The Defiant

DRPC Launches With Aim to Decentralize Ethereum Access

Alchemy, Quicknode, and Infura are the leading Ethereum node providers.

By: Samuel Haig Loading...

DRPC Launches With Aim to Decentralize  Ethereum Access

Access to Ethereum is generally done via centralized infrastructure. That may start to change.

DRPC is trying to provide decentralized access to Ethereum. The provider, which launched Thursday, claims to be the first decentralized remote procedure call, or RPC. RPCs are communication protocols used by dApps to interact and share transaction information on blockchains.

Centralization of Ethereum’s RPC infrastructure creates a single point of failure that has resulted in outages for dApps and other protocols, the collection of users’ IP address data, and malicious attacks. Alchemy, Quicknode, and Infura are all centralized entities that provide access to most Ethereum users.

Ethereum’s infrastructure layer “remains the last holdout of centralized processing left largely unaddressed,” DRPC said in a statement.

“Centralized solutions represent a step backward to Web2,” Constantine Zaitcev, chief product officer at DRPC, told The Defiant. “Relying on a single provider for anything is unwise since it presents a host of issues from a single point of failure, to the potential for data compromise in the event of failures, errors, or hacks, to high prices, and a lack of flexibility.”

Compromised RPCs

In July 2022, Polygon and Fantom were targeted in a domain name server (DNS) hijack attack after two RPC gateways hosted by Ankr were compromised.

DRPC seeks to address Ethereum’s centralized infrastructure by leveraging a decentralized and globally-distributed network of RPC providers. Infura, which ConsenSys owns, in September said it’s also planning to roll out a decentralized node provider to complement its offering.

DRPC currently supports Ethereum-based projects and will expand to other EVM-compatible chains such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and BNB Chain in the coming months. Lido, the top liquid staking protocol and DeFi dApp by total value locked, is a DRPC customer.

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