Skip to main content
Version: ArrowSquid

Squid Archives

Archive is a specialized data lake for on-chain data, optimized for batch data access. The Archive API is meant to be used as a data source for Squid SDK processors.

Compared to data access using a conventional chain node RPC, an Archive allows one to access data at near zero cost, in a more granular fashion and from multiple blocks at once, thanks to its rich batching and filtering capabilities.

Subsquid Labs GmbH maintains public Archives for most EVM and Substrate chains. Until Archive services are replaced by a decentralized and permissionless Subsquid Network, access to the Archives is free of charge.

If you are a network developer and would like to see your chain supported by Subsquid, please fill a form or contact us in SquidDevs Telegram chat.

Archive Registry​

Subsquid publishes the up-to-date list of public Archives in the Archive Registry repository. The registry is available as a npm package @subsquid/archive-registry. The package contains a script for listing the available archives and a function for looking up archive URLs.

Listing the available archives​

Use the squid-archive-registry executable included in @subsquid/archive-registry to list aliases for the supported networks:

$ npx squid-archive-registry --help
Usage: run [options]

Display list of available archives

Options:
  -t --type <type>  Network type (choices: "evm", "substrate")
  -h, --help        display help for command

Lookup an Archive​

@subsquid/archive-registry provides a function lookupArchive(alias: KnownArchive, opts?: LookupOptionsEVM | LookupOptionsSubstrate ) to locate an Archive data source endpoint. KnownArchive is a network alias and opts is an optional config to disambiguate.

Example:

import { lookupArchive } from "@subsquid/archive-registry";
import { EVMBatchProcessor } from "@subsquid/evm-processor";

const processor = new EVMBatchProcessor()
  .setDataSource({
     archive: lookupArchive("eth-mainnet")
})

On self-hosted archives​

Starting with the ArrowSquid release and until Subsquid network is launched we are pausing the support of self-hosted archives. If you maintain a production network or a stable testnet and need a public archive please let us know at the SquidDevs Telegram chat.

For smaller networks (including temporary testnets and any development networks) consider using the RPC ingestion feature. One of these use cases is described in our local development tutorial.