We’re excited to share more about Grove's Portal v2 update, their latest step forward in our commitment to providing scalable and robust decentralized Web3 infrastructure.

‍

The following text was shared by the team at Grove.

‍

This update sets a strong foundation for the future of the Portal, offering enhanced data transparency while sharpening our focus on meeting or exceeding the Quality of Service of a centralized provider on POKT’s decentralized network.

Our engineering team has been hard at work implementing several major improvements to the Portal. To bring a seamless migration, we've ensured that the transition to Portal v2 is invisible to end users. We anticipate no interruption of service, and there is parity between features and regional support.

Portal v2 brings several important changes, including:

• A new, clean codebase that allows for scalable development and faster iteration of new features
• A new architecture for expanded user customization of Portal Applications, including improved administration functions
• A Quality of Service (QoS) module to be expanded upon
• The Portal Data Services initiative, which focuses on the expanded capture and analytics of network traffic. This includes increased transparency of node selection logic.

Laying the Foundation for Future v2 Updates

The clean code base of Portal v2 is crucial for ensuring scalability, as we continue to grow and adapt our Web3 infrastructure solutions to the needs of our users. In accordance with our Product Roadmap, we'll be exploring and expanding on features. QoS and Platform (Administrator and User) features will be highly emphasized.

See what’s happening on the Product Roadmap

By transitioning to Go, we're leveraging its impressive performance, simplicity, and scalability to strengthen the foundation of the Portal. This will enable us to seamlessly accommodate the growing needs of our users while maintaining the high-quality experience that’s expected with Web3 infrastructure. Some key benefits of using Go include:

• Enhanced performance. Go's efficient compilation and execution allow for faster response times and reduced latency. This contributes to a more responsive and satisfying user experience.

• Improved maintainability. Go's clean syntax and strong typing make it easier to read and maintain code. This will be critical as our codebase continues to evolve.

• Robust scalability. Go's inherent concurrency support empowers us to build more scalable solutions that can handle increasing workloads and user demands with ease.

Aligning the Portal with the POKT Protocol

Rewriting the Portal APIs in Go not only unlocks these technical benefits but also brings our Portal in sync with the POKT Protocol. This alignment fosters better integration and consistency across the ecosystem. It simplifies the development and maintenance processes for both our team and external contributors. By unifying our technology stack, we can accelerate the implementation of new features and improvements while ensuring seamless compatibility between the Portal and the Protocol.

Regional Mapping Differences and Region-based Rollout

To ensure a smooth rollout, we're implementing a region-based migration from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Starting with the lowest-traffic region and moving to the highest traffic region, we'll be utilizing the GCP Traffic Director to send fractional amounts of traffic. This will allow us to closely monitor and optimize the process. We will not be deprecating any regions until after v2 is fully live and stable.

Learn more about our partnership with Google Cloud

As part of this transition, our existing regions will be updated as shown in the chart below.

Throughout this process, you can stay tuned to our Discord announcements for all updates on the regional roll-out.

Join the Portal Discord

New Features and the Path Forward

With Portal v2, we'll have the foundation to expand on features that emphasize QoS and Platform (Administrator and User) features. We're dedicated to providing increased data transparency and improved visibility of node selection logic as part of Portal v2. This will ensure that our community has the information they need to make informed decisions and optimize accordingly.

Portal v2 will also allow us to move from a more “monolithic” approach to our codebase (logic split across the whole codebase, difficult to understand and maintain), to an approach with more defined modules and services that are built in a way that makes them easier to maintain and re-use.

Some of the new modules in Portal v2 are:

• Relayer: Sending relays to node runners
• Quality of Service: Node selector logic
• Middleware: Coordinating the modules to work together 
• Plugins: One-off business logic use cases (e.g. user security, MEV)
• Metrics: What we save as metrics, and how we do it
• Messaging: Cross-regional communication using pub/sub
• Chains: Unique business logic per chain

At launch, Portal v2 will be closed source, so that the team can focus on the migration and stability. In alignment with our open core model, some modules and plugins will be open sourced with time. This enables us to protect our intellectual property and maintain important competitive advantages while improving data transparency and community engagement. The Portal v2 enhancements we’ve highlighted above will help us with that data transparency. This will be especially true with regard to node selection logic.

Stay Tuned for More

We're thrilled about Portal v2 as a major building block for the future, and our expanded ability to provide added data transparency and an improved experience for the community. Portal v2 allows us to continually enhance our protocol with optimal quality of service, and stay at the forefront of decentralized Web3 infrastructure for years to come.

Stay tuned for more updates and announcements in the Portal Discord! We're excited to share more about the upcoming features and improvements that Portal v2 will bring to our service.