Lava Network: What You Need to Know
The Amazon for Crypto Data & RPC
As $BTC price shoots towards ATHs and altcoins (hopefully) follow suit, it’s easy to get caught up in the price action. But one shouldn’t forget about the underlying tech and infrastructure that makes it all possible. While new user-facing apps are emerging, infrastructure projects continue to raise and ship, similar to last cycle.
Today, we’re focusing on Lava Network. Lava Network acts as a dynamic P2P marketplace, connecting blockchains & dApps with node providers offering RPC services and data. With the protocol’s recent raise, upcoming mainnet, and points program, things are heating up for the modular data layer…
Stay vigilant in the markets ⬇️
Background on Lava Network
Lava Network is a modular data network giving developers scalable access to any rollup or blockchain. The word ‘modular’ has been thrown around a lot lately; but what does it mean? In the context of Lava, it allows any blockchain to acces it’s data network to help scale. Lava is a network of node providers, which provide access to data and RPCs. It basically helps make these things more accessible to various blockchains.
The demand for this kind of service has been proven, with blockchains choosing DA (Data Availability) solutions like EigenDA and Celestia for this purpose. Lava Network removes intermediaries, allowing blockchain to access features like censorship-resistance, transparency and privacy. It is perhaps preferable to use a network of nodes, rather than depending on just one node or using multiple node providers.
Yair Cleper, Co-Founder of Lava Network, uses the analogy of Amazon’s business model to explain what Lava Network does.
Peer-to-peer SDK: Allows direct communication between dApps and multiple providers without intermediaries. Providers are rewarded for their services based on reviews. In this case, dApps are the customer and P2P providers act as the Amazon merchant. Providers are rewarded for their contribution after transactions settle. There are already 300+ providers on Lava Network, both big and small.
Specs: ‘Champions’ in lava can define RPC API according to specific chains. They offer these specs to the community, and node providers can spin up nodes based on these specs. Specs can be thought of as the products provided by Amazon themselves. Champions are those who provide the specs, who also define RPC for specific and upcoming chains.
The same way amazon has many vendors, trust is distributed among multiple providers, ensuring scalability and reliability on Lava Network. Lava aims to be a one-stop platform for accessing blockchain data. It eliminates the need for developers to individually obtain RPC providers and index the data themselves. Lava allows quick addition of new chains and APIs based on demand.
Lava Network aims to provide flexibility and empower developers to build wherever they want. It offers a dynamic marketplace that adds more modules and chains as needed, ensuring a balance between supply and demand.
Origins of Lava Network
Lava Network was Co-Founded by Yair Cleper and Gil Binder, who hail from Israel and have experience building multiple startups in the Web2 realm. The two initially wanted to build a multi-chain NFT marketplace but realized that running their own nodes for each blockchain was resource-intensive. They then explored using node providers but found that there were limited options for certain chains like Cosmos. Existing providers had limitations or were not reliable enough for their needs. They decided to instead focus on Ethereum initially but again faced challenges with API limitations and needing to use multiple providers.
Ultimately, the team realized that the blockchain world was fragmented, complex, and slow in terms of accessing data. This is where Lava Network aims to step in. Lava Network aims to simplify the multi-chain landscape by providing a one-stop solution for accessing blockchain data. With Lava Network, developers can easily access relevant providers without needing to know which provider is being used behind the scenes. Lava Network is designed to be modular and flexible, allowing for easy integration of new chains as they gain popularity.
Lava Network Recent Raise
While raises alone obviously aren’t indicative of success, it shows that investors see potential in the product being offered.Notably, Lava Network recently raised $15M. The Seed round was led by Jump capital, and also included the likes of: Hashkey Capital, Tribe Capita, Alliance, Node, North Island, Quiet, Finality, and Dispersion Capital.
Blockdaemon, ConsenSys (Infura) and QuickNode, who previously invested in Alchemy, were also participants. Validators, ecosystems and founders of Cosmos, Polkadot, Filecoin, StarkWare, Axelar, NEAR, Celestia, Celo, and more joined the round. This is a recent example of a slew of raises being announced across the crypto ecosystem.
Lava Network is clearly integrated within the Cosmos communities. Dozens of providers from various ecosystems have already joined Lava and are receiving rewards at the end of each month.
Lava Network’s mainnet is slated for 2024; for now, the protocol is focused on expanding their offerings to non-technical users. While the product’s concept might seem hard to grasp at first, the team is building communities in Korea, Turkey, Africa, and more consisting of non-technical users. Help is needed from these communities in terms of writing guides and documentation for the mainnet launch.
A points system will be introduced soon to engage non-technical users with Lava. This system aims to allow every user to bring real value to Web3 by providing access anywhere while maintaining a public good.
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