Decentralizing Ethereum Data with VulcanizeDB
Duration: 00:31:52
Speaker: Rob Mulholand
Type: Talk
Expertise: Intermediate
Event: Devcon
Date: Jul 2026
Ethereum is a robust platform for decentralized applications, but the same data structures and encodings that make it effective and trustless also complicate data accessibility and usability. How do you know token balances were updated correctly after you sent your transaction? Is an address authorized to seize your assets? How have system parameters changed over time? To answer these questions, we’ve traditionally depended on centralized APIs and block explorers to capture and serve historical data in a performant way. But what if those services shut down or returned modified results? VulcanizeDB has been working hard to address this problem - aiming to make it easier for anyone to set up, maintain, and query their own data directly. The good news: it is possible to keep track of the historical state of smart contracts without storing petabytes of data! The tricky part: you need to be intentional about how you track information, and you need to aggregate data from disparate sources to provide a holistic view. This workshop will provide a demo and hands-on experience walking through how VulcanizeDB simplifies the process of developing and interacting with smart contracts while keeping our applications and data independent of centralized third parties.
