Antelope Firewall
The Antelope blockchain family distinguishes itself through its unique transaction processing methods. This innovation brings challenges in managing a strong infrastructure to handle numerous unsuccessful HTTP requests and speculative transactions. This situation underscores the need for reliable and efficient firewall and proxy server solutions to maintain the network’s health and accessibility.
The Challenge at Hand
Antelope blockchains operate under a unique model where users are not charged for transactions that fail. While this model encourages active participation and experimentation within the ecosystem, it has also led to increased load on HTTP-level traffic, creating a bottleneck that can affect all network participants.
Introducing Antelope Firewall
In response to these challenges, Animus Labs has developed Antelope Firewall, a solution designed to serve as a ratelimiter, firewall, and load balancer specifically for Antelope blockchains. This tool is not just an addition to the network’s infrastructure but a fundamental enhancement aimed at ensuring the smooth operation of RPC servers and, by extension, the entire blockchain ecosystem.
Key Features
At the core of Antelope Firewall are its advanced filter and rate limit systems. These allow node providers to sift through incoming traffic and identify requests that are likely to fail, thus preventing unnecessary load on the servers. By introspecting requests to be proxied, antelope-firewall can block or granularly rate limit problematic IPs, authorizers, and even specific smart contracts, ensuring that potentially successful transactions are prioritized.
Configurable Prometheus Exporter
Understanding the importance of observability in maintaining a healthy network, Antelope Firewall includes a configurable Prometheus exporter. This feature allows node operators to monitor and analyze traffic, providing insights into the types of requests being processed and identifying potential sources of abuse or inefficiency.
Health Checks
Antelope Firewall performs health checks on nodes to detect any that are lagging or otherwise incapable of processing requests correctly. This ensures that only functional nodes are included in the routing system, minimizing the risk of failed transactions.
High Performance with Rust
Rust’s advantages, including the absence of a garbage collector and stringent compile-time checks, ensure that antelope-firewall can handle high loads with predictable performance.
SSL Traffic Handling
Antelope Firewall is designed to operate behind a proxy when handling HTTPS requests. This decision ensures that the system remains focused on its core functionalities without the added complexity of unwrapping SSL traffic.
Why This Matters
The blockchain industry is steadily moving towards lower costs and faster transaction times. This evolution necessitates infrastructure that can support the resultant high load without compromising on performance or security.
Final Notes
This product development was made possible with support from the EOS Network Foundation. Their funding has been essential in bringing this project to life.
Try Antelope Firewall today
https://github.com/animuslabs/antelope-firewall
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