9 min read
You can now access Logs for your RPC endpoints, helping you troubleshoot issues more effectively. If you encounter an issue with your RPC calls, simply check the logs in your QuickNode dashboard to identify and resolve problems quickly. Learn more about log history limits on our pricing page.
Overview
Are you finding it challenging to keep up with your blockchain data usage? QuickNode has got you covered! With its powerful tools and metrics, managing your blockchain activity has never been easier. This guide will walk you through the powerful insights and features that the QuickNode User Dashboard offers and how best to utilize them. Let's dive in!
What is the QuickNode User Dashboard?
The QuickNode User Dashboard is your central hub for building and managing blockchain infrastructure. From creating endpoints for specific blockchains to enabling advanced security features like JSON Web Tokens (JWT), it gives you everything you need to launch and scale with ease.
Inside the dashboard, you can explore powerful tools like Streams for backfilling and accessing real-time data, and enhance your performance with Marketplace add-ons like Single Flight RPC and the Solana Priority Fee API—all designed to make your setup faster, smarter, and more efficient.
In this guide, we'll be covering the following features and products:
- Endpoint Metrics
- Usage & Billing
- Security
- Marketplace
- Streams
- Functions
- Rollup as a Service (RaaS)
- IPFS
- Teams
- API Keys
Create a QuickNode Endpoint
To access the User Dashboard, you'll need a QuickNode account. You can create one for free here. Once you have created an account and logged in, click the Create an Endpoint button and choose the blockchain and network you want access to.
Then, according to the blockchain and network you have selected, you can see the available add-ons recommended for your endpoint. You can review and add these add-ons or continue without them.
Once you create your endpoint on the QuickNode User Dashboard, the autogenerated name appears at the top, which you can customize by clicking the pencil icon. Alongside the essential HTTP and WSS provider URLs, the dashboard offers an expanded selection of developer resources like sample projects, walk-through sample codes, and recommended guides.
Now, let's dive into all that the Dashboard has to offer, starting with the Metrics tab.
Metrics
On the Metrics tab, you can see all activity related to a specific endpoint. At a glance, you can see the latest block height (of that particular blockchain), the number of responses served to you in a rolling 30-day period, and the client version (e.g., Geth 1.13.14) your endpoint is running on. Keep note that responses served are not the same as API Credits used.
Visually seeing the activity you are conducting is important. This is why the Metrics tab breaks down your RPC calls into different visual representations, such as graphs and tables. In the graph above, the Method calls over time graph represents your endpoint's RPC responses in a rolling 30-day period (summarized by a day/24-hour time period). This can even be further broken down into different timeframes such as hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly or filtered down to a specific RPC method (which then applies to all visualizations).
The metrics dashboards described below (Method call breakdown, response status breakdown, response status over time, and method response time) are only available to users on the Build plan and above. Check out our pricing for more information.
With the Method call and Response status breakdown, you'll see all the specific methods you are calling from your endpoint and the type of call it is (e.g., HTTP code and protocol). A list of response codes is also tracked to see how often your endpoint returned a successful response.
Response status over time is displayed and can be filtered down by HTTP response codes.
To check your endpoint's response time performance, you can analyze the Method response time (maximum) graph, which will break down your endpoint's maximum response times.
The maximum metric represents the highest response time observed during the time interval. For instance, if we receive 1 million responses and the highest time taken was 200ms, then 200ms would be recorded as the maximum value for that interval.
Usage & Billing
Another important component of understanding your endpoint and usage can be reviewed on the Usage & Billing tab. This page provides information regarding usage on your account (in terms of API Credits), while the Metrics tab is focused on endpoint performance.
Usage
The Usage tab will show details such as the number of endpoints you have active, how many you can create on your plan, the number of QuickAlerts created, credit usage, and credit usage over time. Note that the data on this tab is derived from your cumulative usage across all endpoints in terms of API credits (which differs from the responses shown on the Metrics tab) and reflects this usage in your current billing cycle. The billing cycle is usually the date of the payment plus one month, and users can choose the period. This differs from the data shown on the Metrics tab, which tracks responses in a rolling 30-day period (the current time minus 30 days).
To better understand how many API Credits your endpoint has used, you can also view the breakdown at an endpoint level:
For more information about API Credits and how they are calculated, check out this post. The remaining tabs on this page are described here:
- Plan: Displays information regarding your plan type, invoices, and any subscription settings you may want to update
- Add-ons: Configure your add-ons and see which are already included in your plan
- History: Displays payment history
- Payment methods: Update and manage your payment method on file
Security
In the Security tab, you'll find that QuickNode offers various security features for your endpoint, which caters to a wide range of use cases.
Token Based Authentication
Endpoints, by default, come with token-based authentication enabled, however, you can disable this feature if you wish. Note that disabling token-based authentication allows anyone who knows your hostname to make requests to your endpoint. You can also create multiple authentication tokens, which enables you to add and remove specific authentication tokens. This can be useful for developing teams to better manage endpoint usage or for security measures such as a comprised endpoint (learn more about multi-token auth in this QuickNode guide).
The Security features listed below are only available to users on the Build plan and above.
- Rate limit by IP address
- JSON Web Token
- Referrer Whitelist
- Domain Mask
- Source IP
- Contract Addresses
Rate Limit by Address
Rate limit by address is a feature that applies rate limits to individual IP addresses. It is recommended if your endpoint is publicly facing to manage traffic from different sources.
JSON Web Tokens
A popular security feature for modern applications is JSON Web Tokens (aka JWT). This allows for authentication on the client side and can improve security between your endpoint and front-end. Learn how to add JWT to your front-end application in this QuickNode guide.
