Avoiding the Pitfalls of Web 2.0 Infrastructure Through Radical Web3 Decentralization

Today, Ankr, a leading platform and Web3 infrastructure provider, unveiled plans to restructure as a protocol to further incentivize local node deployments and support an RPC taxi system for better load balancing within their supported networks. Over the past year, Ankr noted a 1,900% increase in traffic to blockchain node infrastructure providers, which resulted in congestion and outages across numerous platforms. To combat the continued issues related to stress on blockchain nodes, Ankr plans to adopt a Web3 ethos as a protocol with DAO architecture that champions community ownership, reduced costs, stronger geographic distribution, and rewards for self-sovereign infrastructure.

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Already, Ankr boasts node hosting prices that are three times more affordable than Alchemy and nearly 19 times lower than Infura’s offerings. Through its novel DAO governance and easy-to-use RPC management system, Ankr projects lower costs for customers and higher rewards for full node operators. In a shift from platform to protocol, Ankr intends to reshape the overly centralized landscape impeding Web3 performance and bolster reward incentives.

“Community ownership in decentralized networks should be a key component of Web3. At Ankr we’re building a protocol that provides and captures value, and then redistributes this value to the community. This is very different from the traditional way of building a business where the goal is to extract as much value as possible from their users,” said Josh Neuroth, Head of Product at Ankr.

From Value Extraction to Value Redistribution

Infrastructure is big business in- and outside of Web3. In Q1 of this year massive amounts of venture capital have flowed into this segment, with companies like Alchemy, Blockdaemon, Fireblocks and more raising upwards of $500M and garnering billion-dollar valuations.

Although these centralized node infrastructure providers can facilitate institutional adoption of Web3, they fail to align with Web3 principles by not incentivizing community-run nodes, falling under VC pressure to generate quick profits, and relying on centralized cloud providers prone to frequent outages and geo-specific latency issues. This is a major issue for the Web3 economy, leaving the ecosystem open to attack and at the mercy of a few powerful players, and Ankr aims to address this.

“Ankr is among the most innovative protocols, and a leader across DeFi and the larger Web 3.0 ecosystem,” said Michael Kong, CEO of Fantom. “Not only does its node infrastructure deliver a more robust, distributed network, but it also allows for unique staking capabilities that benefit users globally. Fantom is proud to continue working alongside Ankr to drive greater Web3 adoption.”

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Web3 Infrastructure Built by the Community for the Community

Notably, Ankr eskews the industry’s affinity for AWS by partnering with independent data centers around the globe (including Maxihost, INAP, and Zadara) to run full blockchain nodes. Through these relationships with data centers internationally, in addition to a novel incentive structure for node providers, Ankr provides users and developers with enhanced performance and reduced latency in underserved geographical regions like Latin America and Southeast Asia. Nodes are critical financial infrastructure, and global distribution is needed to service the massive demand, as Ankr processes more than 1 Billion RPC requests per month from users in Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, and Argentina, among others.

“Ankr currently runs around 10% of Web3 and grew 20x last year as we really hit product market fit. We expect to grow even more this year as we build better Web3 incentives, and move to being the leader in decentralized infrastructure, by really leaning into the Web3 ethos in every part of our company and culture. We’re currently on track to do around two trillion transactions this year, but we’re hopeful we can blow even those projections out of the water,” said Greg Gopman, CMBDO at Ankr.

Ankr has effectively disrupted its own business model to form Ankr DAO, as this will distribute power away from Ankr’s executive leadership over to token holders, and facilitate Ankr’s ability to self-sustain with regard to hiring decisions, tokenomic updates, and other bureaucratic and operational decisions.  The $ANKR token will play an important role in the Ankr DAO. This push toward establishing a DAO serves to empower the community with governance rights and the ability to contribute to important decision-making processes. Additionally, this transition will increase the utility and governance mechanisms of the $ANKR token, including those concerning fee and reward distribution mechanics to token holders.

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