Confederacy lookup services

Confederacy lookup services are integral modules in Confederacy that facilitate the location and retrieval of specific Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) within a given topic, based on submitted queries. Serving as dynamic data management reservoirs, these services utilise the specifics of incoming UTXO events to build elaborate data stores, which are then used for indexing and parsing UTXO data.

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A Confederacy lookup service reacts to UTXO events - both entries and exits within a particular topic. Whenever a Topic Manager running on the Confederacy instance admits new outputs to any topic or an output gets spent, the lookup service considers these events, feeding them into its datastore for indexing. This custom datastore caters to each service's specific requirements and can apply deep analytical and indexing methodologies to make sense of the data, structure it, and provide responses to queries.

When a lookup service provider receives a search query, the service uses the information from the query to perform a datastore search. The lookup service responds with a standard format (BRC-36) response to the user, indicating a set of UTXOs responsive to the query. It is noteworthy that the service decides its datastore organisation and search algorithm independently, catering to the protocol of the specified overlay network.

Confederacy hosts also have the opportunity to monetise the use of their lookup services by using PacketPay, a base-layer monetisation system. The hosts can establish their fee models for the services, enabling receiving money from users for access to data and, in some cases, paying other nodes for data synchronisation. The flexibility of the PacketPay system allows for unique monetisation strategies tailored per Confederacy node, ensuring that the system is not only functional but also profitable for the node operators.