Network
Launch Date
Consensus
Note
Sepolia
Oct 2021
PoW
Like-for-like representation of Ethereum
Görli
Jan 2019
PoA
Proof-of-Authority
Kiln
Mar 2022
PoS
Post-Merge (for ETH2), shadow fork of the mainnet
Kintsugi
Dec 2021
PoS
DEPRECATED, use Kiln; post-Merge (for ETH2)
Ropsten
Nov 2016
PoW
DEPRECATED, use Sepolia; the Merge to happen on Jun 8, 2022
Rinkeby
Apr 2017
PoA
DEPRECATED, use Görli and Görli Faucet
Kovan
Mar 2017
PoA
DEPRECATED, use Sepolia or Görli
List of active and deprecated Ethereum testnets, including Kintsugi.
Features
Optimistic rollup 
ZK-rollup 
Proof
Uses fraud proofs to prove transaction validity. 
Uses validity (zero-knowledge) proofs to prove transaction validity. 
Capital efficiency
Requires waiting through a 1-week delay (dispute period) before withdrawing funds. 
Users can withdraw funds immediately because validity proofs provide incontrovertible evidence of the authenticity of off-chain transactions. 
Data compression
Publishes full transaction data as calldata to Ethereum Mainnet, which increases rollup costs. 
Doesn't need to publish transaction data on Ethereum because ZK-SNARKs and ZK-STARKs already guarantee the accuracy of the rollup state. 
EVM compatibility
Uses a simulation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which allows it to run arbitrary logic and support smart contracts. 
Doesn't widely support EVM computation, although a few EVM-compatible ZK-rollups have appeared. 
Rollup costs
Reduces costs since it publishes minimal data on Ethereum and doesn't have to post proofs for transactions, except in special circumstances. 
Faces higher overhead from costs involved in generating and verifying proofs for every transaction block. ZK proofs require specialized, expensive hardware to create and have high on-chain verification costs. 
Trust assumptions
Doesn't require a trusted setup. 
Requires a trusted setup to work. 
Liveness requirements
Verifiers are needed to keep tabs on the actual rollup state and the one referenced in the state root to detect fraud. 
Users don't need someone to watch the L2 chain to detect fraud. 
Security properties 
Relies on cryptoeconomic incentives to assure users of rollup security. 
Relies on cryptographic guarantees for security. 
Start building
on Alchemy.
Sign up for free
Start building on Optimism.
Sign up for free
Start building on Arbitrum.
Sign up for free
Start building on Ethereum.
Sign up for free
Start building on Polygon.
Sign up for free
Start building on Starknet.
Sign up for free
Start building on Flow.
Sign up for free
kiln faucet
Get free Kiln ETH.
Start building today
Goerli faucet
Get free Goerli ETH.
Start building today
SEPOLIA FAUCET
Get free Sepolia ETH.
Start Building Today
mumbai faucet
Get free Mumbai Matic.
Start building today
rinkeby faucet
Get free Rinkeby
ETH.
Start building today
Start building on Ethereum.
Get started for free
Start building on Ethereum.
Get started for free
Start building on Flow.
Get started for free
Start building on Polygon.
Get started for free
Start building on Starknet.
Get started for free
Start building on Optimism.
Get started for free
Start building on Solana.
Get started for free
Start building on Solana.
Sign up for beta access
Start building on Solana.
Join the waitlist
Arbitrum logo
Start building on Arbitrum.
Get started for free
Build with Alchemy's
Gas Manager & Bundler APIs
Learn
Solidity at
Alchemy
University
Get started today
Build with Alchemy's
Gas Manager & Bundler APIs
curl 
https://release.solana.com/v1.10.32/solana-install-init-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.exe 
--output 
C:\solana-install-tmp\solana-install-init.exe 
--create-dirs
Web3 Tools
Developer dapp monitoring tools

How to Identify Issues in Your Dapp Quickly and Deploy Fixes Before They Affect Users

Learn About the Challenges and Solutions Engineers Face for Monitoring Their Dapp's Health
Last Updated:
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents

{{building-alchemy-ad}}

In the dynamic world of decentralized applications (dapps), swift identification and resolution of issues are critical to maintaining a seamless user experience and fostering customer trust.

