Lava is the first modular data access network for Ethereum and 20+ blockchains.

Developers use the Lava Gateway or SDK to get fast responses from a decentralized network of data providers. Lava has 250+ providers - including enterprise-grade entities such as Blockdaemon, as well as smaller, individual node runners. Providers reach more developers through Lava and are incentivized by the protocol to serve quick, reliable and high-uptime data.

Lava is modular and RPC is only the initial service the network will support. Contributors can permissionlessly add new "specs" to Lava, JSON-files representing different types of data services and APIs, on any chain. We will soon add a Subsquid spec to bring fast indexing and subgraphs to Lava.

All specs are shown in our Github.

Lava creates a peer to peer marketplace between data consumers and data providers. The protocol is modular and can extend to any type of data access service - we have started with RPC, but increasingly the protocol is expanding towards indexing and richer APIs. We are a permissionless network that can support small, medium or enterprise-size providers. 

Lava is looking for data providers - RPC providers, indexing providers, rich API providers etc - to join the network and work with us on our vision to build a modular data access network for web3. We’d love to hear from you - you can reach out to us at [email protected] or complete the typeforms above!

Of course, Lava is permissionless and you can already join the network without speaking to us. 

It’s super easy! You can follow the simple instructions in our Provider docs and complete this Typeform so we can reach out about testnet tokens. 

Make sure you join our Discord too, where we can help answer any questions and we will be in touch to send you testnet tokens for onboarding.

Lava is a chain and API agnostic protocol for blockchain access. The peer to peer protocol connects data consumers with data providers. 

RPC providers can join the protocol, connect directly to developers and serve RPC relays. During testnet, Lava is working with top ecosystems such as Evmos and Axelar, and these chains offer programmes to pay providers for their service.

Providers serve relay requests through the Lava p2p protocol. Developers purchase on-chain subscription plans for a set number of Compute Units (each RPC or API request has a set computational cost), and these payments are distributed to Providers based on how many relays they served in a given period. Providers are also incentivized to have a high quality of service across latency, availability and data freshness.

During testnet, Lava is working with top ecosystems such as Evmos and Axelar, and these chains offer an additional programme to pay providers for their service: Incentivized Public RPC (ipRPC).

RPC providers serve requests from consumers via the Lava protocol. Payments with testnet tokens are sent a transactions & settled on the Lava blockchain, a Cosmos SDK appchain. 

Validators order transactions and reach consensus over the state of the Lava blockchain. 

Note that even if the blockchain goes down, because relays are peer-to-peer, Providers can still continue serving consumers and will be able to claim payments when the chain is back up.

No! To make our service more scalable and remove barriers to entry, we have separated Validator and Provider roles.

Lava supports 30+ networks currently, including Ethereum, Cosmos Hub, Aptos, Celo, Arbitrum, Starknet, Polygon, Osmosis, Fantom, Canto, Base, Evmos, Optimism and Juno.

New chains are added all the time and providers who join early to Lava will be the first to know about new opportunities to serve RPC. You can see some of Lava’s supported chains in our docs and website.