Internet search giant (and much more) Google has added ethereum to its massive data analytics platform BigQuery.
Making the announcement in a blog post on Saturday, the company said that, whereas an API exists for normally used functions corresponding to checking transaction status or wallet balances, it is not really easy to access all of the information keep on the ethereum blockchain.
The post continues to mention that "perhaps more importantly," the API does not allow viewing blockchain data "in aggregate."
Aiming the new service to supply more of a giant data window into ethereum, Google said:
"A visualization like this ... is useful for making business decisions, such as prioritizing improvements to the Ethereum architecture itself (is the system running close to capacity and due for an upgrade?) to balance sheet adjustments (how quickly can a wallet be rebalanced?)."
The software system Google has designed on its Cloud platform does many things: it synchronizes the ethereum blockchain to computers running Parity; it pulls data from the ethereum ledger on a everyday, including the results of smart contract transactions; and it "de-normalizes and stores date-partitioned information to BigQuery for easy and cost-efficient exploration."
In some examples of why the addition could also be helpful and/or interesting to users, Google sets out many examples, showing that, for one, CryptoKitties (a crypto collectibles game) smart contract transactions are by far the most various on the ethereum network. It further adds a visualization for "pedigrees" of accounts that own more than 10 CryptoKitties:
A second example appearance at data from ERC-20 token project OmiseGo, with a visualization that shows how token recipients spiked on Sept. 13, 2017, while senders did not. The explanation? The surge marked the OmiseGo project's airdrop of tokens to its community.
Data from the bitcoin network was added to BigQuery earlier this year, according to the post.
Anyone interested in using Google's new service can already query ethereum's data in Kaggle.
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