testnet channel for testnet, or #indexer-software for mainnet.