Incentivized RPC Pools: September Report
Incentivized Public RPC
Lava Foundation
Oct 24, 2024
Lava is a modular data network for scaling access to any blockchain.
Lava works with rollups and blockchains to consolidate and improve their node infrastructure. Our Incentivized Public RPC service is already used across a growing set of chains, including NEAR, StarkNet, Evmos and Axelar, and soon Agoric, Koi, Filecoin etc.
Incentivized Public RPC is a programme where node operators join Lava and are rewarded for providing performant RPC. Chains such as NEAR will reward node operators in their native token. Developers benefit from an aggregated endpoint and the Lava Protocol which seamlessly routes RPC requests to the best available providers on the network.
If you're a rollup or blockchain, partner with Lava to scale your public infrastructure with Incentivized Public RPC.
If you're a developer/user, get fast and free RPC on our ipRPC chains:
NEAR endpoints - Mainnet and Testnet
StarkNet endpoints - Mainnet and Testnet
Across web3, chains have adopted a model where community members volunteer free RPC endpoints for onboarding developers and users. This initiative is frequently called "Public RPC" and the public endpoints are often insufficient for testing, let alone building applications which might require more resilient and performant service.
Blockchains cannot scale like this. For example, in the Cosmos ecosystem, all chains are unsupported by the largest providers such as Alchemy and Infura (who collectively serve an estimated 80%+ of Ethereum's RPC traffic). Instead, smaller node operators and validators either put up free endpoints or occasionally are incentivized via delegation, which is reluctantly given by foundations due to lack of performance transparency and quality of service guarantees.
As adoption grows and new chains emerge, innovation and usage will be limited to only the chains which have performant and reliable infrastructure. Public RPC needs to adapt for the next stage of web3.
Since October 2023, Lava has been working with several ecosystems on strengthening their public RPC infrastructure. Incentivized Public RPC leverages Lava Protocol to consolidate existing public endpoints, routing requests to the best performing providers.
RPC consumers on the protocol algorithmically score providers based on latency, uptime and data sync. Providers on the Lava network are eligible to appear in pairing lists, which are created based on QoS, geolocation and other parameters such as a provider's stake on the network. Relays are then sent to the most performant provider available for each request and, over time, service quality across the network will rise to a stable level.
The Incentivized Public RPC endpoints (across all interfaces e.g. REST, JSON-RPC, Tendermint, websockets, gRPC and more) remain free for developers to use and anyone to replace in their wallets.
Our vision is to be the universal infrastructure layer for accessing blockchains and rollups.
Late 2023, NEAR Protocol experience issues at the infrastructure level, with many RPC providers unable to handle the increase in traffic from inscriptions. Although the blockchain itself did not go down, it was clear that NEAR's node infrastructure was not at the level it needed to be to scale to the next stage of web3.
Lava launched the NEAR ipRPC endpoint in January and dapps have already reported improved stability and performance.
Lava also launched Evmos ipRPC in October 2023 and has since become the default endpoint for developers and users. This is based on achieving high availability and generous rate limits of 30 requests/second/IP.
Lava is a single network for fast, reliable and cost-efficient access to any blockchain. Its first service is to provide a performant RPC solution for developers and users, and it will later expand to any type of data infrastructure e.g. indexing and oracles.
If you’re looking to grow with us as we move towards Mainnet, we are already working with:
You can get in touch with the Lava team here: lavanet.xyz/partnerships
Alternatively, join our Discord to speak directly with our community and ask questions: discord.gg/bKkEtU6AMQ
Mainnet is coming in early 2024, bringing us closer to Lava's vision of a scalable, modular data layer for web3. We welcome all feedback and participation to help battle-test the network.
Thank you for taking part in the Lava journey.
Visit the website: lavanet.xyz
Create and manage RPC endpoints: accounts.lavanet.xyz/register
Read the docs: docs.lavanet.xyz
Meet the community: discord.gg/bKkEtU6AMQ
Follow our Twitter: twitter.com/lavanetxyz
Read our research papers: community.lavanet.xyz