The key lies in transforming traditional reactive troubleshooting into proactive health management of your dapps through data-driven engineering.

What is unique about data-driven engineering in web3?

Data-driven engineering involves making decisions based on hard data instead of hunches or gut feelings. Data-driven engineering empowers engineering teams to predict, understand, and solve problems before they affect end-users.

What are the challenges of data-driven engineering in web3?

Despite the immense potential that data-driven engineering offers, at present many web3 developers find themselves stuck in a reactive mode because of challenges such as a lack of proper tooling, the complexity of web3, and 24/7 nature of the blockchain industry.

1. Lack of Web3 Observability Tools

The lack of effective web3-specific monitoring tools means that issues often go undetected until they start affecting end-users, leading to frantic scrambles to deploy fixes. Web3 developers frequently end up sacrificing their peace of mind and nights of sleep, as they resolve active issues, which lead to downstream effects:

  1. Users have a poorer experience
  2. Developers are consistently working in high-stress, high-stakes scenarios
  3. Issue fatigue threatens the overall success of the dapp

2. Traditional Tooling Does Not Cover the Complexity of Web3

Moreover, the situation is exacerbated by traditional analytics tools that, despite their strengths in other domains, often fail to serve the unique needs of web3. 

These tools don't capture the depth and breadth of data that developers require to anticipate and mitigate issues in a decentralized environment. 

From user interactions to smart contract executions to token transfers, the world of web3 requires monitoring and analytics that can handle its multifaceted complexity.

What are the advantages of data-driven engineering tools?

The three main advantages of data-driven engineering tools are: proactive issue management, performance optimization, and enabling engineers to make more informed decisions.

1. Proactive Issue Management

Real-time data helps in detecting potential problems early and mitigating them before they impact users. Potential issues that can be flagged early on range from performance bottlenecks to abnormal user behavior.

Some examples include:

  • API consumption limits being hit during peak times
  • Utilized nodes being out of sync
  • Third party providers being unavailable
  • Blockchain congestion
  • Bugs in the frontend being deployed to production causing transactions to fail
  • Detecting bad actors trying to interact with your smart contracts

A real world example was a dapp deploying a feature update into production leading to a significant increase in failed transactions, costing gas to the users without transactions successfully executing. 

After being alerted about this spike, the engineering team could quickly find the root cause, which was a bug in the dapp’s frontend trying to call a smart contract function by passing a hardcoded parameter that consistently violated a revert statement in this function. 

As the revert statement did not include an explanatory revert reason, finding the root cause without an observability tool would have impacted a larger number of their users. 

2. Performance Optimization

Analyzing data can help identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, leading to optimized performance and a better user experience. Such performance issues include slow smart contract execution, oracle latency issues, inefficient resource usage, and issues with interoperability across the web3 stack

In a concrete instance, a development team using Blocktorch identified a recurring inefficiency within their dapp where a specific smart contract was causing higher-than-normal gas fees due to its complex nature. 

With this information, the dapp developers were able to refactor the smart contract to streamline its execution and significantly reduce gas fees. This efficiency gain not only enhanced the performance of their dapp but also resulted in cost savings and UX improvements for their users. This scenario illustrates how data-driven insights can lead to tangible benefits and a competitive edge in the Web3 landscape.

3. Informed Decision Making

Teams can make better decisions about feature development, resource allocation, and system enhancements by using insights derived from data. 

Observability provides visibility into how users interact with different features of the dapp and trends in usage over time. Such information can for example be the specific chains that are used more than others by your users (for best user experience, ensure the most used chain in your dApp is the default chain) as well as comparing this information to competing dApps. 

Another example is optimizing support for specific browsers or wallets that an increasing number of users are using. 

3 Tools to Help Monitor Engineering Issues in Web3

To become more data-driven as a web3 engineering team, it's crucial to incorporate tools that provide observability and in-depth data analysis. Here are a few tools that can help web3 engineers have great observability and monitoring into their applications.

