Due to potential display issues with some charts in format across various devices and platforms, please refer to the detailed information in this Google Document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NXVGFI6i-5zoEXoMpm30j2u7FA5h9f1n2ccWvxR9RWE/edit?usp=sharing
https://kusama.polkassembly.io/post/2686
Subscan requests funding from the Kusama Treasury to support 2025 Q3–Q4 operational maintenance for the following five networks:
Subscan is one of the most essential public data infrastructure services in the Kusama ecosystem, providing stable, accurate, and low-latency indexing for developers, validators, governance systems, wallets, and other crucial tools.
This proposal covers only maintenance and necessary compatibility work, not new feature development.
Total requested amount: USD 141,624 (to be converted to KSM using the 30-day average price at submission)
Over the past several months, Subscan has continued to deliver crucial updates and maintenance work for the Kusama ecosystem. Beyond providing stable explorer and indexing services, our team has:
As the default block explorer and indexing layer for Kusama, Subscan provides the foundational data required by nearly all ecosystem participants.
Without Subscan, many essential tools would face significant data degradation, and the accessibility of historical and governance data would be severely impacted.
This proposal includes the following mandatory maintenance activities:
Throughout 2025, Subscan has focused on deep infrastructure optimization. By refining our technical stack, we have successfully reduced internal overhead and operational costs without compromising the high service standards the ecosystem expects. Our goal is to pass these efficiencies directly to the networks we support through a more competitive pricing structure.
To ensure a stable transition, we are rolling out these optimizations and subsequent price reductions in stages:
Note: For a detailed breakdown of how these infrastructure improvements will impact future budgets, please refer to the "2026 Cost Outlook (Infrastructure Optimization Based)" section.
For the period of 2025 Q3–Q4, Subscan’s fee structure remains consistent with the model successfully utilized over the past two years.
Our maintenance packages are designed to support a wide range of data and operational needs, ensuring stable and efficient system performance. Because our overall cost structure is composed of multiple infrastructure and operational expenses—such as cloud services, network acceleration, monitoring systems, node providers, and the Subscan team’s ongoing operations—we use storage consumption as the primary metric for determining service fees.
Pricing Tiers:
a. Basic Plan
b. Advanced Plan
c. Professional Plan
Correlation to Real Costs:
Storage growth scales directly with block production and transaction activity, making it a more stable and predictable metric than raw API traffic. As chain activity evolves, storage becomes the clearest and most consistent indicator of the underlying infrastructure load required to maintain long-term historical data.
Subscan Baseline:
Subscan determines the appropriate fee tier based on the median storage consumption measured during the billing period. For example, for the Q3–Q4 2025 billing cycle, the baseline storage usage is derived from data recorded on September 30th.
Predictable Billing:
Basing fees on storage reduces the volatility caused by sudden traffic spikes and ensures a more transparent, usage-based cost model for both the community and the treasury.
Our pricing also incorporates the broader operational overhead required to run a production-grade, high-availability data service—such as cloud infrastructure, network acceleration, monitoring systems, node providers, and Subscan’s ongoing engineering and support efforts.
Because these components fluctuate dynamically based on cloud regions, traffic patterns, redundancy requirements, and security considerations, they cannot be broken down into a stable or meaningful line-item list. In addition, some of these details involve sensitive architectural and security-related information that should not be fully disclosed publicly in order to preserve system robustness and reduce attack surface.
For these reasons, Subscan adopts a service-fee-based pricing model, which is consistent with industry practices used by major explorer and indexing providers. Pegging the service fee to storage usage strikes the right balance between:
This model also enables Subscan to invest continuously in optimization and long-term cost reduction—ensuring that infrastructure improvements directly translate into better performance and lower overall fees for the ecosystem over time.
| Network | Actual Usage/GB | Date | Package | Fees/Month | Billing Period | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kusama | 4236.9 | 30/09/2025 | Professional | 19063 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 114378 |
| AssetHub-Kusama | 341.96 | 30/09/2025 | Basic+ | 1546 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 9276 |
| Coretime-Kusama | 93.14 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 799 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 4794 |
| BridgeHub-Kusama | 313.12 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 1397 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 8382 |
| People-Kusama | 88.89 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 799 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 4794 |
Kusama Relay Chain currently exceeds 4 TB of indexed data. This is primarily the result of long-term historical accumulation and the high density of chain activity. The key technical factors driving the large storage footprint include:
1. Long network lifespan and full historical retention
Kusama is one of the earliest and longest-running networks in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Its extended operational history results in a significantly larger volume of blocks, extrinsics, events, and state transitions.
