[Proposal: MB9/MR6] Blast support for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha

Governance Treasury Proposals
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Abstract - Ongoing costs for supporting Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks in BlastAPI (https://blastapi.io). These costs are ongoing for as long as the Moonbeam, Moonriver, Moonbase alpha ecosystems need this service and are requested on a quarterly basis and the first costs requested are for the first quarter of 2023 (from January 1 to March 31, 2023).

Motivation - Easy, fast, and reliable access to high-performance HTTP and WSS APIs for all Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks through https://blastapi.io in just a few clicks. Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha builders can focus on developing their applications without worrying about running and maintaining infrastructure.

Project Overview and Team Experience - Blast is Bware Labs’ API provider platform that aims to solve Web 3 infrastructure issues related to reliability and latency, by employing geographically distributed third-party nodes.

Blast offers a multi-region architecture that, along with a series of clustering and geo-location mechanisms, ensures optimal routing of user requests to the closest point of presence relative to where a call is generated.

The development and maintenance of the Blast platform are provided by a highly technical team of engineers with proven experience in both Web3 and Web2 projects.

Rationale - We support Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks in Blast API platform (https://blastapi.io ) so blockchain developers that are building their dApp on can bypass all the hurdles involved in running their own infrastructure thus reducing both their outage risks and infrastructure costs.

Overall Cost - The total cost, including three regions’ support for Moonbeam, Moonriver plus Moonbase alpha (EU, US, and APAC), is $8000 per month, meaning $24000 on a quarterly basis payable in Moonbeam Network (GLMR) Tokens that are calculated at an average USD price over the last 7 days at the established payment date.

Use of Treasury Funds - The funds will be used to pay for the infrastructure and maintenance of the Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha nodes between January 1 to March 31, 2023.

These funds will be directed to cover the costs from the infrastructure providers that are used for the Blast backend like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Hetzner, OVH, Servers.com and Digital Ocean and our internal resource cost for the support provided by our engineering team to have high quality infrastructure services for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks.

Specifications - On our multichain, subscription-based, API platform, Blast we support Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks with the following services and specifications:

  • Expose RPC and Websockets APIs for Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha;
  • The Service availability is at least 99.9%;
  • 24/7 Monitoring and alerting for reduced downtime.
  • 24/7 On-call engineering support.
  • Developer support on Bware Labs Discord Channels.
  • The incoming traffic is Geo-load balanced over three regions: North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific, with automated traffic routing for optimal response times.
  • The Clients that use the Public API free version of Blast are limited to 25 API Calls/second.
  • 12 Million API calls/month with a throughput of 40 API calls/second offered for free to Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha users on each dedicated Blast account
  • Total traffic supported on all subscription plans and Public API: 3700 calls/second per region per network.
  • Multi-region node hosting: Moonbeam (EU, US, and APAC), Moonriver (EU, US and APAC), Moonbase alpha (EU, US and APAC)
  • Support for Debug and Trace methods
  • Security ensured through continuous integrity monitoring coupled with a smart routing mechanism significantly reduce the risk of malicious behavior from bad actors within the ecosystem

Public APIs:
https://moonbeam.public.blastapi.io

wss://moonbeam.public.blastapi.io

https://moonriver.public.blastapi.io

wss://moonriver.public.blastapi.io

https://moonbase-alpha.public.blastapi.io

wss://moonbase-alpha.public.blastapi.io

Dedicated APIs:

https://blastapi.io

Blast API Usage Report:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16-wi3dBp0mCEO5TdBk59UyjUmbzNCFez/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109806970176342760198&rtpof=true&sd=true

Steps to Implement:

  • We’ve been supporting Moonbase alpha and Moonriver networks since June 2021. It was supported at the beginning on our MVP: Bware API Platform (BAP).
  • On the same MVP we’ve added support for Moonbeam network in January 2022.
  • The MVP turned into Blast (https://blastapi.io) on March 22, 2022, and since then we support Moonbeam, Moonriver, and Moonbase alpha networks on Blast.
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Hello, thank you for your proposal. I am reviewing the information presented, but I would like some clarification regarding this graph.

In this case, the number of calls corresponds to the 3 networks together?