1. Alchemy Monitor

Alchemy Monitor provides a comprehensive suite of dashboards for monitoring and analytics to understand dapp user behavior and Alchemy API health and performance. 

Monitor allows dapp developers to evaluate their API usage analytics by call type in order to better understand how to optimzie and debug their programs. It also provides a platform for creating alerts and digests about your application’s activity.

2. Blocktorch

Blocktorch is an Alchemy Ventures portfolio company that provides blockchain developers with end-to-end insights into dapps. Positioned as a full stack monitoring platform for web3 applications, blocktorch delivers an unrivaled breadth and depth of insights including frontends, blockchain transactions, smart contract performance, and each layer of the web3 stack.

Blocktorch enables engineering teams to not just react to real-time data, but also anticipate potential issues. They take proactive management a step further by identifying patterns, spotting anomalies, and visualizing these insights in a format that's simple to interpret. 

This empowers teams to not only comprehend the complete health of their dapp but also make informed decisions and deploy rapid fixes.

3. Tenderly

Tenderly is a smart contract developer tool to build, test, monitor and operate smart contracts from development to adoption. The suite of tools support engineers to test their smart contracts thoroughly with a powerful transaction simulator before deploying to mainnet and to identify issues in production by finding the specific line of code in smart contracts that lead to issues. 

5 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web3 Monitoring Tool

When choosing a web3 observability and monitoring tool for your decentralized application, consider the following factors: coverage, real-time alerting, data interpretation, scalability, and integrations with other providers.

1. Comprehensive Coverage

The tool should provide insights into every layer of your web3 stack, from user interactions to smart contract execution. Blocktorch gives engineers visibility into the frontend of their dApps, the smart contracts developed by the engineering team and also other protocols integrated with, and on demand the used oracles and decentralized file storage. 

In addition Blocktorch is interoperable with the web2 data standard Open Telemetry, to be usable in conjunction with any web2 observability tools in case the application is only partly decentralized but still relies on cloud services. 

2. Real-Time Alerting

The tool should offer real-time alerts for potential issues, enabling the team to rectify them before they escalate. Some of the most frequently used alerts set up by web3 engineers are:

  • Average time of transactions pending in the mempool
  • Percentage of dropped and failed transactions
  • Sudden drops in usage which indicates potential faulty functionality
  • Spikes in gas fees especially in relation to overall network gas cost 

All the listed examples directly impact the users as either their cost of using the dapp increases and they look for cheaper alternatives, or they face issues using the dapp which leads to churn. 

3. Easy Data Interpretation

Look for tools that provide easy-to-understand data visualizations and actionable insights. 

Out-of-the box dashboards provide insights in very short time, custom dashboards give engineers the flexibility to monitor exactly according to the team's needs. The optimal tool should support both. Dashboards offer a bird’s eye view on the systems to understand trends, spikes and liveness to then dive deeper into. 

4. Scalability 

As your dapp grows, the monitoring tool should be able to scale up seamlessly. For example, if your dapp is adding support for a new blockchain network, your monitoring tool should similarly be able to extend to the new chain. 

The tool and its pricing tiers should also be scalable itself, so the real-time functionalities work also when your dapp experiences an increase in usage. 

5. Integration

The tool should integrate smoothly with other tools and services your team uses. For example, integrations with IDEs for smart contract deployments as well as API providers for nodes and other services can be helpful for a smooth observability experience and the richest data. 

Conclusion

Adopting a data-driven approach is imperative for web3 engineering teams to deliver a seamless user experience. Tools like Alchemy and blocktorch, with their advanced observability features, play a crucial role in enabling teams to identify and rectify issues swiftly.

ALCHEMY SUPERNODE - ETHEREUM NODE API

Scale to any size, without any errors

Alchemy Supernode finally makes it possible to scale blockchain applications without all the headaches. Plus, our legendary support will guide you every step of the way.

