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Proposal: Funding for Design and Development of XCQ, the Cross-Consensus Query Language
Following are the recent discussions of XCQ
XCM as a Standard for Reading And Interacting with Parachains - #19 by gavofyork, and Polkadot forum discussion of XCQ, with all the positive comments, we would like to move onto the next phase, to have treasury's funding support in making this happen.
Cross-consensus Query Language or XCQ, is the missing piece to enable a lot of utilities that currently lacks with XCM alone.
Example use cases (more in our full proposal here):
- Query balances of an account
- Query the weight and fee of a particular XCM
- Query if a certain feature / pallet is available
- Implement decentralized staking pool from a parachain
- Use XCQ to query staking rewards from relaychain
- Use XCQ to query weights and fees for related operations
- Automatically purchase coretime from broker chain
- Use XCQ to query market information
- Use XCQ to query weights and fees for related operations
XCQ employs a extension based design, above features are developed as extensions and new features can be added later on as extensions too, all without changing to the core XCQ protocol.
With these XCQ queriable informaiton, it will greatly enhance UX of XCM bridge UIs, wallets, universal dApps in the ecosystem, and more as list of extensions grows.
We would like to open this discussion for other use cases (i.e. extensions) you would like to see, if it has enough support we will add them to the list too.
Link to full proposal https://docs.google.com/document/d/11c0-t0S5WbVLpoonh24OgadcK4X35_I1Q0HKpxKxLBk/edit?usp=sharing
Comments (3)
Great initiative. XCM really shoudln't be used to query data - but we need some abstraction for queries
across chains
We'd like to contribute a requirement:
We should not assume that blockchains using XCQ necessarily are transparent. In the case of Incognitee, the state is private and a user is only authorized to query i.e. their own balance. It gets more complex for private smart contracts: there we need a standardized way to describe authorization rules generically
Would be great if XCQ could be applied in such a case too
@integritee
That's an interesting use case that we did not consider before. Could you add a comment here and describe some technical details on how a private query may be executed to access private data.
Firstly, I commend the Acala team for consistently delivering valuable tools that have greatly improved the developer experience within the Polkadot ecosystem. The deliverables, such as the XCQ protocol, extensions, and comprehensive documentation, promise to provide robust tools and references. This proposal addresses a critical need in our multi-chain environment. The lack of a standardized method for querying information across different chains creates unnecessary guesswork and operational inefficiencies.
The use cases you’ve outlined—from querying balances and asset prices to improving cross-chain treasury management and enhancing wallet functionality—highlight the vast potential of XCQ. This tool will streamline existing processes and open up new possibilities for cross-chain interactions and integrations. Including a 10% buffer to account for potential volatility is prudent, ensuring the project stays on track without further financial hiccups.
Given the extensive groundwork, including the previous discussions and the detailed milestones, I’m confident that the Acala team is well-equipped to bring XCQ to fruition. The commitment to transparency and progress updates is also reassuring. I’m eager to see the positive impact XCQ will have and fully support this.
Cheers, Jimmy