A current issue for blockchain networks is the existence of faulty nodes, which impact the way end users interact with decentralized applications (dApps) and pose a barrier to cryptocurrency adoption. Yair Cleper, co-founder of infrastructure provider Lava Network, shared with Crypto Briefing the importance of nodes to the Web3 ecosystem.
“When you think about nodes, you think about the basic operation of every transaction, all the data that is written into the blockchains, and it all depends on your requirements. Someone has to query the blockchain here and there to see what the account balance is, but some are heavier users and need 1,000 requests per second,” Cleper explains.
By default, blockchains provide a public RPC point, which allows users to interact with the blockchain. However, no one has time to properly support those RPC nodes, the Lava co-founder added, which impacts performance.
“It usually results in the problem that when there is more usage, even initial usage, and when testnet goes to mainnet, when there are airdrops, when there is more activity in a special region, then this piece of infrastructure starts to break.”
Therefore, blockchains require high-quality nodes, which are mainly determined by uptime, availability and latency. Still, there are many more parameters that define a good node, such as disaster recovery, backup, and load balancer.
Nevertheless, those are four important guarantees that every node runner must provide. The first is the aforementioned uptime, because the node must be active as long as possible to keep the decentralized applications running. The second is resistance to censorship, which allows users to interact with the blockchain regardless of where they are.
“The third thing is to know whether the blockchain data you receive really comes from the blockchain itself, or is not a case of DNS hijacking. A year and a half ago, the Ankr gateway to Polygon was hacked due to DNS hijacking. And they were trying to do phishing and all this stuff.”
The last guarantee, according to Cleper, is privacy. The way projects like Lava Network discovered how to maintain high-quality nodes and reliable node runners is by boosting their operations. That way, they can use these operators to maintain the integrity of different blockchains, keeping the user experience smooth. Briefing.