Lack of Proper Indexing Holding Back DApp Speeds, Says Pangea CEO

Decentralized applications (DApps), or Web3 applications, are facing significant speed challenges, with load times often far slower than their Web2 counterparts. While users expect applications to load within three seconds, many Web3 applications experience delays of up to 20 seconds, leading to frustration and potential user abandonment. According to Maxim Legg, CEO of Pangea, a decentralized data indexing solution, the root cause of these slowdowns lies in the lack of effective data indexing.

The Indexing Problem for Web3

Unlike traditional Web2 apps, which can rely on centralized databases for fast access to data, Web3 DApps must organize blockchain data from various sources, including RPC nodes, smart contracts, and other blockchain infrastructure. On high-throughput chains, this data can accumulate to hundreds of terabytes, creating significant challenges for DApps trying to retrieve and display relevant information quickly.

Legg explains that indexing — the process of organizing raw blockchain data for quick and efficient retrieval — is essential to overcoming this bottleneck. He argues that solving the issue once and for all through proper indexing solutions could prevent DApp developers from having to build their own inefficient, complex, and time-consuming solutions.

"This is not something you want your developers to be dealing with," Legg told Cointelegraph. "It's a real infrastructure problem that, once solved, doesn't need to be addressed by every single DApp developer individually."

The Impact of Blockchain Throughput

The challenge of data indexing becomes even more pressing as blockchain networks increase their throughput, or transactions per second (TPS). The higher the TPS, the more on-chain data is generated, which in turn increases the data that DApps must index. For example, as blockchain ecosystems scale, the volume of data grows exponentially, making efficient indexing critical to maintaining DApp speed and performance.

In October 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin set ambitious goals to scale Ethereum’s base layer and layer-2 solutions to process over 100,000 transactions per second combined. These improvements, part of Ethereum’s roadmap, are also focused on increasing interoperability between Ethereum and its many layer-2 networks.

Layer-2 solutions like Starknet and ZKsync are also targeting substantial throughput increases. At the DevCon 2024 conference, Ben Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, the company behind Starknet, announced plans to quadruple the TPS of Starknet within three months, bringing it closer to rivaling Solana's throughput. Similarly, ZKsync aims to increase its throughput to 10,000 TPS by 2025 while reducing transaction fees to as low as $0.0001.

Solana’s High Throughput Model

Currently, Solana leads the high-throughput race with a non-voting throughput of 800 to 1,050 TPS, and its design has garnered significant attention from developers. Known for its monolithic architecture, Solana’s model allows for high scalability, which has helped make it the top ecosystem for development in 2024.

As these networks grow in scale and throughput, the need for effective data indexing becomes even more critical. Without it, DApps will struggle to handle the increasing volume of on-chain data, which could result in delays, slow response times, and ultimately poor user experience.

The Future of DApp Speed

For DApp developers, the solution to this bottleneck is clear: data indexing. As blockchain throughput increases and the demand for fast, responsive decentralized applications grows, investing in efficient indexing solutions will be key to unlocking the full potential of Web3.

With companies like Pangea offering decentralized data indexing solutions, the Web3 ecosystem has the opportunity to scale and improve the performance of DApps, creating a more seamless experience for users. By solving the indexing challenge, Web3 applications could finally reach the speed and efficiency that users expect, making them competitive with the fast, fluid experience of Web2 applications.