Subscan preserves complete historical data without pruning, ensuring full auditability and long-term access for developers, explorers, governance tools, and research.
2. Increasing data complexity over time
As runtime modules, governance logic, asset operations, and state transition models have evolved, the structure and richness of on-chain events have grown substantially.
This results in more complex data schemas and heavier indexing requirements for historical blocks.
3. High density of XCM-related activity
Kusama carries some of the most experimental and active XCM traffic in the entire ecosystem.
The large number of cross-chain messages and event records generates:
This XCM-heavy traffic is a major contributor to the relay chain’s significantly larger storage footprint compared to individual parachains.
(Already operational on Westend testnet and gradually rolling out across the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems, with quantifiable cost-reduction results to be reflected in billing beginning Q1 2026.)
To mitigate long-term storage growth and reduce operational costs—particularly for the Kusama relay chain—we are executing several structural optimization initiatives. These include efforts to reduce reliance on GCP and lower total cost of ownership.
We are segmenting frequently accessed data into high-performance storage tiers while moving older blocks and events into cost-efficient archival layers.
This significantly reduces the cost of maintaining multi-terabyte historical datasets.
Given that XCM events represent a major portion of Kusama’s data weight, we are optimizing:
These adjustments reduce long-term index growth without affecting query accuracy.
To optimize long-term infrastructure costs, we are:
These changes directly address one of the largest cost drivers in the current operational model.
Subscan’s goal is to deliver high-quality infrastructure services with stable performance, predictable budgeting, and cost-efficient pricing, while also offering additional discounts for prepaid commitments.
As our ongoing optimization continues, Subscan expects to introduce more favorable and more predictable pricing in Q1 2026, including:
BASIC PLAN
ADVANCED PLAN
CUSTOM PLAN
2026 Estimated Annual Cost (Updated Pricing + Testnet Annual Discount)
| Network / Service | Plan | Monthly Fee (USD) | Annual Billing Discount | Annual Fee (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kusama | Custom | 10,000 | 25% | 90000 |
| Kusama Trace Service (Optional) | Custom | 4,000 | 25% | 36000 |
| AssetHub (Kusama) | Advanced (Up to 1 TB/month) | 1,699 | 25% | 15291 |
| AssetHub (Kusama) Trace Service (Optional)（This is a new feature and has not yet been officially implemented.） | Custom | 2,000 | 25% | 18000 |
| Coretime (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
| BridgeHub (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
| People (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
Based on the current scope and configuration, the estimated Total Annual Fee (USD) for 2026 is: 180,864.
Please note that this amount is provided for 2026 cost forecasting purposes only, and is intended to support an evaluation of the long-term sustainability of the service. We welcome further discussion on the most suitable payment structure and scope adjustments, including:
Subscan will prepare the 2026 service proposal based on the community’s feedback and preferred direction.
The total requested amount for all 5 networks, including all maintenance, operational overhead, and mandatory compatibility work, is USD 141,624. This request will be submitted in KSM, converted based on the 30-day average price at the time of on-chain submission.
2026-03-23 07:00:00 (+UTC), Block #14715524
KSM Price ( USD ): 4.340000;
Number of KSM: 32632.258064
KSM EMA7 Price ( USD ): 4.500600;
Number of KSM: 31467.804292
KSM EMA30 Price ( USD ): 4.690700;
Number of KSM: 30192.508580
Conclusion
Subscan has evolved alongside Kusama since its inception, serving as the "window" into the network’s data. As we move into the second half of 2025, this proposal is not just a request for funding, but a commitment to maintaining the gold standard of data transparency for the Kusama ecosystem.
Subscan is more than a block explorer; it is a public good. By supporting this proposal, the Kusama Treasury is investing in the reliability and accessibility of the network's data. We remain open to community feedback regarding the 2026 roadmap and are dedicated to delivering a more cost-effective, high-performance service in the coming year.
We invite the community to review our track record of consistent delivery and support this proposal to keep Kusama's data infrastructure robust and reliable.
What is Subscan?
Subscan is a tool that helps people see and use data from the Kusama network, like checking transactions, blocks, and votes.
What does this proposal ask for?
Subscan is asking for money to keep working for 6 months (July to December 2025) on five parts of Kusama.
How much money?
They want $141,624, which will be paid in KSM coins based on an average price.
What will the money be used for?
The money pays for basic maintenance, like keeping the data service running, fixing bugs, and updating the system when Kusama upgrades.
Why is it important?
Many people in the Kusama community, like developers, validators, and voters, use Subscan to get important information. Without it, their work would be harder.
