Multi-chain world - meet modular data

Phase one of our approach was to decentralize node infrastructure to create greater resilience and cost-efficiency. This approach removed single point of failure and over 300+ node providers have since joined Lava. Our testnet has successfully onboarded developers to our p2p SDK and protocol.

But developers are looking for more than reliability. In a multi-chain world, infrastructure has become wildly fragmented, limiting innovation to the most established chains and stunting activity in newer ecosystems. Developers are looking for total flexibility to innovate in web3, without worrying about infrastructure. Today, Lava solves this.

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Lava functions like a dynamic marketplace, creating and matching supply to demand for any type of data, on any blockchain.
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As a chain grows in traffic and popularity, community contributors (”Champions”) can permissionlessly add that chain's APIs as modules on Lava. Node operators join the network, each competing to offer the highest quality of service. Developers and applications ("Consumers") plug into Lava, automatically pairing to the best providers in the network. Each provider is continuously scored and compensated according to latency, uptime and accuracy.
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The entire ecosystem is bound by incentives. Anyone can participate and earn rewards:

• “Champions” define “specs” to add new types of data infrastructure to the network e.g RPC, indexing, oracles etc.
• “Providers” run nodes and serve data as part of a network of competing operators, rewarded based on quality of service
• “Delegators” add stake to the best providers and earn a % of their rewards
• “Consumers” are apps, services and projects that need access to data, and plug into Lava via the Gateway UI, backend server kit or Lava SDK.

Fragmented infrastructure limits innovation in the modular ecosystem

Fragmentation is the largest obstacle to web3 innovation.
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If you want to build an application in crypto, you need a data provider. The quality of data providers on each chain differs wildly and doesn't scale quickly enough to meet developer and user interest. For example, if Cosmos was to jump on popularity today, it would still be dependent on highly unreliable public endpoints.
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Battling these issues is a huge time-sink for developers, which are only worsening as more rollups and chains are launched and backend complexity for the average web3 app increases. Instead of focusing on innovation, developers focus on infrastructure.
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Just like long-standing issues caused by fragmented liquidity or connectivity, disjointed infrastructure creates systemic issues that have no native solution:

• developers are highly dependent on a handful of "good-enough" providers, and vulnerable when those provides go down
• developers rely on word of mouth or marketing to find the best providers and face vendor lock in if they want to switch
• developers must use multiple providers to cover all the chains they want to access
• developers must pay for expensive add-ons like debug APIs or indexing or pay for multiple contracts

Build whatever, wherever

Lava is an open network of node operators that quickly add and compete to serve in-demand RPC and APIs, on any blockchain. This gives a completely flexible, fast and scalable platform for developers to use as their backend.

Now developers do not need to worry about data infrastructure when building on a new chain.

• What if developers could access all chains in one place, through whatever API, with very few lines of code?
• What if developers could automatically send relays to the best available node provider, based on historical performance, latency, uptime and data freshness?
• What if developers could buy one subscription and customize it with services from all providers, instead of just one?

This is what Lava does for blockchain data, starting with RPC and indexing. We intend for Lava to contribute the following to Ethereum, its rollups and the broader multi-chain ecosystem:

• Speed up rollup and blockchain deployment by quickly bootstrapping the supply of RPC and indexing providers
• Making any API much faster, more resilient and cost-effective
• Abstract away multi-chain data infrastructure and eliminate the fragmentation we see today across L2s and rollups
• Creates sustainable incentives for long-term node decentralization

As Lava expands with web3, we aim to support newer ecosystems as well as the most popular today:

• Modular projects such as Celestia, Hyperlane, Astria and future rollups
• L2s on Ethereum such as Arbitrum, Starknet, Polygon, Base, Optimism
• Appchains in Cosmos such as Osmosis, Evmos, Axelar, Berachain, Juno and more
• Alt-L1s such as Solana, Aptos, Avalanche

Lava will support Celestia

Celestia is now one of the most popular ecosystems, with significant plans for modular expansion in 2024. As the ecosystem grows, more and more rollups will be launching on top of its data availability layer, making use of Celestia's scalability and cost-efficiency vs Ethereum.
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To support builders and users of Celestia, Lava will be integrating RPC support for Celestia, powering scalable and reliable node infrastructure. RPC and API modules for any future sovereign rollup built on Celestia can also be permissionlessly added and supported on Lava, meaning Lava is well positioned to be the go-to node provider for the modular ecosystem.
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In our testnet, we are looking to support a Celestia "Champion" to build the spec. This will include access to our engineering team who will provide heavy guidance in building and deploying the module (a JSON-file) to Lava.
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If you are interested in become a Celestia Champion, please reach out to our team in Discord and see the champion-bounties channel for more info: discord.gg/bKkEtU6AMQ

Modules beyond RPC - oracles, sequencers, indexing and more

Lava is modular and can extend to any data infrastructure. The first service offered to consumers is RPC. We have spent the last year gathering feedback and steadily improving the network both from an RPC provider coverage and from a quality of service perspective.
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The protocol introduces a new primitive we call “specifications” (specs, for short). Specs are modules in JSON-format which define the method calls and computational cost for a provider to serve an API.
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Our spec champions programme provides a pathway and incentives for developers to add new specs and services to Lava. If you’re interested, we invite you to read this blog for more information and to join our Discord to get started.

Keep up with the latest on Lava Network

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