Danny Nelson
Algorand is gaining the ability to analyze the largest blockchains by adding the PARSIQ monitoring system to its platform, company executives told CoinDesk.
PARSIQ is a monitoring tool for compliance officers, market analysts, blockchain developers and researchers. The advance brings new business insights to the blockchain first proposed by MIT professor Silvio Micali, such as following transactions and tracking smart contracts in real time.
The addition makes it easier for users to get a “broad view” of the blockchain, from interpreting reams of data to tracking and analyzing movements on the network, Algorand CEO Steve Kokinos told CoinDesk. He called it a benefit for users seeking detailed analysis.
“There’s a need to both simplify experiences and also give people better information about network application performance, and we think the work PARSIQ is doing will be a great addition for people developing on the Algorand blockchain.”
“PARSIQ is allowing people to analyze these blockchains that are too big these days to be analyzed by any kind of normal tool,” Tom Fry, PARSIQ spokesman, said.
He said PARSIQ addresses the growing complexity of ballooning blockchains, including Bitcoin’s 242 GB blockchain. “Right now, it’s crazy, you can barely fit it on a hard drive,” Fry said of it.
Much of that functionality comes from PARSIQ’s domain-specific language: ParsiQL.
“We call it a data stream manipulation language,” PARSIQ founder Andre Kalinowski said, adding that its applications help users track the blockchain in real-time.
Smart triggers – essentially an off-chain notification system for on-chain smart contracts – is one such tool. It gives users a customizable window into market movements and smart contract executions, alerting them when specified conditions are met, the white paper describes.
Algorand does not yet support smart contracts – the company said that it’s building out that functionality now. But Kalinowski said that once it does, PARSIQ’s smart triggers will be there to monitor them.
“We will extend the monitoring to Algorand’s Smart Contract technology when it becomes available to the public. This will work in a similar way to how we monitor Ethereum Smart Contracts now, allowing triggers to be set up for Smart Contract events.”
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