Referrer Whitelist
You can also whitelist hostnames to have access to your endpoint. If the API request arrives without a whitelisted domain name in the Referrer or Origin HTTP header, the request will be denied. Learn how to set up a referrer whitelist in this QuickNode guide.
Domain Masks
You may want to mask your endpoint with another name (for example, your branded domain name). Domain masking can help you accomplish this. You'll want to add the domain to the list and then update your domain's CNAME settings to include your endpoint name. Check out this QuickNode guide to learn more about domain masks.
Source IP
IP whitelisting is another feature that is available to your QuickNode endpoint. You can add up to 25 IP addresses you wish to whitelist for your endpoint. This security feature differs from referrer whitelisting as it takes an IP (e.g., 123.123.123.123 vs. quicknode.com).
Contract Addresses
You can also limit which smart contracts your endpoint can make requests to. This feature is only supported for EVM-based chains and the eth_call RPC method, but additional methods will be added in the future.
If you are looking for advanced security options tailored to your application, check out Endpoint Armor in the QuickNode Marketplace.
Marketplace Add-ons
QuickNode Marketplace allows users to enhance their endpoints' capabilities by installing add-ons. In the Add-ons tab, you'll find that QuickNode offers a variety of useful add-ons and tools you can use to supplement your blockchain infrastructure.
Here are a few worth considering:
- Solana Priority Fee API: Estimates Solana fees by getting real-time priority fee averages based on recent fee data.
- Metis - Jupiter V6 Swap API: Makes lightning fast calls to Jupiter swap API via their SDK with clear and reliable rate limits.
- BTC Blockbook JSON-RPC Add-On: Gets access to balances, transactions, and UTXOs for addresses or xpubs via JSON-RPC.
- Single Flight RPC: Bundles multiple RPC calls to get full block and transaction receipts so you don't have to.
- Multi-region Transaction Broadcast: Send transactions to multiple regions in a single RPC call.
- Flashbots Protect: An RPC endpoint that users can add to their wallets, which sends their transactions to Flashbots to prevent frontrunning.
- Crossmint NFT Mint API: Create and send NFTs to your users with a single line of code. Check out this QuickNode guide to learn how.
To see the full list of add-ons, check out the QuickNode Marketplace. If you want to become a marketplace partner and publish your own add-on, apply for a developer account here.
Streams
To receive both real-time and historical blockchain data, Streams provides a powerful solution with guaranteed delivery. Whether you need to monitor on-chain activity as it happens or backfill historical data for analysis, Streams is designed to meet your needs. Setting up is simple: choose your dataset, specify your data preferences, and Streams will continuously push data to your designated destination, such as webhooks, PostgreSQL, or Amazon S3.
Streams is available to all users with a QuickNode plan. For teams with unique requirements, we offer tailored datasets, dedicated support, and custom integrations. Contact our team for more information.
Here are a few ways you can utilize Streams:
- Monitoring real-time gas prices
- Tracking all transactions associated with a given address
- Receiving updates when a smart contract method is executed
- Backfilling historical data for comprehensive analysis
For a step-by-step guide on setting up Streams, visit our Setting Up Streams with Webhook Streams guide. To see Streams in action, visit our Streams guides.
Functions
Functions is a serverless product designed to build and deploy functions specifically optimized for blockchain data processing. To get started, navigate to the Functions tab in your QuickNode dashboard and click Create Function. This allows you to process blockchain data efficiently with automatic scaling and no infrastructure management, whether used as a standalone function or integrated with tools like Streams.
For more on creating and managing Functions, see our Functions Getting Started Guide and other Functions Guides.
Rollup as a Service
Rollup as a Service (RaaS) enables you to launch your own Layer 2 or Layer 3 rollup for faster, cost-efficient blockchain transactions. To deploy a rollup, go to the Rollups tab in your QuickNode dashboard and select Deploy a New Rollup. This provides high-performance RPC endpoints, a block explorer, and a bridge UI for a complete rollup experience.
For more on deploying and managing rollups, check out our Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) Getting Started Guide and other RaaS guides.
IPFS
IPFS on QuickNode offers easy pinning services and gateway access to store and share files in a decentralized manner securely and efficiently. IPFS, or InterPlanetary File System, is a protocol and network designed to create a content-addressable, peer-to-peer method of storing and sharing hypermedia in a distributed file system.
IPFS is available to all users on the Build plan. View our feature breakdown by plan on our pricing page.
IPFS is perfect for scenarios like:
- Hosting decentralized websites
- Storing metadata for NFTs
- Sharing large files without relying on a central server
- Ensuring data permanence with content addressing
Learn how to get started with IPFS on QuickNode in our IPFS documentation. To see IPFS in action and understand its practical applications, dive into our guide: How to Create and Host a Blog with IPFS using QuickNode
Teams
The Teams feature lets you collaborate with others by providing access to QuickNode products and services (i.e., endpoints, Streams). To create a team, click the avatar icon in the top left, select Teams, and click Create Team. This allows team members to work with one account’s resources seamlessly. Note that invited users must not already have a QuickNode account.
For more details on managing teams and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) feature, see our Team Management and RBAC Guide.
API Keys
To interact with QuickNode's services over API as opposed to the UI, you can create API Keys from your dashboard. These keys can be configured with access to one or many products. To create your keys, log in to your QuickNode Account, click on the avatar icon on the top left, and select API Keys. It will bring you to the API Keys page.
For more information on using API keys with specific products, such as Streams, Functions, Key-Value Store, IPFS, and the Console API, you can refer to their dedicated documentation pages.
Final Thoughts
By applying the knowledge acquired from this guide, you can create a secure, reliable, and efficient infrastructure that meets your needs. Good luck!
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