Lava Network is aiming to decentralize the infrastructure sector in the Web3 space, by providing RPC Tech to other chains.
Host Cryptocito and Gil Binder, the CTO of Lava Network have an interview regarding RPC infrastructure, why it is essential, and how to improve it.
Read our notes below to learn more.
Gil’s Background
Served in a cyber unit, reverse engineering complex systems, breaking them apart, finding vulnerabilities.
Founded a startup around that, which he sold.
A tweet about a MEV-Bot brought him into Web3.
Build his own bots to snipe NFTs.
Origin Story of Lava Network
Saw first hand that RPC data is trustable.
RPC is the core of every blockchain transaction.
Web3 is like a house and Infura is the door, Lava incentivizes to build more doors.
30 team members around the world.
Public Testnet scheduled for years end.
Why on Cosmos
Wanted to build a sovereign chain for their app to make sure it is scalable.
Cosmos SDK can handle a lot of transactions.
The community is very supportive.
IBC to be implemented at some point.
Why RPC Infrastructure is Essential
When Infura went offline, MetaMask didn’t work.
RPC is used to get data out of the blockchain.
Blockchain is a distributed database with built-in incentives to write data onto it.
To read data, nodes are needed which is expensive, hence became centralized.
Big players like Infura and Alchemy are scalable, run Staking-as-a-Service businesses leading to trust assumptions and reliability to a few centralized providers.
These could censor transactions/contracts, are single points of failure, could manipulate or sell user data, but could get slashed for wrongdoings.
How Lava Network Improves Infrastructure
Removing trust assumptions, everyone can verify the data and there is accountability.
Build their own RPC, now bringing the tech to other chains.
Application specific chains can buy services from Lava, they don’t have to build it, and don't need to subsidize nodes themselve.
Gives access to all the big RPC providers, which should reduce outages to zero.
Separates providers of data and validators which confirm the data.
Can check node data (reliability, actuality) for users, if not the case, reducing compensation for provider, incentivizing better service.
Expansion to other Chains
Cosmos can support any type of RPC or API making Lava chain agnostic.
Governance vote needed to add new chains and set pricing.
Code will be open source so any chain can use it.