What is this?
Currently, there are only a handful of public API nodes that are mostly based in Europe with one or two nodes being in North America.
My plan is to have global coverage with several servers located in different parts of the world.
I don't want to bother reading, give me a TL:DR!
Global HIVE API nodes, resulting in a faster, more stable and decentralized blockchain experience. Costs are 1650 HBD per month (55 HBD per day) and the proposal will continue for 180 days and reevaluated then. Please do read the proposal though.
Why should you support this proposal?
As a witness and node operator, I have been operating api.deathwing.me and have developed various other projects on Hive. Currently, taking the average DAU and traffic usage on api.deathwing.me it is safe to assume that it is one of the most popular API nodes on the blockchain.
While there are several other nodes, depending on the nodes' hardware and optimizations a node can perform better or worse. api.deathwing.me, as of the creation of this post runs on state of the art Ryzen 9 5950X with 128GB RAM. According to different tests and benchmarks, it is a fast, if not the fastest public API node currently out there.
However, there is one big caveat. The server is hosted in European data centers. What does this mean? It means that if you're living in North America, South America, Asia or Southeast Asia, you'll interact with the chain considerably slower due to latency. Since the node is located in the EU, your actions have to be routed. This will result in a "slower" experience while browsing the chain, broadcasting transactions and depending on your ISP and internet connection, even inability to do transactions from time to time.
This is not the only issue, unfortunately, majority of Hive nodes are located in Germany as well. Even looking further, we can observe that most of the witnesses and node operators run their nodes under one hosting company. While that hosting company has its reputation for being one of the most trusted datacenters/hosting company, as crackdowns on cryptocurrencies continue to increase, we'll never know what they'd think of Hive nodes later down the road. This is also a risk as any sudden downtime in their datacenter may result in nodes being unable to operate or forking off (this has happened before.)
If this proposal is funded, I will be looking to maintain and rent at least 3 servers (depending on the pricing) from 3 different server providers located on 3 different continents. The plan is to have one server in Europe, one server in North America and one server in Southeast Asia. By doing this, the blockchain becomes more decentralized and less prone to hosting company outages, whether deliberately or on accident. As well as providing a more stable and faster experience to the users.
All of these servers will be connected under one domain api.deathwing.me and it will be able to automatically detect your location from your IP address and re-route your connection to the nearest server. For example, if you are in the EU, you will be routed to the European node. If you are in Asia, you'll be rerouted to the Asian node. This will yield better performance in most cases due to low latency and less load per node.
In summary, having more servers in different parts of the world will result in a faster, more stable and more decentralized blockchain experience than ever before. Especially for users and future users in North America and Asia, where, unfortunately, we currently lack broad coverage in terms of low-latency nodes with high uptime and stable operation.
What happens if the proposal loses DHF support?
If there are funds in savings, they will be used to continue global coverage. In the worst-case scenario that there are no funds in the savings, api.deathwing.me will continue to operate under one server in Europe as it is now.
How much will you need for this and for how long?
At the moment, the proposal is for 55 HBD/day from DHF. This equals 1650 HBD per month spent from the Hive Fund. The proposal will run for 180 days initially. If funded throughout those 180 days, I am planning to recreate the proposal for another 180 days and will continue on.
What are the costs associated with this proposal?
Unfortunately, hardware costs are quite expensive. Even when the hardware is covered, colocation (having servers running 24/7 in a datacenter) is expensive as well. Especially in North America and Asia.
The plan is to have a budget of at least 350 HBD per month for each server in each continent. So basically, 350 HBD/m for the NA, 350 HBD/m for the EU and finally 350 HBD/m budget for the Asian server.
Out of the remaining 600 HBD, 300 HBD will be saved for emergency situations (such as the datacenter burning down and taking down all the servers with it,) backup servers before hardforks (in those cases, during hardforks, an additional fully-capable node will be on standby and switched to in a moments' notice if there are any problems and/or until the stability of the hardfork is confirmed) and finally long-term savings to look at potentially obtaining hardware and colocating it. The remaining 300 HBD is for maintenance and other costs such as GeoDNS load balancers and monitoring servers.
Vote For the Proposal
You can vote for this proposal on PeakD, Hive.Blog or Ecency
Feedback
Feedback is always welcome. Please let me know if you have any inquiries.
P.S.
I am also a witness on Hive! If you would like to support my endeavours feel free to vote me as a witness :)