Infura Taps Microsoft and Tencent For Decentralized Web3 Infrastructure Network

Infura, the web3 infrastructure firm from Consensys, announced it will team up with 18 prominent internet technology firms including Microsoft and Tencent to launch a Decentralized Infrastructure Network.

Infura announced the initial cohort of launch partners on Nov. 15 at the Decentralized RPC Summit at the DevConnect conference in Istanbul. The 19 firms will establish an initial “federated” version of DIN, paving the way for its progressive decentralization moving forward.

Infura’s DIN comprises a decentralized Remote Procedure Call (RPC)-as-a-service enabling developers to securely connect to Ethereum and other networks.

“[DIN] is a significant milestone in Infura’s ongoing efforts to foster decentralized internet infrastructure,” Consensys said. “DIN is part of Infura’s work to support a variety of blockchain APIs, in recognition of the inevitability of a multi-chain world.”

Central point of failure

Infura launched in 2016 and provides core back-end infrastructure for DeFi dApps, NFT marketplaces, Layer 2 scaling solutions, and other popular web3 products.

Infura first announced plans to foster decentralized RPC infrastructure last September. The move followed long-standing concerns that Infura comprised a central point of failure for Ethereum, with Consensys estimating more than 430,000 web3 developers relied on Infura to access the network at the time.

Incidents resulting in downtime for Infura have previously wreaked havoc for Ethereum users due to the volume of services relying on its infrastructure. Last April, MetaMask, Consensys’s popular web3 wallet, was unable to connect to the Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Filecoin, and Palm networks due to an Infura outage. Ethereum’s transaction fees briefly plummeted amid the resulting drop in on-chain activity.

“The demand for decentralized alternatives to the world’s current centralized systems and services continues to grow quickly,” said Consensys. “Data hacks and outages in the status quo hurt users. Decentralizing access to blockchain APIs is a vital step to improve network uptime and importantly, give people sovereignty of their personal data.”

The initial cohort of DIN members includes Microsoft, Tencent, 0xFury, Bloq, Chainstack, Covalent, Ellipfra, Everstake, Gateway.fm, Grove, Laconic Network, Linkpool, LinkRiver, Luscent, Mantle, MatrixedLink, Pokt, and Rivet, alongside Infura. Infura said more partners will come online in the coming months.