Bison Trails, an established blockchain infrastructure platform-as-a-service firm that will be acquired by Coinbase, has announced the launch of its Global Blockchain Sync (GBS) feature.
The Global Blockchain Sync aims to expand the functionality of the Bison Trails platform by making it faster and a lot easier for clients to set up new nodes across various protocols, as well as for Bison Trails to “respond to potential adverse events like a Cloud provider outage.”
As explained in a release shared with CI, Global Blockchain Sync enables new nodes to “quickly catch up to the current state of the network, reducing the time it takes for new nodes to be production-ready by over 100x.”
The announcement also mentioned that Bison Trails’ Global Blockchain Sync offers support for client infrastructure on protocols such as Polkadot, Kusama, Ethereum, Cosmos, Celo, NEAR, and EOS.
The main benefits of Global Blockchain Sync are as follows:
Reduced downtime risk and slashing penalties: Many proof of stake protocols “penalize validators for downtime because this behavior degrades overall network performance.” Global Blockchain Sync “enables customers to recover from adverse events like a cloud provider outage in minutes, significantly reducing the risk of downtime slashing or missed rewards.”
Active management for optimized participation: Global Blockchain Sync “makes it easier to participate in a number of networks, particularly protocols like Polkadot that require more active node management.” Polkadot’s reward mechanism incentivizes customers to “distribute their stake across multiple validators.” However, staking requirements change frequently, potentially “requiring customers to access new nodes to re-distribute their stake in an optimal way.” With Global Blockchain Sync, new Polkadot validators “can be launched in as early as 20 minutes, compared to the 30+ hours it would otherwise typically take.”
Reducing costs and increasing scale: Global Blockchain Sync also “allows for dynamic management of Bison Trails’ QT read/write infrastructure used by leading custodians, exchanges, wallets, and others to build products and services that connect to blockchain data.” With GBS, organizations can “add or remove synced nodes in a matter of minutes and respond to fluctuating demand while reducing operational costs.”
Quick, efficient support for new protocols: Global Blockchain Sync with QT Archival enables companies, such as large exchanges and custodians, to “add support for new protocols quickly and easily.” Archival nodes “provide a complete record of everything happening on a blockchain on a block-by-block basis – meaning they have to sync with very large amounts of data.”
Global Blockchain Sync “dramatically reduces the timeline to make an archival node production-ready.” For example, with QT Archival and Global Blockchain Sync, an EOS Archival node “can be ready within 72 hours, compared to what would normally take upwards of 6 months.” Similarly, an Ethereum archival node “can be production-ready in 12 hours with Global Blockchain Sync, compared to 14+ days without.”
Joe Lallouz, CEO of Bison Trails, stated:
“A significant pain point when launching new nodes is the time it takes for them to catch up to the rest of the network before they can begin performing useful work. Newly launched nodes must sync from the genesis block, which can take hours to months to be fully synced. Bison Trails created Global Blockchain Sync, an enterprise-grade solution to this problem, to allow customers to dynamically scale their infrastructure in response to demand, while reducing operational costs.”
Aaron Henshaw, Co-Founder and CTO at Bison Trails, remarked:
“Global Blockchain Sync enables us to respond quickly to customers and changing network conditions. Being able to bring new nodes up quickly improves the user experience across every part of the platform and helps optimize participation.”
You may learn more about Global Blockchain Sync here.
Bison Trails claims to be the premier blockchain infrastructure platform-as-a-service company that’s focused on blockchain participation, provides an “easy-to-use” platform to set up and operate “highly-available” nodes on any blockchain or DLT network in a seamless manner. Headquartered in New York City, Bison Trails provides geographically distributed infrastructure for clients to secure networks and “enable the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish.”
