Shadow

Shadow is a data workflow platform that provides infrastructure to reduce the engineering time and costs associated with on-chain data indexing and analytics. The company was founded in 2023 by siblings Alvin Hsia (CEO) and Emily Hsia (CTO), who previously worked in technical roles at Airbnb. Their shared experience in blockchain development, which intensified during the "DeFi summer" of 2020, led them to create Shadow.

The company's core product allows developers and analysts to get custom on-chain data by adding gasless event logs and view functions to any smart contract. This is accomplished using "shadow forks," which are off-chain, read-only execution environments that mirror the state of a public blockchain in real-time, optimized for data access. This process enables users to log desired information from any smart contract without paying gas fees, simplifying data stacks and accelerating product development. The platform handles infrastructure complexities such as nodes for both shadow and public chains, real-time state synchronization, and contract compilation. Shadow's services are aimed at crypto builders, developers, and data analysts who require deeper data coverage and faster integration cycles. The platform supports Ethereum Mainnet and Arbitrum, with plans to expand to Optimism and Base.

In December 2023, Shadow announced it had raised $9 million in a seed funding round led by Paradigm. Other investors include Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, the Ethereum Foundation, Uniswap, and Flashbots. The funding is intended to expand the engineering team. The company is headquartered in New York City.

Keywords: on-chain data, data extraction, blockchain analytics, smart contract data, shadow forks, crypto data infrastructure, gasless events, data indexing, Ethereum, DeFi, blockchain developer tools, real-time data, data workflow, crypto analytics, web3 data, EVM, smart contract indexing, blockchain data platform, seed funding, Paradigm