Introducing Lava Mainnet

News & Updates
Ethan
Jul 30, 2024

Today, the Lava Public Mainnet is launching, marking a first step to powering access for blockchains.

Lava began 2 years ago with a passionate team of contributors, a drastically different era for crypto, and a vision for decentralizing RPC. Back then, Ethereum was the only mainnet, modular blockchains was still an unknown concept and huge verticals such as RWAs and dePIN were only in their infancy.

Uniswap pool is here.

ALWAYS verify the correct token address - see section at end of this page.

Lava: a modular access layer for all blockchains

Blockchains are global, decentralized databases which allow users to read data and write data by sending requests to nodes. Read and write - in other words, “access”. Today, still, basic interactions with dapps and blockchains are unreliable and slow. This is due to poor quality infrastructure for blockchain access.

Lava Network is building the modular and decentralized access layer, so every blockchain can provide low latency, high uptime and scalable read/write for users. Having launched Testnet in early 2023, Public Mainnet is the start of a longer term plan to support every appchain and rollup, from Ethereum L2s to modular rollups.

There are two key components of Lava - an appchain and an off-chain protocol

Lava blockchain:

  • Cosmos SDK, delegated proof of stake
  • RPC providers “register” on the Lava blockchain, by staking LAVA
  • RPC consumers (dapps, wallets) fetch a list of RPC providers every epoch, generated according to geolocation, size of stake and quality of service

Off-chain protocol:

  • Fully peer-to-peer betwen providers and consumers, RPC service can still occur even if Lava chain halts
  • Consumers score providers across quality of service (latency, uptime and data accuracy)
  • Providers can earn tokens from other chains via incentive pools
  • Providers are incentivized to offer quality service, via algorithmically-boosted rewards and a jailing/slashing system

Ultimately, Lava lets chains quickly attract, aggregate and coordinate RPC providers by creating incentive pools. As a result, users get faster and more reliable access to any blockchain.

This is powered by the LAVA token.

A new kind of token launch

In recent years, many projects have converged on one approach to launching mainnet and their tokens:

The “CEX-first, low float, high FDV, high inflation” launch.

At Lava, we’ve taken a radical new approach to the launch that goes back to early protocol launches like Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana, believing that crypto protocols must be decentralized and as accessible as possible to users.

This means:

  • Dex-first
  • Higher float
  • A capped supply, with no inflation
  • Market-derived FDV
  • A focused airdrop to active onchain users and community members

We believe this approach is how all crypto protocols should be built - prioritizing community and sustainability, not only VCs.

The problem Lava solves

When Lava first started, despite a growing DeFi ecosystem, the user experience for interacting and connecting to Ethereum was still unreliable. Wallets would regularly fail and NFT mints would require several attempts before finalizing.

The increase in blockchains and rollups only made this problem more important.

Today, Ethereum has largely reliable RPC (the way wallets/dapps connect to blockchains), but many other rollups are not served by the largest providers, making the user and developer experience drastically worse.

Lava helps all blockchains give users and developers a reliable connection to the ecosystem.

Bring back innovation and decentralized participation

Crypto has always been about rebellion.

  • Rejection of entrenched, rigged system.
  • Resistance against centralized power.
  • Exit from broken, monopolistic platforms.

Lava is launching in the same vein and we expect many more projects will find new ways to bootstrap their community set. Contributors, node operators, developers and users are invited to join the eruption.

The lava must flow.

Verify you are using the right LAVA Token address

Always verify that you are interacting with the correct smart contract and LAVA token.

There are many fake tokens already claiming to be LAVA.

Note: while Lava is a Cosmos appchain, and the LAVA token follows the Cosmos standard, when bridged to EVM networks like Arbitrum, you will need to interact with the LAVA ERC-20 version.

Always verify the ERC20 token you are interacting with, e.g. on Arbitrum, has the correct token contract address:

0x11e969e9B3f89cB16D686a03Cd8508C9fC0361AF

Arbirtum explorer link:

https://arbiscan.io/token/0x11e969e9B3f89cB16D686a03Cd8508C9fC0361AF

Where to find LAVA & how to stake

LAVA is a Cosmos token and can also be found as an ERC-20 token (Arbiscan) on EVM networks such as Arbitrum. LAVA is designed to be distributed far and wide, to enable broad participation in the network.

Lava on Uniswap: https://app.uniswap.org/explore/pools/arbitrum/0x4F122EdCD91AF8Cda38C3A87158afa8687bab57c

Lava on Squidrouter (for bridging & swapping):

https://app.squidrouter.com/?chains=42161%2Clava-mainnet-1&tokens=0x11e969e9B3f89cB16D686a03Cd8508C9fC0361AF%2Culava

Some validators have also created staking guides to help stakers secure the network. You can find Leap Wallet's guide here.

Note

By accessing and reading this article, you represent and warrant that you do not reside in, are not located in, are not incorporated in, and do not have a registered office or principal place of business in the United States.

Also note that this is announcement of the Public Mainnet. Lava is a novel blockchain which already has dapps and users. We reached out directly to community members and partners to join as Validators and Providers, ensuring a wide diversity of participants.

Initial delegators have staked tokens to secure Lava Mainnet over the last few months. However, there were no services and no incentive pools live on private Mainnet, and only 0.46% of total LAVA supply was distributed for rewards. These rewards were reserved for testnet and Public Mainnet participants.

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