Most blockchain queries only return the present state. You check an account, and all you get is its current balance, its current token holdings, its current smart contract state.
But what if you need to look back in time?
- what was an account’s balance 1,000 blocks ago?
- how much did a user stake at a specific point?
- what was the state of a smart contract before an upgrade?
MultiversX Deep History Squad changes everything. It allows you to query any account at any block, just as easily as checking real-time data. Unlike standard observer nodes that track only the latest few blocks, Deep History Squad is a specialized observer node designed to store every single piece of historical data the MultiversX blockchain has ever produced.
This is a game-changer for:
- Developers building dashboards, analytics tools, and dApps.
- Auditors verifying past states for compliance and security.
- DeFi projects tracking staking rewards, vault performance, and liquidity shifts.
The Deep History Squad is an observer node designed to capture and maintain the complete historical state of the MultiversX blockchain. Unlike standard observers, which only track the latest state, it archives the entire trie data structure, making precise historical queries possible.
This enables
- Historical State Queries — Retrieve the state of an account at any specific block height.
- Comprehensive Data Retrieval — Access token balances, staking data, and smart contract states over time.
- Efficient Data Analysis — Analyze historical trends without reprocessing all past transactions.
Why this matters
By default, most blockchain nodes store only the current state of accounts and smart contracts. While historical transaction logs exist, reconstructing past states requires:
❌ Replaying every transaction up to the target block
❌ Manually parsing storage changes over time
❌ Handling smart contract upgrades & state modifications
This process is slow, expensive, and impractical at scale.
Instead of reconstructing past states manually, Deep History Squad stores the full historical trie data, allowing developers, auditors, and projects to:
✅ Instantly access historical states at any block height
✅ Directly query past balances, staking records, and smart contract storage
✅ Retrieve historical data without replaying transactions
At its core, Deep History Squad is not just an indexing tool, it is a full historical archive of the blockchain, continuously synchronizing with the network and maintaining complete account states and contract storage.
How it works
Deep History Squad synchronizes continuously with the blockchain, recording all state transitions. To query historical data:
- Specify the Block Nonce (Height): Defines the historical snapshot.
- Provide the Account Address and Key: Retrieves account balances, staking data, or contract states.
- Extract Historical Data: Returns the precise account state as it existed at the specified block.
Advantages of Deep History Squad
- Comprehensive Historical Access: Query account states from any historical block.
- Versatile Applications: Applicable for DeFi analytics, security audits, staking platforms, and governance tracking.
- Optimized Efficiency: Rapid data retrieval without reprocessing past transactions.
Applications
- Governance Analysis: Track historical voting power and participation.
- DeFi Monitoring: Analyze liquidity, vault performance, and staking behaviors.
- Security Auditing: Verify historical account states efficiently.
- Storage Analysis: Decode on-chain storage data for detailed contract state reviews.
- Smart Contract Forensics: Retrieve stored contract data from any past block, allowing developers to debug, analyze, and optimize protocols with a granular historical perspective.
From designing the architecture to creating tools for reading hex-encoded storage keys and querying specific block nonces, we helped bring full state-time-travel to MultiversX. It’s now powering advanced analytics and dashboards used across the ecosystem—including data on staking growth, DeFi behavior, and contract forensics.
* For developers and organizations interested in leveraging the capabilities of the Deep History Squad, please reach out to us through our official Telegram communities (BeaconX or buidly), where dedicated support is available to assist with integration and technical inquiries.
* Special thanks to Iulian Pascalau for his contributions to the development of key infrastructure components, including mx-epoch-proxy-go, which have helped make this tool possible
* For more details, refer to the MultiversX Deep History Squad documentation.
