Why RPC Endpoints Are a Centralized Chokepoint

RPC endpoints are the gateway to every blockchain. Centralized providers like Infura and Alchemy act as critical chokepoints for ~80% of Ethereum traffic. This creates systemic censorship and downtime risk, as seen when Infura's outage bricked MetaMask for millions.

• Censorship Vector: A single provider can block transactions.
• Data Integrity Risk: Users must trust the provider's chain state.

Centralized RPC providers insert themselves as rent-seeking intermediaries. They capture value by monetizing API calls and MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) opportunities, siphoning billions in potential user value annually. This model is antithetical to decentralized finance's ethos.

• Hidden Costs: 'Free' tiers monetize via data and order flow.
• MEV Capture: Centralized sequencing enables front-running.

Centralized infrastructure is subject to jurisdictional regulation. Providers like Infura have already complied with OFAC sanctions, blocking access to Tornado Cash-related smart contracts. This turns infrastructure into a tool for regulatory overreach, compromising chain neutrality.

• Protocol-Level Censorship: Compliance filters at the RPC layer.
• Fragmented Access: Geoblocking creates multiple internets.

While centralized providers offer low-latency performance (~100ms p95), it's achieved through massive, centralized server farms. This creates a false trade-off between decentralization and speed, stifling innovation for truly distributed, high-performance networks like POKT Network or Lava Network.

• Artificial Monopoly: Scale begets scale, locking in dominance.
• Innovation Stagnation: No incentive to improve decentralized stacks.

Centralized RPC providers like Infura and Alchemy control access for >50% of Ethereum traffic. This creates systemic censorship and downtime risk, as seen during OFAC-compliance events.\n- Censorship Vector: Providers can block transactions to sanctioned addresses.\n- Data Monopoly: Centralized logging creates a honeypot for user and MEV data.

These protocols distribute requests across a permissionless network of node operators, eliminating single-provider risk.\n- Censorship Resistance: No single entity can filter transactions.\n- Economic Efficiency: ~30-50% cost reduction via competitive, token-incentivized markets.\n- Redundancy: Built-in failover across 1000s of global nodes.

The ultimate sovereignty: running your own execution and consensus clients (Geth/Lighthouse) with a local RPC. This is the gold standard for protocols like Lido and Rocket Pool.\n- Total Control: Zero reliance on third-party APIs or data integrity.\n- MEV Capture: Direct access to the mempool for proprietary strategy execution.\n- High Barrier: Requires significant DevOps overhead and ~$1M+ in staked ETH for consensus.

Projects like Ethereum's Portal Network and Helios enable stateless verification of chain data without syncing a full node. This is the future of truly decentralized frontends and wallets.\n- Trustless Verification: Cryptographically verify state proofs directly from the p2p network.\n- Mobile-Native: Enables secure, lightweight access on resource-constrained devices.\n- Killer App: The foundational layer for The Graph-like querying without central servers.

Traditional RPC providers like Infura and Alchemy are centralized chokepoints. Their outages have historically taken down major dApps, wallets, and protocols, proving the fallacy of 'decentralized' infrastructure.

• ~70% of Ethereum traffic flows through a handful of providers.
• A single provider's downtime can halt $10B+ in DeFi TVL.
• Creates systemic risk for the entire application layer.

Centralized RPC endpoints are a powerful tool for transaction censorship and MEV extraction. Providers can front-run, censor, or reorder your users' transactions, directly undermining core blockchain guarantees.

• Providers can blacklist addresses (e.g., Tornado Cash) at the RPC level.
• Transaction ordering is a lucrative MEV opportunity controlled by the endpoint.
• Breaches the principle of permissionless access.

You're paying for shared, rate-limited infrastructure with unpredictable performance. During network congestion, your users face degraded latency and failed transactions, directly impacting UX and protocol revenue.

• P95 latency spikes to ~5s+ during high gas periods.
• Global Anycast routing often fails to optimize for geographic proximity.
• Opaque, usage-based pricing creates unpredictable operational costs.

Networks like POKT Network, Lava Network, and Ankr's decentralized RPC distribute requests across a global, permissionless node set. This eliminates single points of failure and aligns incentives with the network's health.

• Fault tolerance via multi-provider redundancy.
• Censorship resistance through node diversity.
• Competitive pricing via a marketplace model.

For maximum performance and control, run your own nodes or use specialized providers like Chainbound or BlastAPI. This is non-negotiable for high-frequency trading, gaming, or any latency-sensitive application.

• Sub-100ms latency for custom geo-optimized setups.
• Full control over transaction ordering and privacy.
• Predictable, fixed costs independent of public mempool chaos.

Next-gen architectures like UniswapX, CowSwap, and ERC-4337 bundlers abstract the RPC layer entirely. Users submit intents (desired outcomes), and a decentralized solver network competes to fulfill them, bypassing traditional RPC limitations.

• Removes gas estimation failures and front-running.
• Better execution via MEV capture and refunds.
• Native cross-chain capabilities (e.g., Across, LayerZero).