Lava Testnet: Phase I is live!

Ethan
Lava Network
Published in
4 min readFeb 22, 2023

The first omnichain, decentralized RPC network is one step closer 🌐

For the last year, we’ve been working towards this moment — the first time any developer can start testing out Lava and get RPC for 10+ blockchains from a decentralized network of providers.

Building the best tools to access blockchains, the Lava way 🛠️

Lava Network is now open to all developers and primarily accessible through our easy-to-use hosted front-end — the Gateway.

We’re building the open standard for blockchain RPC and APIs. That means equipping developers who are building apps of all shapes and sizes — large enterprises, small projects, front-ends, back-ends — with the best tools to access blockchains, in an open-source and community-led way.

To that end, we’ve designed the Gateway powered by the Lava Access Server Kit, our solution for building self-hosted gateways, and will later release the Lava Access SDK, our primary package for developers building with Lava which is soon to be open-sourced.

Today, you can already use the Lava Gateway to test and build your applications with ease. For those looking for maximum decentralization, the SDK will offer direct access to the network, empowering developers to build multichain and unstoppable web3 apps.

Benefits of the Gateway and the Lava Access SDK ⚡

The Gateway offers developers:

  • Multi-chain Support — Access to chains where developers are typically reliant on rate-limited public RPC e.g. Cosmos Hub, Osmosis, Juno etc
  • Rapid Onboarding your app will be up and running in 5 minutes with an RPC endpoint of your choice
  • Unstoppable Performance — By being connected to multiple leading RPC providers, apps benefit from 99.99% uptime as well as the best latency, freshness, and availability.
  • Consensus-Based Data Integrity — Data accuracy, consistency and freshness are preserved by a consensus mechanism which detects and resolves conflicts. Poor service or attempts to manipulate data are caught and disincentivized, with providers staking and signing responses so that they can be held accountable.
  • Private relays — Relay requests are routed per epoch to a random and constantly shuffled list of providers, so any user RPC queries going through the network cannot be profiled.
  • Open-Source — The Lava protocol is open-source and transparent, with a community-led approach that centers around the DAO. Anyone can contribute to the protocol and the appchain, as well as verify that the network is secure and reliable.

The Lava Access SDK will offer all the benefits of the above, with maximum decentralization.

How can you start building with Lava? (Clue: it’s really easy 👀)

You can use Lava today!

We’ve created easy to use Getting Started documentation, which you can access here. The Gateway supports RPC and APIs for many top chains and is now ready for you to build your apps. You can ask for support in our Discord, where we have a growing community of developers building across many different ecosystems e.g. Cosmos and Ethereum. We’ll see you there!

Vote now for the next chain to be added!

Today we’re also launching a new way for the community to vote on the next chain to be added. In the future, new chains will be up to the Lava DAO. But before the DAO is launched, we want to make sure the community’s voice is heard. You can vote on the next chain in our Discord — #Next-chain-vote.

If you’re planning to become a Lava Provider, we’d also love to see you in the Discord and will soon have clearer processes about how you can join the Network. Did someone mention an incubation program… 👀

The vision 🔭

Blockchain data should be trustless, universally accessible and always available.

Lava is building the open standard for blockchain RPC and APIs.

Join as an early design partner: become a Lava Voyager today⚡️

We are looking for developer teams building dapps to join the network as early design partners — Lava Voyagers. You’ll be eligible for benefits including co-marketing and credits at mainnet. Apply here.

Contribute as a Developer Champion 📣

If you’re keen to work closely with our DevRel Engineer to create content, provide product feedback, build tools, spread the Lava vision and take our open-source ecosystem to next level — you’re already a winner in our eyes 🤩

You can apply to become a Champion here. Let the data flow 🌋

Learn more 📚

There are plenty of places to learn more about what Lava is building. Check us out below 👇

Discord: https://discord.gg/lavanetxyz
Twitter: twitter.com/lavanetxyz
Website: lavanet.xyz
Litepaper: https://lavanet.xyz/assets/lava_litepaper_v0_1.pdf
Docs: docs.lavanet.xyz
Github: github.com/lavanet

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