As one of Germany's largest IT companies, Deutsche Telekom has been a leading contributor to Web3 companies, running validators for renowned blockchain protocols, including Polygon, Ethereum, and Polkadot. Now the firm is increasing its footprint in Web3 by contributing to the Subsquid network (SQD).
The German telco provider will be joining over 700 worker nodes already run by individuals as well as corporate entities on the network. SQD is a hyper-scalable modular data platform focused on providing developers building Web3 products with better blockchain data access. The network combines a decentralized data lake with a highly efficient query engine to unlock new functionality for dApps, AI agents, analytics, and ZK Proofs. These data lakes offer enterprises and businesses a place to store unformatted raw data.
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Decentralized data storage
In a landscape of multiple layer-1 and layer-2 chains fragmenting the overall Web3 audience, developers have to build on more than one chain, leading to a challenge in getting data. While blockchain data is generally publicly available, each chain has a different format, varying coding language and access points for this data. Often, the easiest way to get the data in a format that can be queried has been via centralized APIs or from RPC nodes directly.
However, this approach is littered with potential issues, from high costs for multichain data to long retrieval times, corrupted data, and other security issues. SQD aims to replace this approach by retrieving historical data with a fully decentralized stack. In its decentralized data lake, worker nodes serve developers' queries. The data is stored in a raw format, enabling businesses and individuals to retrieve it in their preferred formats.
Deutsche Telekom MMS setting up worker nodes
The decentralized query engine will support general-purpose SQL queries and an ever-growing collection of structured data sets derived from on- and off- chain data. Worker nodes are an integral part of the network. In a decentralized network a node is an electronic device that maintains a copy of the blockchain and processes transactions, ensuring the network's security and integrity. In the case of SQD the worker nodes listen to queries and deliver the data requested as fast as possible from the data lake to the data consumer. They contribute to the data infrastructure, enhancing the network's resilience and scalability.
"Deutsche Telekom running worker nodes is a big deal: One of the world's biggest and most trusted infrastructure providers will now be helping to strengthen and secure permissionless data access for use cases across Web3. We are reaching a new level of legitimacy and security not just for the network we are building, but for all of blockchain technology. “ - Marcel Fohrmann, co-founder of Subsquid Labs
