Infura, a blockchain infrastructure company owned by Consensys, is expanding its API data marketplace, the Decentralized Infrastructure Network (DIN), to run on EigenLayer, a protocol that allows Ethereum stakers to reuse their staked ETH to secure external services.
In a press release shared with The Defiant, Infura says this is the first large-scale RPC and API marketplace to run as an EigenLayer Autonomous Verifiable Service. That means the service is now supported by stakers who can earn rewards if the service performs well, or lose some of their stakes if it fails, encouraging operators to stay online.
EG Galano, co-founder of Infura, said that using EigenLayer allows the team to realize its vision of a “proven restaging standard, backed by the strongest asset in crypto: restaging ETH.”
DIN has been processing real user requests since February 2024, routing more than 13 billion requests per month across more than 30 networks and platforms, including Ethereum mainnet, Layer 2 network Linea and web3 wallet MetaMask, according to the release.
DIN links blockchain apps to multiple node providers, so if one goes down, requests automatically switch to another without breaking anything. With the EigenLayer integration, Infura adds economic responsibility to this existing traffic, making it costly to ignore reliability.
Combating centralization
With the new service, Consensys’ blockchain infrastructure company aims to address a major weakness in Web3 infrastructure, as it says that “70-80% of RPC traffic today still flows through a handful of centralized providers.”
Network types for execution layers. Source: Ethernodes
Data from Ethernodes, a website that tracks Ethereum data statistics, shows that more than half of Ethereum’s so-called ‘execution nodes’, which process blockchain data, are hosted by cloud providers.
Ethereum execution node cloud providers. Source: Ethernodes
About 28% of these nodes run on Amazon’s cloud services, while 15.6% run on European data center Hetzner.
Although blockchains are designed to be decentralized, much of their traffic still relies on a few centralized cloud platforms, most notably Amazon Web Services (AWS). And the industry has already seen the consequences of this concentration.
In late October, AWS suffered an outage lasting several hours that disrupted major websites and apps, including Coinbase, its Layer 2 network Base, cross-chain stablecoin USDT0, and even Infura, which reported a “widespread outage” affecting multiple Infura networks and services. The AWS incident followed a similar outage in April.