Etherscan's sudden charging unexpectedly exposes the data dependency contradiction in the Ethereum ecosystem

Original Title: "Etherscan Cancels Several Free APIs, Uncovering Issues We Never Considered"

Original Author: Eric, Foresight News

On November 23, Lefteris Karapetsas, the founder of the open-source portfolio tracker Rotki, tweeted his frustration 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 block explorers.

While he understands that providing free services can be quite stressful, he questioned whether they could have given a bit more notice or at least avoided making such an announcement during a major event when everyone is away, leaving no time to respond.

According to Etherscan's announcement, as the performance of chains gradually improves, the volume of data has also increased significantly, which has raised costs considerably. In this situation, they can no longer afford to provide all APIs for free and have reluctantly turned some of the originally free APIs into 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 also a bit puzzled, wondering if Base, OP Mainnet, and BNB Chain really couldn't afford to support such an important service, aside from Avalanche.

However, opposing voices quickly followed, with Jack, the founder of Routescan and operator of the Avalanche block explorer Snowtrace, being the first to respond. Jack provided some data that might only be known within the industry:

· Etherscan charges the chains it supports approximately $1.5 million to $2 million annually, although some only cost around $300,000 and 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 can cost up to $899;

· Last month, the number of unique visitors to 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 had 4 million.

The CEO's implication is that charging for a small number of APIs is indeed due to financial constraints, not because they are greedy for money. Some chains have not paid, and they have already been generous by providing free services for a while, so everyone should stop complaining and move on.

There isn't much to discuss about this issue; some people feel that Etherscan is greedy, while others think that commercial behavior is justifiable. However, some other discussions that emerged from this event are quite interesting.

First, this incident made the author aware of the existence of an ecosystem alliance called VERA, which promotes convenient, unified, and open access to EVM smart contract source code, as well as the Open Labels Initiative, which advocates for the standardization of EVM address labeling frameworks and data models. The goals of these two organizations are essentially aligned: to support the accessibility of blockchain data, especially verification.

The Open Labels Initiative retweeted Lefteris Karapetsas's complaint and stated that they have been working to prevent the emergence of over-reliance on centralized on-chain data providers for the past year, and they believe that such important infrastructure should not be monopolized but should be co-built.

Organizations like sourcefify.eth, a tool for verifying Ethereum contract code, the Ethereum data visualization platform growthepie, the open-source block explorer Blockscout, and the previously mentioned Routescan are all contributing to the readability and accessibility of Ethereum data.

According to Akshat Mittal, a DeFi engineer at Reserve Protocol, Etherscan has not participated in these initiatives. Is it for commercial interests? No one knows, but even if it is, it is understandable. The Ethereum ecosystem will always have some who uphold open-source culture and reject excessive commercialization, which is neither good nor bad; it is simply the diversity of the ecosystem. Profit-oriented organizations can ensure service quality, while open-source products will also have their place.

Additionally, 0xFrancis, the founder of zCloak Network, who has recently been generous in praising IC, once again compared IC with Ethereum.

0xFrancis stated that Ethereum does not consider "querying block data" as part of its consensus, and developing DApps must rely on third-party RPC services. If RPC nodes collectively go offline, the chain will continue to operate, but it will become "unreadable."

On a deeper level, if centralized RPC nodes or websites like Etherscan provide false data, it can easily mislead users. IC treats querying itself as part of the protocol; when someone initiates a query request, it is executed uniformly through the ICP node network and returns cryptographically verified data, ensuring the accuracy of the data.

0xFrancis's points are not without merit, and this can serve as a typical example of IC being overly advanced. The debate surrounding Etherscan's fees is also a classic discussion about centralization versus decentralization. However, could it be that Ethereum's imperfections and the need for commercialization components have actually driven the prosperity of its ecosystem?