Get started for free
Supernode footer
Web3 Tools
Developer dapp monitoring tools

How to Identify Issues in Your Dapp Quickly and Deploy Fixes Before They Affect Users

Learn About the Challenges and Solutions Engineers Face for Monitoring Their Dapp's Health
Last Updated:
Last Updated:
March 14, 2023
Don't miss an update
Sign up for our newsletter to get alpha, key insights, and killer resources.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Table of Contents

Talk to an Expert

Learn how Alchemy's blockchain developer tools can help your business succeed in web3!
Valid number
Thank you! An Alchemy expert will be in touch with you shortly!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

{{building-alchemy-ad}}

In the dynamic world of decentralized applications (dapps), swift identification and resolution of issues are critical to maintaining a seamless user experience and fostering customer trust.

The key lies in transforming traditional reactive troubleshooting into proactive health management of your dapps through data-driven engineering.

What is unique about data-driven engineering in web3?

Data-driven engineering involves making decisions based on hard data instead of hunches or gut feelings. Data-driven engineering empowers engineering teams to predict, understand, and solve problems before they affect end-users.

What are the challenges of data-driven engineering in web3?

Despite the immense potential that data-driven engineering offers, at present many web3 developers find themselves stuck in a reactive mode because of challenges such as a lack of proper tooling, the complexity of web3, and 24/7 nature of the blockchain industry.

1. Lack of Web3 Observability Tools

The lack of effective web3-specific monitoring tools means that issues often go undetected until they start affecting end-users, leading to frantic scrambles to deploy fixes. Web3 developers frequently end up sacrificing their peace of mind and nights of sleep, as they resolve active issues, which lead to downstream effects:

  1. Users have a poorer experience
  2. Developers are consistently working in high-stress, high-stakes scenarios
  3. Issue fatigue threatens the overall success of the dapp

2. Traditional Tooling Does Not Cover the Complexity of Web3

Moreover, the situation is exacerbated by traditional analytics tools that, despite their strengths in other domains, often fail to serve the unique needs of web3. 

These tools don't capture the depth and breadth of data that developers require to anticipate and mitigate issues in a decentralized environment. 

From user interactions to smart contract executions to token transfers, the world of web3 requires monitoring and analytics that can handle its multifaceted complexity.

What are the advantages of data-driven engineering tools?

The three main advantages of data-driven engineering tools are: proactive issue management, performance optimization, and enabling engineers to make more informed decisions.

1. Proactive Issue Management

Real-time data helps in detecting potential problems early and mitigating them before they impact users. Potential issues that can be flagged early on range from performance bottlenecks to abnormal user behavior.

Some examples include:

  • API consumption limits being hit during peak times
  • Utilized nodes being out of sync
  • Third party providers being unavailable
  • Blockchain congestion
  • Bugs in the frontend being deployed to production causing transactions to fail
  • Detecting bad actors trying to interact with your smart contracts

A real world example was a dapp deploying a feature update into production leading to a significant increase in failed transactions, costing gas to the users without transactions successfully executing. 

After being alerted about this spike, the engineering team could quickly find the root cause, which was a bug in the dapp’s frontend trying to call a smart contract function by passing a hardcoded parameter that consistently violated a revert statement in this function. 

As the revert statement did not include an explanatory revert reason, finding the root cause without an observability tool would have impacted a larger number of their users. 

2. Performance Optimization

Analyzing data can help identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, leading to optimized performance and a better user experience. Such performance issues include slow smart contract execution, oracle latency issues, inefficient resource usage, and issues with interoperability across the web3 stack

In a concrete instance, a development team using Blocktorch identified a recurring inefficiency within their dapp where a specific smart contract was causing higher-than-normal gas fees due to its complex nature. 

With this information, the dapp developers were able to refactor the smart contract to streamline its execution and significantly reduce gas fees. This efficiency gain not only enhanced the performance of their dapp but also resulted in cost savings and UX improvements for their users. This scenario illustrates how data-driven insights can lead to tangible benefits and a competitive edge in the Web3 landscape.

3. Informed Decision Making

Teams can make better decisions about feature development, resource allocation, and system enhancements by using insights derived from data. 