Will costs go down in the future?
Yes! Subscan is working to make their system cheaper. They plan to lower prices starting in 2026.
What about past work?
Subscan has been funded by Kusama before to do similar work, and they have a history of completing their tasks.
Due to potential display issues with some charts in format across various devices and platforms, please refer to the detailed information in this Google Document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NXVGFI6i-5zoEXoMpm30j2u7FA5h9f1n2ccWvxR9RWE/edit?usp=sharing
https://kusama.polkassembly.io/post/2686
Subscan requests funding from the Kusama Treasury to support 2025 Q3–Q4 operational maintenance for the following five networks:
Subscan is one of the most essential public data infrastructure services in the Kusama ecosystem, providing stable, accurate, and low-latency indexing for developers, validators, governance systems, wallets, and other crucial tools.
This proposal covers only maintenance and necessary compatibility work, not new feature development.
Total requested amount: USD 141,624 (to be converted to KSM using the 30-day average price at submission)
Over the past several months, Subscan has continued to deliver crucial updates and maintenance work for the Kusama ecosystem. Beyond providing stable explorer and indexing services, our team has:
As the default block explorer and indexing layer for Kusama, Subscan provides the foundational data required by nearly all ecosystem participants.
Without Subscan, many essential tools would face significant data degradation, and the accessibility of historical and governance data would be severely impacted.
This proposal includes the following mandatory maintenance activities:
Throughout 2025, Subscan has focused on deep infrastructure optimization. By refining our technical stack, we have successfully reduced internal overhead and operational costs without compromising the high service standards the ecosystem expects. Our goal is to pass these efficiencies directly to the networks we support through a more competitive pricing structure.
To ensure a stable transition, we are rolling out these optimizations and subsequent price reductions in stages:
Note: For a detailed breakdown of how these infrastructure improvements will impact future budgets, please refer to the "2026 Cost Outlook (Infrastructure Optimization Based)" section.
For the period of 2025 Q3–Q4, Subscan’s fee structure remains consistent with the model successfully utilized over the past two years.
Our maintenance packages are designed to support a wide range of data and operational needs, ensuring stable and efficient system performance. Because our overall cost structure is composed of multiple infrastructure and operational expenses—such as cloud services, network acceleration, monitoring systems, node providers, and the Subscan team’s ongoing operations—we use storage consumption as the primary metric for determining service fees.
Pricing Tiers:
a. Basic Plan
b. Advanced Plan
c. Professional Plan
Correlation to Real Costs:
Storage growth scales directly with block production and transaction activity, making it a more stable and predictable metric than raw API traffic. As chain activity evolves, storage becomes the clearest and most consistent indicator of the underlying infrastructure load required to maintain long-term historical data.
Subscan Baseline:
Subscan determines the appropriate fee tier based on the median storage consumption measured during the billing period. For example, for the Q3–Q4 2025 billing cycle, the baseline storage usage is derived from data recorded on September 30th.
Predictable Billing:
Basing fees on storage reduces the volatility caused by sudden traffic spikes and ensures a more transparent, usage-based cost model for both the community and the treasury.
Our pricing also incorporates the broader operational overhead required to run a production-grade, high-availability data service—such as cloud infrastructure, network acceleration, monitoring systems, node providers, and Subscan’s ongoing engineering and support efforts.
Because these components fluctuate dynamically based on cloud regions, traffic patterns, redundancy requirements, and security considerations, they cannot be broken down into a stable or meaningful line-item list. In addition, some of these details involve sensitive architectural and security-related information that should not be fully disclosed publicly in order to preserve system robustness and reduce attack surface.
For these reasons, Subscan adopts a service-fee-based pricing model, which is consistent with industry practices used by major explorer and indexing providers. Pegging the service fee to storage usage strikes the right balance between:
This model also enables Subscan to invest continuously in optimization and long-term cost reduction—ensuring that infrastructure improvements directly translate into better performance and lower overall fees for the ecosystem over time.
| Network | Actual Usage/GB | Date | Package | Fees/Month | Billing Period | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kusama | 4236.9 | 30/09/2025 | Professional | 19063 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 114378 |
| AssetHub-Kusama | 341.96 | 30/09/2025 | Basic+ | 1546 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 9276 |
| Coretime-Kusama | 93.14 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 799 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 4794 |
| BridgeHub-Kusama | 313.12 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 1397 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 8382 |
| People-Kusama | 88.89 | 30/09/2025 | Basic | 799 | Q3 & Q4: 01/07/2025-31/12/2025 | 4794 |
Kusama Relay Chain currently exceeds 4 TB of indexed data. This is primarily the result of long-term historical accumulation and the high density of chain activity. The key technical factors driving the large storage footprint include:
1. Long network lifespan and full historical retention
Kusama is one of the earliest and longest-running networks in the Polkadot ecosystem.
