The Race Is On to Replace Ethereum’s Most Centralized Layer
Channel: BTC Cryptocurrency News
Date: 05/12/2018

The Race Is On to Replace Ethereum’s Most Centralized Layer
Ethereum developers are working on numerous approaches to replacing or enhancing a popular tool for connecting to the network.
“If we don’t stop relying on Infura, the vision of ethereum failed.”

That’s how Afri Schoedon, release manager for the Parity Ethereum client, described one of ethereum’s most popular – and controversial – technologies on Twitter in October.

Infura handles around 13 billion code request per day and provides a way for developers to connect to ethereum without having to run a full node. And while the exact usage stats aren’t public, by creating a simpler method for interfacing with the network, it’s said to underpin the majority of decentralized applications in the ethereum ecosystem.

But here’s the thing: Infura is operated by a single provider – the ethereum development studio ConsenSys – and relies on cloud servers hosted by Amazon. As such, concerns exist that the service represents a single point of failure for the entire network.

“If every single dapp in the world is pointed to Infura, and we decided to turn that off, then we could, and the dapps would stop working. That’s the concern and that’s a valid concern,” Michael Wuehler, the co-founder of Infura, told CoinDesk in an interview.

While many of the projects recognize the importance of Infura’s contribution to ethereum – referring to the service as a pillar that holds up the developer community today – many, like Schoedon, feel that steps must be taken to seek a decentralized alternative.

“There is no point in having dapps connecting through Metamask to a blockchain hosted by someone else,” Schoedon tweeted.

And Schoedon isn’t alone in his interpretation. Rather, he’s met by a host of new efforts to dethrone Infura as the go-to connection point for developers linking their decentralized applications to ethereum.

For example, new full node incentivizations schemes like VIP node, Dappnode and D-Node seek to provide different kinds of alternatives.

Equally, infrastructure minimizing efforts such as light clients are gaining traction, as well as experimental software restructuring like Turbo Geth. And according to developers, what’s at stake is the very decentralization of the ethereum ecosystem itself.
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