Hi! Dima from Subsquid here. I would like to bring some certainty as to why we decided to launch our testnet on Arbitrum Goerli (tl;dr: it has nothing to do with OpenGov), at the same time highlight the issues we do see with OpenGov on a different note. The launch of the testnet does not in any way affect the existing projects using Subsquid for data indexing, and Substrate based chains will remain being first-class citizens of the Squid SDK (ArrowSquid release) and later Subsquid Network.
First of all, what is Subsquid Network? It is a decentralized data lake to store and query bulk data, and by design it is agnostic with regards to what on-chain data it serves. It will serve the data from 100+ networks, both Substrate and EVM-based. The data is ingested and split between workers participating in the network. The worker logic is fully off-chain, and the smart contracts are only used for settlement and registration of the workers.
Why have we chosen Arbitrum vs an app chain?
The reason is very simple. Most of liquidity is concentrated on EVM chains. Everything else – exchanges, custodians, investors, institutions, developers, auditors – all follow the money. Second, our on-chain logic is quite simple – it is only the settlement layer, and we don’t need all the complexity of an app chain when we can go with a bunch of smart contracts. At this point it’s very hard to justify building a chain, as bootstrapping the token would’ve been much harder, while we’d have 10+ more things to care about about (e.g. how do we custody a non-EVM asset? How do we do audits? How do we incentivise validators/collators? etc etc). I do believe however that as we add more features, past certain threshold of complexity it does make sense to move some logic to a dedicated app-chain, retaining the EVM interface. But we are far from being there now.
It is a hard truth, but in my opinion, the Polkadot community should accept that without an EVM-centric roadmap and seamless cross-chain bridging to Ethereum + major EVM chains it risks exacerbating the negative feedback loop: less liquidity → less interest → less developers → less investments → less liquidity. Polkadot may have another 10+ years of runaway, but very few projects have the luxury of waiting that long for adoption.
Did OpenGov affect our decision?
No, but it did change our perspective on how we offer our services. Up until now, our strategy was to invest heavily into the development of the open-source indexing SDK for substrate chains, and provide the data for indexers for free as a public service. The community has been definitely supportive so far, until the recent proposal (referendum 145). While it has eventually passed, it became clear to us from the conversation that big DOT holders want to see such infra services to be independent of the treasury funding. I am not saying it is for bad or for good (maybe indeed such “cleansing” is healthy and will do more good eventually), but it definitely has changed our strategic outlook. Clearly, right now the ecosystem market is not big enough to accommodate the required R&D resources we put into the development of the SDK and the Giant Squid API without the “buyer of last resort”. The support for Substrate networks will also eventually shrink only to those (para)chains who commit to a (small compared to a usual RPC infra bill) monthly subscription fee.
To sum up, the treasury funding is not something one can rely on long-term unfortunately. Every retroactive proposal funding is a big stress test and the outcome really depends on a whim of a few whales. It goes into a strong conflict with the mission of funding “public goods”, which assumes long-term support and sustainability. The chaos, in my opinion, comes from the lack of a clear understanding and a strong discontent within the community about what should and what should not be funded by the treasury.