SQD Network: Six Months In: Big Plans, Bold Moves, and the Road Ahead

Things are starting to heat up.

Exactly six months ago, we launched SQD Network to mainnet. Following a massively successful testnet and token launch on CoinList (their fastest sale ever!), SQD’s mainnet launch was the first major step towards the network’s decentralization.

→ Don’t know what SQD network is? Read about it here.

At mainnet launch, it became possible for anyone to run their own worker nodes, providing compute resources to the decentralized data network in exchange for network rewards. Community members could also earn by delegating tokens to these nodes, acting as their curators.

Additionally, ‘Gateways’ were launched as a rudimentary tool for retrieving data from the decentralized data lake in a completely decentralized way.

Since mainnet launch, over 1450 worker nodes have entered the network, and thousands of individuals have delegated SQD. Gateways were thoroughly tested in the initial months of mainnet and re-architected for their next, production-ready evolution–Portals, released to beta just yesterday. See the release notes here.

Today, on the semi-anniversary of mainnet launch and immediately following the release of our most impactful tech update ever, we will take the opportunity to share our near-term (apx. 2-month) plans, both in terms of GTM strategy for the network and technological development. 

We expect this article to lead to vibrant discussion in the community and are looking forward to talking with you directly in our Telegram chat and during the upcoming Office Hours (details to be announced shortly). 

Start of Migration of Production Clients to the Network through Portals

Yesterday, we announced the beta release of Portal, marking the official start of the migration of live use cases to SQD Network. This means that the centralized ‘fork’ of the decentralized data lake, called SQD Archives has entered its final stage of existence and will eventually be sunset.Starting now, data consumers will be able to lock $SQD tokens in order to access data in a fully P2P manner and with huge performance improvements, or use a provider like SQD Cloud that locks tokens for them.

→ Get started here. 

Keep in mind that this will be carried out in a gradual process and with the consent of the approximately 190 projects that currently depend on SQD Network as a data provider. Given SQD’s unique architecture and the rigorous testing we have already carried out, we expect the migration process to go significantly faster than those of major incumbents in the indexing space, like the Graph.

Surprise Product Launch: Consumer Use Case for SQD Network in December! 

Over the past few months, we have been very inspired by innovations in the consumer crypto space–and it goes beyond memecoins! For example, Shiba Inu has 1,446,870 token holders who actively interact with a growing ecosystem of DeFi and games (powered by SQD’s data lake and ecosystem of tools!). SQD user The Honey Jar has been growing Berachain massively through an endless series of fun quests, NFT-based games, and onchain experiences. Remarkably, Hamster Kombat’s $HMSTR token stands at 10,887,765 holders, all thanks to a game based on very simple mechanics. 

Within the next few weeks, we will be releasing a new product that we honestly expect to be a major surprise for our community and the entire industry. Anybody–even people with zero technological knowledge–will be able to use the SQD Network to search for onchain information. 

We can’t wait to reveal what’s coming! 

Tokenomics 2.0: Introducing Scarcity to SQD Network 

SQD Network is still young, and we are in the bootstrap phase, where rewards are high for worker node operators and delegators. Today, the average worker is receiving an APY of 22%, and delegators earn 8.45%. 

Compare this to the early days of Bitcoin, when miners could get hundreds of BTC with just a home laptop! This opportunity window closed very quickly, with BTC mining rewards halving and the difficulty increasing. 

In the near future, we will announce Tokenomics 2.0, which we plan to implement in 2025. As part of this update SQD will become more scarce, and reward rates will be gradually reduced. As a bonus, the volatility of those rewards will go down significantly, ensuring the long-term stability and profitability of operations for network participants. 

We have always had plans to introduce scarcity to SQD tokenomics, and we thank the community for validating our theses. We will reveal our “secret sauce” soon and look forward to hearing your feedback. 

Market and Ecosystem Expansion

We made an excellent choice to launch the SQD decentralized data lake on Arbitrum owing to its EVM compatibility, scalability, large community (including DeFi protocols like SQD users GMX and PancakeSwap), Ethereum-alignment, and neutrality among L2 protocols. Arbitrum will continue to be SQD Network’s ‘home base,’ but very soon, we will be sharing news about certain market and ecosystem expansions elsewhere in the Ethereum world. 

The Ethereum ecosystem currently contains 522 billion dollars in value, so we’re confident there’s a lot of opportunity for us to expand. 

Real-Time Data Streams & Solana GTM

In January, we expect Portals to be ready to enter their second phase: Decentralized real-time data streams. Currently, developers rely too much on RPC node providers for real-time data, leading to a constant flow of issues and limitations. With the release of Portal Hot Streams, this will be over.  

We estimate that this release will allow SQD Network to eventually replace as much as 90% of RPC usage (‘reads’). We have already entered deals with multiple large RPC providers who intend to migrate much of their infrastructure to SQD Network themselves. We will publish information about these agreements when the time is right.

Furthermore, we have identified the Solana ecosystem ($344B in total value) as a prime target for Hot Streams. Developers as well as Solana founders universally discuss issues relating to data access on this hyper-scalable blockchain platform, which we intend to solve. We will release a Solana-focussed indexing and data streaming product to this end. 

Provide Your Input

SQD is a decentralized project, and we depend on community feedback to move forward. The entire team is hyper-available in the Official Telegram Chat, so after reading this blog please come along and let us know what you think.

We promise that we will read your message and respond.