Observability provides visibility into how users interact with different features of the dapp and trends in usage over time. Such information can for example be the specific chains that are used more than others by your users (for best user experience, ensure the most used chain in your dApp is the default chain) as well as comparing this information to competing dApps. 

Another example is optimizing support for specific browsers or wallets that an increasing number of users are using. 

3 Tools to Help Monitor Engineering Issues in Web3

To become more data-driven as a web3 engineering team, it's crucial to incorporate tools that provide observability and in-depth data analysis. Here are a few tools that can help web3 engineers have great observability and monitoring into their applications.

1. Alchemy Monitor

Alchemy Monitor provides a comprehensive suite of dashboards for monitoring and analytics to understand dapp user behavior and Alchemy API health and performance. 

Monitor allows dapp developers to evaluate their API usage analytics by call type in order to better understand how to optimzie and debug their programs. It also provides a platform for creating alerts and digests about your application’s activity.

2. Blocktorch

Blocktorch is an Alchemy Ventures portfolio company that provides blockchain developers with end-to-end insights into dapps. Positioned as a full stack monitoring platform for web3 applications, blocktorch delivers an unrivaled breadth and depth of insights including frontends, blockchain transactions, smart contract performance, and each layer of the web3 stack.

Blocktorch enables engineering teams to not just react to real-time data, but also anticipate potential issues. They take proactive management a step further by identifying patterns, spotting anomalies, and visualizing these insights in a format that's simple to interpret. 

This empowers teams to not only comprehend the complete health of their dapp but also make informed decisions and deploy rapid fixes.

3. Tenderly

Tenderly is a smart contract developer tool to build, test, monitor and operate smart contracts from development to adoption. The suite of tools support engineers to test their smart contracts thoroughly with a powerful transaction simulator before deploying to mainnet and to identify issues in production by finding the specific line of code in smart contracts that lead to issues. 

5 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web3 Monitoring Tool

When choosing a web3 observability and monitoring tool for your decentralized application, consider the following factors: coverage, real-time alerting, data interpretation, scalability, and integrations with other providers.

1. Comprehensive Coverage

The tool should provide insights into every layer of your web3 stack, from user interactions to smart contract execution. Blocktorch gives engineers visibility into the frontend of their dApps, the smart contracts developed by the engineering team and also other protocols integrated with, and on demand the used oracles and decentralized file storage. 

In addition Blocktorch is interoperable with the web2 data standard Open Telemetry, to be usable in conjunction with any web2 observability tools in case the application is only partly decentralized but still relies on cloud services. 

2. Real-Time Alerting

The tool should offer real-time alerts for potential issues, enabling the team to rectify them before they escalate. Some of the most frequently used alerts set up by web3 engineers are:

  • Average time of transactions pending in the mempool
  • Percentage of dropped and failed transactions
  • Sudden drops in usage which indicates potential faulty functionality
  • Spikes in gas fees especially in relation to overall network gas cost 

All the listed examples directly impact the users as either their cost of using the dapp increases and they look for cheaper alternatives, or they face issues using the dapp which leads to churn. 

3. Easy Data Interpretation

Look for tools that provide easy-to-understand data visualizations and actionable insights. 

Out-of-the box dashboards provide insights in very short time, custom dashboards give engineers the flexibility to monitor exactly according to the team's needs. The optimal tool should support both. Dashboards offer a bird’s eye view on the systems to understand trends, spikes and liveness to then dive deeper into. 

4. Scalability 

As your dapp grows, the monitoring tool should be able to scale up seamlessly. For example, if your dapp is adding support for a new blockchain network, your monitoring tool should similarly be able to extend to the new chain. 

The tool and its pricing tiers should also be scalable itself, so the real-time functionalities work also when your dapp experiences an increase in usage. 

5. Integration

The tool should integrate smoothly with other tools and services your team uses. For example, integrations with IDEs for smart contract deployments as well as API providers for nodes and other services can be helpful for a smooth observability experience and the richest data. 

