Blockdaemon Empowers Web3 Devs and Institutions to Run Their Own Collator Nodes on Astar

[PRESS RELEASE – Los Angeles, United States, 24th August 2022]

Astar Network, the innovation hub on Polkadot, is thrilled to announce that it has integrated Blockdaemon, the world’s largest institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure company for node management and staking, as a collator. The partnership will enable Blockdaemon’s institutional and individual users to start their own collator nodes with Astar Network.

Though Astar supports users who maintain their own collator nodes, it’s still technically out of reach for many individuals and institutions joining its network. Blockdaemon’s suite of products and tools comprise a total ‘node stack’ of blockchain technology empowering any eligible project to access the Astar Network.

As a node infrastructure provider, Blockdaemon will provide Websocket and RPC endpoints to projects wishing to build on the network. Often, it is not feasible for many projects, devs and businesses to build and maintain their own Astar node to access these services. Blockdaemon’s years of node blockchain expertise specifically for the Polkadot ecosystem significantly lowers the barrier to entry for projects building on Astar.

Blockdaemon’s full node support provides a critical on-ramp for Astar dApp developers and institutions. Rather than relying on public infrastructure, which can come under heavy load from many different sources, or facing the ongoing challenges of self-running an Astar node, it is now possible to outsource Astar node requirements to Blockdaemon.

“We are excited to integrate with Astar to improve accessibility for developers and institutions. Astar is connecting the Polkadot ecosystem to all major Layer 1 blockchains by building in interoperability for a multi-chain future.

Combining Blockdaemon’s institutional-grade infrastructure with Astar’s rich tech stack, we look forward to supporting the health of the network and providing a critical on-ramp for Astar dApp developers,” said Cecilia Feng, Strategic Protocol Research Lead at Blockdaemon.

“We are very excited to have a partnership with Blockdeamon. This partnership allows us to make a more reliable and robust network and explore new use cases like DOT liquid staking,” said Sota Watanabe, founder and CEO of Astar Network. “Together with Blockdeamon and infra partners, we will do our best to provide developers with the best experience.“

Collators maintain parachains by collecting parachain transactions from users and producing state transition proof for Relay Chain validators. Unlike validators, collator nodes do not secure the network. If a parachain block is invalid, it will get rejected by validators.

More users will strengthen the Astar network and play a crucial role in block production, collecting transactions, and producing state transition proofs for Relay Chain validators.

Blockdaemon is the largest independent blockchain infrastructure platform connecting institutions and developers to leading networks. Founded in 2017, Blockdaemon runs over 50,000 nodes on behalf of its more than 200 institutional customers—including exchanges, custodians, liquidity providers, and neobanks—and supports 55+ blockchain networks such as Polkadot, Kusama, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche.

As Astar builds the future of smart contracts for multichain, it’s keen to attract developers and institutional interests. Besides enabling new users and businesses to join Astar, Blockdaemon will collaborate with Astar Network in future hackathons and networking events. Developers building on Astar can deploy their dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts while offering true interoperability and cross-consensus messaging (XCM).

About Astar Network

Astar Network is The Future of Smart Contracts for Multichain. Astar Network supports the building of dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts and offers developers true interoperability, with cross-consensus messaging (XCM). We are made by developers and for developers. Astar’s unique Build2Earn model empowers developers to get paid through a dApp staking mechanism for the code they write and dApps they build.

Astar’s vibrant ecosystem has become Polkadot’s leading Parachain globally, supported by all major exchanges and tier 1 VCs. Astar offers the flexibility of all Ethereum and WASM toolings for developers to start building their dApps. To accelerate growth on Polkadot and Kusama Networks, Astar SpaceLabs offers an Incubation Hub for top TVL dApps.

About Blockdaemon

Blockdaemon is the leading blockchain node infrastructure to stake, scale, and deploy nodes with institutional-grade security and monitoring. Supporting 50+ cutting edge blockchain networks in the cloud and on bare metal servers globally, Blockdaemon is used by exchanges, custodians, crypto platforms, financial institutions and developers to connect commercial stakeholders to blockchains.

We power the blockchain economy by simplifying the process of deploying nodes and creating scalable enterprise blockchain solutions via APIs, high availability clusters, auto-decentralization and auto-healing of nodes.