The Backbone of Blockchain: How RPCs Drive Decentralized Innovation
Have you ever wondered about the inner workings or processes that allow dApps to carry out tasks such as checking your cryptocurrency balance in your wallet, sending Ether (ETH) to a friend’s wallet, or viewing the history of your transactions on the etherscan?
All this is possible because of Remote Procedure Call or RPC. Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is the backbone technology that powers the interaction between blockchain applications and the underlying blockchain infrastructure.
Early implementations of RPC were developed at Xerox PARC and were widely used in systems like Sun Microsystems’ Network File System (NFS). Microsoft’s adoption of RPC helped standardize it for seamless communication in distributed environments, fostering the development of robust, scalable networked applications.
For example, when a client uses RPC to request data from a blockchain node, such as transaction details or block information. The client sends an RPC request, the node then processes it, and returns the required data. This facilitates seamless interaction with the blockchain, abstracting the complexities of network communication and making blockchain operations more accessible and efficient.
RPC is a versatile technology used by a wide range of applications beyond just dApps. It enables seamless interaction with blockchain networks, making it essential for wallets, explorers, trading bots, DeFi platforms, enterprise solutions, blockchain-based games, governance tools, and analytics tools. In summary, RPCs are vital for performing a wide range of tasks in the blockchain environment, providing the necessary bridge between any application and the blockchain network.
- Despite the blockchain industry’s foundational principle of decentralization, a significant aspect of the cryptocurrency ecosystem — the operation of RPC nodes — remains notably centralized. Major centralized RPC providers like Infura, Alchemy, and QuickNode dominate the market. For example, Infura serves a large portion of Ethereum applications, making it a critical infrastructure component that, if compromised, could affect the entire ecosystem. Interestingly, these providers rely on traditional Web2 cloud hosting services to manage their server infrastructure. Consequently, the Web3 space often experiences outages whenever these major cloud providers face downtime. This centralization creates single points of failure, contradicting the decentralized nature of blockchain technology.
2. Nonetheless, Public RPC endpoints are often free and accessible but come with limitations such as lower reliability and slower speeds, making them unsuitable for commercial applications. As a result, many Dapps and services rely on private RPC endpoints provided by centralized entities, which offer better performance but at the cost of increased centralization.
3. Centralized systems often face scalability challenges. They can become bottlenecks under heavy loads, which negatively impacts transaction speeds and overall user experience. Decentralized systems, by contrast, distribute the load across multiple nodes, enhancing performance and reliability. Moreover, centralized nodes are prime targets for hackers. A successful attack on a centralized server can compromise the entire network, leading to data breaches and potential loss of funds. Additionally, maintaining centralized infrastructure is costly due to the need for robust hardware, security measures, and ongoing maintenance, increasing operational expenses for service providers.
4. However, despite the risks associated with centralization, the current method of decentralizing RPC nodes is not the optimal solution. Irregularities and challenges persist in the industry even with the decentralized approach to RPC nodes.
- Decentralized RPC nodes can significantly vary in performance and reliability. For instance, the Harmony network faced performance issues with decentralized RPC nodes that arose from migrating RPC traffic to the Pocket Network. This migration introduced complexity, increased traffic, and synchronization challenges, leading to occasional reliability issues. Managing a decentralized network added to these difficulties, as ensuring consistent performance across multiple nodes and handling network latency proved challenging, impacting overall service reliability
2. For instance, security risks persist with decentralized nodes as well. In a decentralized network, each node operates independently, making it difficult to implement uniform security measures, which can lead to inconsistent defenses against attacks. This setup also increases the attack surface, as attackers can target multiple nodes simultaneously, potentially overwhelming the network. Additionally, decentralized systems may struggle to coordinate a rapid and unified response to a DDoS attack because each node handles security protocols individually.
3. Operating decentralized nodes can be costly, especially if each node operator is responsible for its infrastructure. These costs can be unpredictable and vary widely, potentially leading to sustainability issues for the network.
The solution powered by the Lava network
Lava Network ensures reliable decentralized RPC nodes through dynamic pairing, automatic load balancing, uniform security protocols, and efficient resource allocation. The Honest Majority Protocol resolves discrepancies via stake-weighted votes, while aggregated transactions and incentivized rewards optimize performance, security, and cost management.
Dynamic Pairing
Lava Network connects RPC Consumers with Providers using a periodically updated Dynamic Pairing List based on factors like provider stake, epoch blockhash, geolocation, and consumer address. Consumers request this list via RPC calls, which refresh every epoch (multiple blocks) to maintain efficiency and scalability. Providers must stake LAVA tokens to be included and are rewarded based on workload measured in compute units.
Open-Source RPC & API Specs
Lava Network’s main advantage is its flexibility and user empowerment. It allows users to add and customize services through “specs” (specifications). These specs define the APIs offered and can be easily submitted and voted on through a governance process. This modular approach lets users quickly integrate new blockchains and rich APIs, ensuring the network adapts to evolving needs and remains user-driven.
Ensuring Latency, Freshness & Availability
Lava Network ensures high-quality service by rewarding providers based on availability, latency, and freshness. Providers are scored from 0 to 1, with higher scores attracting more clients and payments. Consumers rank providers each epoch, incentivizing reliable performance through rewards and penalties like burning, slashing, and jailing.
Data Reliability Checks with Honest Majority Protocol
Lava Network ensures data reliability using provider-funded and client-funded checks. Providers send messages verified by a Verifiable Random Function (VRF), and clients duplicate these messages to different providers to compare the results. Discrepancies are reported on-chain for penalties. The Honest Majority protocol resolves data conflicts, for instance in case of discrepancies, a majority of validators, weighted by their stakes, vote to determine the correct data. This ensures accurate and reliable data, leveraging collective validator consensus for integrity. Moreover, Lava Network conducts background health checks to ensure network reliability at no extra cost to developers. These checks involve sending probes to verify that providers are active and responsive.
Increasing Scalability
Lava Network improves scalability by incentivizing providers and validators separately, increasing efficiency through stake-based work allocation and automatic load balancing. Transactions are processed off-chain and aggregated on-chain, reducing gas fees and boosting throughput. Aggregated compute units (CUs) simplify reward validation, while payment requests spread over time, lowering gas fees and enhancing success rates. These features ensure efficient, low-cost, and smooth network operation as it grows.
Conclusion
In the evolving landscape of blockchain technology, RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls) play a crucial role by enabling seamless interaction between applications and the underlying blockchain infrastructure. While traditional centralized RPC nodes have provided reliability and performance, they also pose risks of centralization, such as single points of failure and scalability challenges. On the other hand, decentralized RPC nodes offer resilience and security but come with their own set of issues, including inconsistent performance and high operational costs.
Lava Network combines the strengths of centralization and decentralization by using decentralized RPC nodes for resilience and security, alongside centralized strategies like load balancing, rate limiting, and continuous monitoring for efficiency. This hybrid approach ensures high performance and robust security for blockchain applications. With over 42 billion testnet requests and hundreds of node runners serving 30+ networks, including Ethereum, Axelar, NEAR, and Polygon, Lava Network enhances blockchain data access and reliability.
RPCs are crucial for blockchain ecosystems, enabling seamless interactions between applications and blockchains. They ensure efficient, reliable operations and enhance user experience. Continuous innovation in RPC technology is essential to address scalability, performance, and security challenges, supporting blockchain networks' growing demands and complexities. Understanding RPCs’ importance is vital for all the ecosystem stakeholders.
Written By: Arpit Jain
Edited By: Sarah Abuagela