Conclusion

Adopting a data-driven approach is imperative for web3 engineering teams to deliver a seamless user experience. Tools like Alchemy and blocktorch, with their advanced observability features, play a crucial role in enabling teams to identify and rectify issues swiftly.

In the dynamic world of decentralized applications (dapps), swift identification and resolution of issues are critical to maintaining a seamless user experience and fostering customer trust.

The key lies in transforming traditional reactive troubleshooting into proactive health management of your dapps through data-driven engineering.

What is unique about data-driven engineering in web3?

Data-driven engineering involves making decisions based on hard data instead of hunches or gut feelings. Data-driven engineering empowers engineering teams to predict, understand, and solve problems before they affect end-users.

What are the challenges of data-driven engineering in web3?

Despite the immense potential that data-driven engineering offers, at present many web3 developers find themselves stuck in a reactive mode because of challenges such as a lack of proper tooling, the complexity of web3, and 24/7 nature of the blockchain industry.

1. Lack of Web3 Observability Tools

The lack of effective web3-specific monitoring tools means that issues often go undetected until they start affecting end-users, leading to frantic scrambles to deploy fixes. Web3 developers frequently end up sacrificing their peace of mind and nights of sleep, as they resolve active issues, which lead to downstream effects:

  1. Users have a poorer experience
  2. Developers are consistently working in high-stress, high-stakes scenarios
  3. Issue fatigue threatens the overall success of the dapp

2. Traditional Tooling Does Not Cover the Complexity of Web3

Moreover, the situation is exacerbated by traditional analytics tools that, despite their strengths in other domains, often fail to serve the unique needs of web3. 

These tools don't capture the depth and breadth of data that developers require to anticipate and mitigate issues in a decentralized environment. 

From user interactions to smart contract executions to token transfers, the world of web3 requires monitoring and analytics that can handle its multifaceted complexity.

What are the advantages of data-driven engineering tools?

The three main advantages of data-driven engineering tools are: proactive issue management, performance optimization, and enabling engineers to make more informed decisions.

1. Proactive Issue Management

Real-time data helps in detecting potential problems early and mitigating them before they impact users. Potential issues that can be flagged early on range from performance bottlenecks to abnormal user behavior.

Some examples include:

  • API consumption limits being hit during peak times
  • Utilized nodes being out of sync
  • Third party providers being unavailable
  • Blockchain congestion
  • Bugs in the frontend being deployed to production causing transactions to fail
  • Detecting bad actors trying to interact with your smart contracts

A real world example was a dapp deploying a feature update into production leading to a significant increase in failed transactions, costing gas to the users without transactions successfully executing. 

After being alerted about this spike, the engineering team could quickly find the root cause, which was a bug in the dapp’s frontend trying to call a smart contract function by passing a hardcoded parameter that consistently violated a revert statement in this function. 

As the revert statement did not include an explanatory revert reason, finding the root cause without an observability tool would have impacted a larger number of their users. 

2. Performance Optimization

Analyzing data can help identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies, leading to optimized performance and a better user experience. Such performance issues include slow smart contract execution, oracle latency issues, inefficient resource usage, and issues with interoperability across the web3 stack

In a concrete instance, a development team using Blocktorch identified a recurring inefficiency within their dapp where a specific smart contract was causing higher-than-normal gas fees due to its complex nature. 

With this information, the dapp developers were able to refactor the smart contract to streamline its execution and significantly reduce gas fees. This efficiency gain not only enhanced the performance of their dapp but also resulted in cost savings and UX improvements for their users. This scenario illustrates how data-driven insights can lead to tangible benefits and a competitive edge in the Web3 landscape.

3. Informed Decision Making

Teams can make better decisions about feature development, resource allocation, and system enhancements by using insights derived from data. 

Observability provides visibility into how users interact with different features of the dapp and trends in usage over time. Such information can for example be the specific chains that are used more than others by your users (for best user experience, ensure the most used chain in your dApp is the default chain) as well as comparing this information to competing dApps. 

Another example is optimizing support for specific browsers or wallets that an increasing number of users are using. 