Is it to show how many calls/requests have been processed in total? If so, I think it would be better to have a general image of all the information (the 3 months together, but separated by network

Screenshot_134
Screenshot_1341498×619 15.4 KB

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Hello! Thank you for your feedback. Yes, the graph showed the number of calls for all three networks. We’ve modified it to show the information for each network as well.

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Hi @Mihai_BwareLabs, I have a few questions:

  1. Could please provide a monthly cost breakdown as follows:
  • Cost for baseline infrastructure
  • Price per request beyond the baseline

  1. Can you describe any future cost saving plans?

  2. Can you describe your monetization and revenue model?

Aditionally, I advise that in case you decide to go ahead with the proposal, you split the amount into two on-chain proposals between Moonbeam and Moonriver: 80% GLMR and 20% MOVR

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Hi @mtca , you can find below the answers to your questions:

  1. Could please provide a monthly cost breakdown as follows:
  • Cost for baseline infrastructure

Monthly Infrastructure costs:

  • Moonbeam 9 nodes(3 on each region) 1825$
  • Moonriver 9 nodes(3 on each region) 1825$
  • Moonbase 6 nodes(2 on each region) 1216$

Support:

  • Account maintenance and on call engineers - 4500$

Total infrastructure costs: 9366$

  • Price per request beyond the baseline

Price per request ranges from 2.5$ to 5$ per 1M API calls based on the subscription plan acquired by the developer.

  1. Can you describe any future cost saving plans?
  • Starting with January, we migrated from Cloud based solution to bare metal, and we’ve been able to reduce the costs by 70%. As the blockchain grows, it’s a tendency for the hardware costs to grow as well and our technical team is constantly analyzing new solutions that scales better in case of blockchain growth. One immediate cost saving plan comes with BlastAPI decentralization, which is targeted at the beginning of Q2. Here third party nodes can join the protocol, and earn rewards for their contribution. More details about this can be found here: Blast protocol - Blast Documentation
  1. Can you describe your monetization and revenue model?

Our revenue model is concentrated around freemium philosophy. Developers and early projects can use our product for free until they mature and get to a point where they have adoption and need more API requests. That’s the moment when they go towards a paid plan.

At the same time, the community that is using our product for day-to-day operations (PolkadotJS Endpoint - Polkadot/Substrate Portal or Metamask ), don’t have to pay anything while benefiting from our Public API.

  • Blast is a subscription-based API platform having the following subscription plans that generate revenue:
    • Developer - $50 /mo
      • 20 Million API calls/mo
      • 100 API calls/second
      • 3 Projects
    • Developer - $250 /mo
      • 80 Million API calls/mo
      • 400 API calls/second
      • 10 Projects
    • Enterprise - Custom price/mo
      • Custom API limits
      • Unlimited Projects

Aditionally, I advise that in case you decide to go ahead with the proposal, you split the amount into two on-chain proposals between Moonbeam and Moonriver: 80% GLMR and 20% MOVR

  • I see that I don’t have the rights to edit the proposal anymore, but we will split the amount into two on-chain proposals between Moonbeam and Moonriver: 80% GLMR and 20% MOVR that are calculated at an average USD price over the last 7 days at the established payment date.
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Hi @Mihai_BwareLabs thank you for sharing the detailed cost breakdown. I am ok to move it to a proposal conditionally to using the 30-day average USD price for GLMR and MOVR, as this is current standard on the Council. I suggest that you wait until other council members state their support here on the forum and majority is ensured (3 votes).

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Stating my support for the proposal.
As mtca mentioned please use 30day average for the on-chain proposals :pray:

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Hey @mtca @dev0_sik ! Yes, we will use for our proposal the 30-day average USD price for GLMR and MOVR.

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aye with the proposal from my part

I will be waiting to see how BlastAPI decentralization positively affects costs, since we seek to maintain a model that is sustainable

also a personal question

What has been the success rate of attracting teams/users that exceed the public rate, to paid members?

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@Mihai_BwareLabs please go ahead and move it to the on-chain proposals

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Hello! We have made the on-chain proposals:

The proposals were made with the 30-day average USD price of 0.392840512 for GLMR and 8.535694795 for MOVR.

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Hi @jose.crypto ! Regarding your question about the success rate, we can point out that right now 5,92% of the Blast API calls on Moonbeam, Moonriver, Moonbase alpha are from paid plans.

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@Mihai_BwareLabs both proposals are now passed

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