Provide read-only access from the Access nodes during a spork

[vishalchangrani]

Problem Definition

What problem is this solving?

Currently, during a spork, the Flow access nodes are turned off to prevent users from submitting any new transactions. After the spork is complete, the access nodes on the new network and the old are turned back on. However, many applications for example Instagram, only needs read access to the network and should be able to read chain data during the spork.

Proposed Solution

What are the proposed solutions to this problem? During the spork, all the read-based APIs are served (e.g. GetBlock, GetCollection etc) and only the SendTransaction API is disallowed.

Definition of Done

What tests must pass for this issue to be considered solved? All except for the SendTransaction API is up during a spork.

Actions Needed Before Submitting

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[peterargue]

This would also be useful in the context of a network halt. Often the ANs are disabled to prevent new transaction submissions and load on ENs. It would be great to have the option of

1. Read-only (disable sending transactions)
2. Local-only (disable sending transactions and requests proxied to ENs)

[aishairzay]

Now that archive nodes are available (https://flow.com/post/flow-blockchain-node-operation-archive-node), is this possible to have for the next spork?

[vishalchangrani]

QN confirmed they can do for the public access nodes using their middleware. The have the capability to shutdown the SendTransaction API while allowing traffic for the other APIs.

[peterargue]

given quicknode has a solution for the public nodes, I'm going to close this