cardano-graphql VS cardano-db-sync

looking to avoid deploying our own instance of https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-graphql, and the current REST implementations of different providers arent expressive enough for our use case.

I'd suggest to use either cardano-graphql or Ogmios which both provide direct interfaces for querying stake addresses' balances.

More about that here https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-graphql

Do check out cardano-db-sync which has a docker-compose file that utilizes cardano-node.

Where are the instructions for building cardano-db-sync? https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-db-sync/blob/master/doc/building-running.md

There are a bunch of examples in the cardano-db-sync repository link to interesting-queries.md

Continuously sync chain to PostgreSQL using official script * https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-db-sync.

Your best choice is running a cardano-db-sync and make queries to the postgres database: https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-db-sync/

So what did I do so far: I followed this instruction(https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-db-sync/blob/master/doc/docker.md) and had a cardano-node, a cardano-db-sync and a postgres isntance running on docker. I was able to successfully connect to the postgres database. However, I was not able to find recent transactions even thought the blockchain was up to date. When I took a close look onto the docker console I saw that the cardano-db-sync_1 process continuously exited with code 126.

https://pool.pm/whales is useful for when whales change their delegation, but what you probably need is cardano-db-sync which basically follows the chain and dumps information into PostgreSQL.