Developer Afri Schoedon once stated that Ethereum cannot rely on Infura to handle up to 10 billion requests per day. If DApps have always relied on third-party service providers or infrastructure developers like Infura, Ethereum’s vision will not be long-term. achieve.
Written by: Donnager
According to official information from Ethereum developer infrastructure Infura, its Ethereum Mainnet API service is temporarily interrupted, and the team is investigating and working hard to restore the service function. And half an hour before the announcement, the developers of the domestic Ethereum community had discovered the problem and sought help from the community.
Some applications and exchanges have been suspected of being affected by the Infura interruption. According to some Twitter users, cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Upbit, Bithumb and other trading platforms are suspected of suspending ETH and ERC20 token deposit and withdrawal services. The Ethereum light wallet MetaMask has abnormal balance display and data delay.
In fact, some developers have already questioned Infura as a single point of failure source in the Ethereum ecosystem. If the Infura service fails, it will cause unmeasured losses to the entire ecosystem. Therefore, this large-scale failure is just a practical test, and the long-term impact on the ecology needs further observation.
What is Infura?
For the most extensive Ethereum ecosystem developers at present, choosing Infura’s API service may be the most common choice.
Infura is an Ethereum infrastructure developed by developer Michael Wuehler. For ordinary developers, it is possible to allow decentralized applications to process information on Ethereum without running a full node. Some of the most popular decentralized applications or protocols, such as Ethereum wallet MetaMask or decentralized exchange protocol 0x, rely on Infura to broadcast transaction data and smart contracts to the Ethereum main network. Previous data shows that Infura processes up to 13 billion daily Requests.
Extending beyond Ethereum?
Previously, Infura was almost entirely focused on the Ethereum ecosystem. Last month, Infura announced that it would support the distributed storage Filecoin project and provide API services for the project. At present, Infura has launched the Beta test version of the Filecoin API service, and developers can develop the Filecoin ecosystem based on their services.
Infura will provide specific users with free access to Filecoin Network API Beta, which allows developers to connect to the Filecoin main network and build Filecoin-based applications. Developers who are approved to join the Infura Filecoin API Beta will gain private access to the Filecoin Network API and fully integrate it into the Infura dashboard, where you can create multiple Filecoin projects and monitor their Filecoin network usage.
Infura also provides the API service of Filecoin’s underlying protocol IPFS and the Beta version of the Ethereum 2.0 API service.
Wholly acquired by ConsenSys one year ago
Infura was originally an independent company, but in October 2019, ConsenSys, the largest investor, participant and builder of the Ethereum ecosystem, announced that it had acquired all the rights and interests of Infura. Since then, Infura will become a project incubated by ConsenSys. The latter’s wholly-owned subsidiary business unit.
Infura said that in the past few years, it has received olive branches from top venture capital companies, but in the end it still believes that staying inside ConsenSys is the best choice for the team, users and the entire ecosystem.
In terms of business model, Infura provides developers with free services. Developers can create 3 projects for free in Infura. API services can submit up to 100,000 requests per day. But for developers who have more needs, Infura also provides a monthly subscription service, with service prices ranging from $50 to $1,000 per month. Provides up to 5 million API requests per day and 8 hours of support response time.
Developers believe that Ethereum should not rely too much on Infura
In fact, as early as 2018, the Ethereum community discussed that Infura’s centralized infrastructure services may have a negative impact on the Ethereum ecosystem.
For example, developer Afri Schoedon once stated that Ethereum cannot rely on Infura to handle up to 10 billion requests per day. If DApps have always relied on third-party service providers or infrastructure developers such as Infura, Ethereum’s vision is not in the long run. Will come true.
What are the options?
In fact, for those developers with a large scale, they can build their own full Ethereum nodes instead of relying on Infura nodes, or they can use Infura as a backup option.
In addition, some developers stated that Taichi launched by Alchemy and Spark Pool can partially replace Infura’s services as a supplement to Infura. If developers want to provide users with durable and stable services, it should be a reasonable solution to choose multiple services for backup, but this may also increase the overall cost.
