Blockchain Monitoring: Start Guide And Common Mistakes

What is blockchain monitoring?

The most general and simple definition is right here.

Blockchain monitoring is the process of collecting, analyzing, and visualizing blockchain data.

As data is the walls, ceiling, light, and air of the blockchain house, monitoring can concentrate on different aspects of it. Thus, the variety of applications created shades of meaning of the main definition that we should also explain.

Different aspects of the chain tracking

• The technical aspect describes blockchain monitoring as an ETL (Extract, Transform, Load data) process that helps to track and analyze thousands of blockchain events that happen every millisecond. 
• The security aspect depicts monitoring as a part of guarding functionality. During the uptime monitoring, it can mention any vulnerabilities or suspicious behavior, and send notifications to chain participants to react.
• From the business perspective, chain tracking is all about finding opportunities to maximize the value and minimize the expenses associated with smart contracts, blockchain applications, and infrastructure. Tons of various services are hiding in this category. 
• At the simplest level, the user wants to utilize monitoring as a status page, an interface, for informing of what’s happening inside the blockchain and how their digital assets are doing there. It’s more like the visualization side of the meaning.

How it works and how it looks like for a user

The structure consists of the following layers:

1. Data layer: Everything starts with setting up raw on-chain and off-chain data pipelines (as blockchain doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and we might be particularly interested in data from connected non-chain applications, or data from other chains). Custom tracking systems can add any source of data in this step.
2. Processing and analysis layer: The collected data get normalized (put in order and correctly formatted in the single database) and prepared for presentation depending on the purposes of monitoring. This is where transaction and smart contract analysis, chain health check, and fixing of other kinds of events happen. The notifications and alerts are coming from this layer, being pre-described as sets of signs, algorithms, or triggers.
3. Interface layer: Here’s what the end user typically sees: dashboards and reports, where they can filter and change the view of the processed data.

In the core, node tracking is still the same as in any business or marketing sphere—you have to carefully collect data, make it appropriate to analyze, process it, and present the results to the human in the best way possible to make decisions and take action.

Applications of blockchain monitoring across industries

The non-trivial problems solved by blockchain monitoring

Prevention of security threats. The tracking system can prevent a crisis by launching the appropriate scenario that minimizes the possible harm. 

Adherence to Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) standards. Your tracking helps you flag and report suspicious activity that might be linked to financial crimes.

Inefficient scaling. With the help of monitoring, predictive autoscaling tools like PredictKube can scale in advance to ensure efficient operations and smooth functioning of blockchain-based apps based on on-chain and off-chain data.

High digital trading competition. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure—and one of the main purposes of monitoring is to find those gemstones of opportunities for maximizing profits. 

Data integrity problem: In a trustless environment, monitoring can be the best way to verify on-chain data, building trust and confidence in the entire blockchain ecosystem.

Why is blockchain node monitoring important for network participators?

Making the whole boiling soup of blockchain data ordered and possible to understand is one of the key goals of monitoring. As a part of the necessary governance, the tracking system serves and participates in the management of the network according to all events and details it mentions. It’s a way participants are involved in the network—if my activity reflects in monitoring, then I’m a part of the system, and we’re all together doing well. And on the other hand, if something goes off, then monitoring is a guardian that should spot it.

Instead of the summary: Tools to try

You may feel a little dizzy about all the tracking peculiarities, but another way to make things through is to meet the representatives of each type of tracking. Discover offers of these guys to dive deeper into the context of blockchain analysis and tracking.

We also invite you to take a closer look at our cases, as Dysnix sets up custom tracking for almost every project we’re involved in. Nansen is one of the brightest examples of our work in this sphere.

PancakeSwap

DEX handling 100,000 RPS with 62.5x faster response

Nansen

Fail-proof secured blockchain infrastructure

zkSync

ZK-infrastructure with a custom scaling solution

Polygon

High-available RPC endpoint; Listing in GCP marketplace

NFTrends

Full-cycle blockchain development

GotBit

Automated CI/CD for 900+ bots and blockchain services

For more talks, meet us here, in our Web3 chatting lounge, or just drop us a line. We’re always glad to help.

And thank you for reading 🙂