3 Tools to Help Monitor Engineering Issues in Web3

To become more data-driven as a web3 engineering team, it's crucial to incorporate tools that provide observability and in-depth data analysis. Here are a few tools that can help web3 engineers have great observability and monitoring into their applications.

1. Alchemy Monitor

Alchemy Monitor provides a comprehensive suite of dashboards for monitoring and analytics to understand dapp user behavior and Alchemy API health and performance. 

Monitor allows dapp developers to evaluate their API usage analytics by call type in order to better understand how to optimzie and debug their programs. It also provides a platform for creating alerts and digests about your application’s activity.

2. Blocktorch

Blocktorch is an Alchemy Ventures portfolio company that provides blockchain developers with end-to-end insights into dapps. Positioned as a full stack monitoring platform for web3 applications, blocktorch delivers an unrivaled breadth and depth of insights including frontends, blockchain transactions, smart contract performance, and each layer of the web3 stack.

Blocktorch enables engineering teams to not just react to real-time data, but also anticipate potential issues. They take proactive management a step further by identifying patterns, spotting anomalies, and visualizing these insights in a format that's simple to interpret. 

This empowers teams to not only comprehend the complete health of their dapp but also make informed decisions and deploy rapid fixes.

3. Tenderly

Tenderly is a smart contract developer tool to build, test, monitor and operate smart contracts from development to adoption. The suite of tools support engineers to test their smart contracts thoroughly with a powerful transaction simulator before deploying to mainnet and to identify issues in production by finding the specific line of code in smart contracts that lead to issues. 

5 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Web3 Monitoring Tool

When choosing a web3 observability and monitoring tool for your decentralized application, consider the following factors: coverage, real-time alerting, data interpretation, scalability, and integrations with other providers.

1. Comprehensive Coverage

The tool should provide insights into every layer of your web3 stack, from user interactions to smart contract execution. Blocktorch gives engineers visibility into the frontend of their dApps, the smart contracts developed by the engineering team and also other protocols integrated with, and on demand the used oracles and decentralized file storage. 

In addition Blocktorch is interoperable with the web2 data standard Open Telemetry, to be usable in conjunction with any web2 observability tools in case the application is only partly decentralized but still relies on cloud services. 

2. Real-Time Alerting

The tool should offer real-time alerts for potential issues, enabling the team to rectify them before they escalate. Some of the most frequently used alerts set up by web3 engineers are:

  • Average time of transactions pending in the mempool
  • Percentage of dropped and failed transactions
  • Sudden drops in usage which indicates potential faulty functionality
  • Spikes in gas fees especially in relation to overall network gas cost 

All the listed examples directly impact the users as either their cost of using the dapp increases and they look for cheaper alternatives, or they face issues using the dapp which leads to churn. 

3. Easy Data Interpretation

Look for tools that provide easy-to-understand data visualizations and actionable insights. 

Out-of-the box dashboards provide insights in very short time, custom dashboards give engineers the flexibility to monitor exactly according to the team's needs. The optimal tool should support both. Dashboards offer a bird’s eye view on the systems to understand trends, spikes and liveness to then dive deeper into. 

4. Scalability 

As your dapp grows, the monitoring tool should be able to scale up seamlessly. For example, if your dapp is adding support for a new blockchain network, your monitoring tool should similarly be able to extend to the new chain. 

The tool and its pricing tiers should also be scalable itself, so the real-time functionalities work also when your dapp experiences an increase in usage. 

5. Integration

The tool should integrate smoothly with other tools and services your team uses. For example, integrations with IDEs for smart contract deployments as well as API providers for nodes and other services can be helpful for a smooth observability experience and the richest data. 

Conclusion

Adopting a data-driven approach is imperative for web3 engineering teams to deliver a seamless user experience. Tools like Alchemy and blocktorch, with their advanced observability features, play a crucial role in enabling teams to identify and rectify issues swiftly.

{{building-alchemy-ad}}

Contact Us

Talk to an expert at Alchemy to answer all of your product questions.
Valid number
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Build blockchain magic with Alchemy

Alchemy combines the most powerful web3 developer products and tools with resources, community and legendary support.

Get started for free