Etherscan's surprise charges! Unexpectedly exposing the data dependency contradictions of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Etherscan suddenly announced during Devcon that some APIs would no longer be free, causing dissatisfaction among developers. This controversy not only exposed the commercialization dilemma of blockchain data infrastructure but also sparked a deep discussion on decentralized data access. (Background: Fed turns dovish, with a 80% chance of rate cuts in December; Bitcoin surges to $89,000, Ethereum hits $2900, and US stocks rally.) (Supplemental background: BitMine increases its position by nearly 70,000 Ethereum, with account unrealized losses expanding to $4.25 billion! Tom Lee: Now is a great time to buy the dip.) On November 23, Lefteris Karapetsas, the founder of the open-source portfolio tracking tool rotki, tweeted his frustrations about Etherscan. He stated that Etherscan suddenly announced during Devcon that it would no longer provide free APIs for the Avalanche C-Chain, Base, BNB Chain, and OP Mainnet blockchain explorers. While he understood that providing free services is indeed very demanding, he wondered if they could have given a bit more notice, or at least not choose to make such a sudden change during a major event when everyone is away, leaving no time to react. According to Etherscan's announcement, as the performance of the chains gradually improved, the amount of data also significantly increased, which in turn raised costs considerably. Under these circumstances, they could no longer afford all free APIs and had to set some previously free APIs to paid versions. It is clear that the inability to continue offering free APIs for specific chains is likely due to a lack of sufficient funding or resource support. In the end, this guy was a bit puzzled, putting Avalanche aside, don't Base, OP Mainnet, and BNB Chain have money to support such important services? However, dissenting voices quickly followed, led by Jack, the founder of Routescan, who also operates the Avalanche blockchain explorer Snowtrace. Jack provided some data that might only be known within the industry: · Etherscan charges the supported chains approximately between $1.5 million to $2 million annually, though some only cost around $300,000 and only provide very basic data; · For those chains that have already paid, Etherscan only offers 5 RPS (requests per second) of free API, and if more is needed, a monthly subscription fee can reach up to $899; · Last month, the number of unique visitors for Etherscan's various chain explorers were: OP Mainnet, 102,000; BNB Chain, 2.5 million; Base, 1 million; HyperEVM, 30,000; Avalanche, 16,000. Etherscan itself has 4 million. The CEO implied that charging for a few APIs is indeed due to tight funding, not because they are greedy for money; some chains did not pay, and they have already been generous by offering free services for a while, so everyone should just stop complaining. There isn't much to say about the discussion of this issue, simply that some people think Etherscan is greedy, while others believe that commercial behavior is justifiable. However, some other discussions that emerged from this incident are quite interesting. The call for data openness organizations First of all, this incident made me aware that there is also an ecosystem alliance called VERA that promotes convenient, unified, and open access to EVM smart contract source code, as well as an organization called the Open Labels Initiative that promotes the standardization framework and data model for EVM address labeling. The essence of what these two organizations want to do is to support the accessibility of blockchain data, especially verification. The Open Labels Initiative retweeted Lefteris Karapetsas's complaint tweet and stated that they had been working for the past year to prevent such situations from overly relying on centralized on-chain data providers, and they believe such important infrastructure should not be monopolized but should be co-constructed. Organizations like sourcefify.eth for verifying Ethereum contract code, the Ethereum data visualization platform growthepie, the open-source blockchain explorer Blockscout, and the aforementioned Routescan are all contributing to the readability and accessibility of Ethereum data. According to Reserve Protocol DeFi engineer Akshat Mittal, Etherscan has not participated in these matters. Is it for commercial interests? No one knows, but even if it is, it is justifiable. The Ethereum ecosystem will always have some who uphold open-source culture and reject excessive commercialization; regardless of good or bad, this is the diversity of the ecosystem. Profit-oriented organizations can ensure service quality, while open-source products will have their place. Comparison of IC and Ethereum's data query mechanisms Additionally, recently, 0xFrancis, the founder of the zCloak Network, who has been praising IC, made a comparison between IC and Ethereum again. 0xFrancis stated that Ethereum does not consider “querying block data” as part of the consensus, and developing DApps must rely on third-party RPC services. If the RPC nodes collectively fail, although the chain will still operate, it will become “unreadable.” At a deeper level, if centralized RPC nodes or websites like Etherscan provide false data, it can easily mislead people. IC regards querying itself as part of the protocol; when a query request is initiated, it will be executed uniformly through the ICP node network and return cryptographically verified data, ensuring data accuracy. 0xFrancis's words are not without reason, and this can serve as a typical case of IC being overly advanced, as the debate surrounding Etherscan's charging is also a typical discussion about centralization versus decentralization. However, is it possible that Ethereum's imperfections and the need for some commercialized components have instead driven the prosperity of the ecosystem? Related reports Discussing Ethereum's “identity crisis”: Misunderstood value Li Lin, Xiao Feng, and others halt the $1 billion Ethereum DAT plan; what key signals does it reveal? Bitcoin's long wick candle drops to $94,000, creating a six-month low, market sentiment turns to extreme fear; Ethereum nearly reaches the $20 range. <Etherscan's surprise charging! Unexpectedly exposes the data dependency contradiction in the Ethereum ecosystem> This article was originally published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.