Its extended operational history results in a significantly larger volume of blocks, extrinsics, events, and state transitions.
Subscan preserves complete historical data without pruning, ensuring full auditability and long-term access for developers, explorers, governance tools, and research.
2. Increasing data complexity over time
As runtime modules, governance logic, asset operations, and state transition models have evolved, the structure and richness of on-chain events have grown substantially.
This results in more complex data schemas and heavier indexing requirements for historical blocks.
3. High density of XCM-related activity
Kusama carries some of the most experimental and active XCM traffic in the entire ecosystem.
The large number of cross-chain messages and event records generates:
This XCM-heavy traffic is a major contributor to the relay chain’s significantly larger storage footprint compared to individual parachains.
(Already operational on Westend testnet and gradually rolling out across the Kusama and Polkadot ecosystems, with quantifiable cost-reduction results to be reflected in billing beginning Q1 2026.)
To mitigate long-term storage growth and reduce operational costs—particularly for the Kusama relay chain—we are executing several structural optimization initiatives. These include efforts to reduce reliance on GCP and lower total cost of ownership.
We are segmenting frequently accessed data into high-performance storage tiers while moving older blocks and events into cost-efficient archival layers.
This significantly reduces the cost of maintaining multi-terabyte historical datasets.
Given that XCM events represent a major portion of Kusama’s data weight, we are optimizing:
These adjustments reduce long-term index growth without affecting query accuracy.
To optimize long-term infrastructure costs, we are:
These changes directly address one of the largest cost drivers in the current operational model.
Subscan’s goal is to deliver high-quality infrastructure services with stable performance, predictable budgeting, and cost-efficient pricing, while also offering additional discounts for prepaid commitments.
As our ongoing optimization continues, Subscan expects to introduce more favorable and more predictable pricing in Q1 2026, including:
BASIC PLAN
ADVANCED PLAN
CUSTOM PLAN
2026 Estimated Annual Cost (Updated Pricing + Testnet Annual Discount)
| Network / Service | Plan | Monthly Fee (USD) | Annual Billing Discount | Annual Fee (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kusama | Custom | 10,000 | 25% | 90000 |
| Kusama Trace Service (Optional) | Custom | 4,000 | 25% | 36000 |
| AssetHub (Kusama) | Advanced (Up to 1 TB/month) | 1,699 | 25% | 15291 |
| AssetHub (Kusama) Trace Service (Optional)（This is a new feature and has not yet been officially implemented.） | Custom | 2,000 | 25% | 18000 |
| Coretime (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
| BridgeHub (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
| People (Kusama) | Basic (Up to 500 GB/month) | 799 | 25% | 7191 |
Based on the current scope and configuration, the estimated Total Annual Fee (USD) for 2026 is: 180,864.
Please note that this amount is provided for 2026 cost forecasting purposes only, and is intended to support an evaluation of the long-term sustainability of the service. We welcome further discussion on the most suitable payment structure and scope adjustments, including:
Subscan will prepare the 2026 service proposal based on the community’s feedback and preferred direction.
The total requested amount for all 5 networks, including all maintenance, operational overhead, and mandatory compatibility work, is USD 141,624. This request will be submitted in KSM, converted based on the 30-day average price at the time of on-chain submission.
2026-03-23 07:00:00 (+UTC), Block #14715524
KSM Price ( USD ): 4.340000;
Number of KSM: 32632.258064
KSM EMA7 Price ( USD ): 4.500600;
Number of KSM: 31467.804292
KSM EMA30 Price ( USD ): 4.690700;
Number of KSM: 30192.508580
Conclusion
Subscan has evolved alongside Kusama since its inception, serving as the "window" into the network’s data. As we move into the second half of 2025, this proposal is not just a request for funding, but a commitment to maintaining the gold standard of data transparency for the Kusama ecosystem.
Subscan is more than a block explorer; it is a public good. By supporting this proposal, the Kusama Treasury is investing in the reliability and accessibility of the network's data. We remain open to community feedback regarding the 2026 roadmap and are dedicated to delivering a more cost-effective, high-performance service in the coming year.
We invite the community to review our track record of consistent delivery and support this proposal to keep Kusama's data infrastructure robust and reliable.
Threshold
Threshold