OnFinality Customer Case Study: Astar
OnFinality provides scalable API services for Astar to scale reliably and a one-click node deploy service for web3 developers to access the Astar and Shiden ecosystems easily.
OnFinality is a blockchain infrastructure platform that saves web3 builders time and makes developers’ lives easier. We deliver scalable API endpoints for the biggest blockchain networks and empower developers to automatically test , deploy, scale and monitor your own blockchain nodes within minutes.
In this Customer Case Study series we hone in on how Astar uses OnFinality to elevate and enhance their project via hosting and API services.
Summary
Astar, a multi-chain smart contract platform that supports multiple blockchains and virtual machines, uses OnFinality to enable their community of builders to build applications on high-performance RPC archive nodes in the Astar and Shiden Networks.
“We are very pleased to be working with OnFinality, one of the most trusted infrastructure partners in the Polkadot ecosystem. Making a stable network is our highest priority now and OnFinality has already been supporting both Astar and Shiden Network. Thanks to their reliable service, dApp developers can only focus on making their products. This must accelerate our ecosystem development”
— Sota Watanabe, Founder & Director of Astar
The Problem Facing Astar
Astar Network is an interoperable blockchain based on the Substrate framework and the hub for dApps within the Polkadot Ecosystem. With Astar Network and Shiden Network, people can stake their tokens to a Smart Contract for rewarding projects that provide value to the network.
However, setting up blockchain infrastructure is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, impeding the interest and progress of builders who want to get started and scale quickly.
Setting up infrastructure from scratch requires a level of server development expertise that many do not have. A Shiden node, for example, requires knowledge of SSL certificate handling, WebSocket management, firewall configuration, and more to set up, run, and monitor a production node.
It’s extremely costly to run a full node nearly continuously, especially when your dApp is new, and traffic is low and inconsistent.
Additionally, running production-level infrastructure is especially tricky. You need to autoscale quickly to handle bursty traffic, and you want to provide services in different regions around the world to provide low latency services — all of this is incredibly costly, but comes with significant economies of scale for a service provider.
On top of it all, DevOps requires constant attention — time that would be better spent elsewhere building something.
How OnFinality Helped Astar
OnFinality provides a shared node API service to mitigate these barriers of entry to accessing a new protocol by reducing all these costs to near zero. We manage all the nodes for Astar and distribute them across the world (with intelligent routing) to achieve global scalability from day 1, we monitor each node and ensure that they meet certain service levels, and we have the expertise and scale to handle production workloads and high peak traffic. We also provide access for Astar to maintain the network by themselves, including applying urgent upgrades to images.
We will continue to support Astar’s ecosystem by providing:
- A free API service and one-click deploy validator or collator nodes service for new users to access the Astar/ Shiden ecosystem
- Much-needed redundancy for this important community service
- Improved resiliency of the Astar/ Shiden network by reducing the load on the current public Astar endpoints and therefore the effort needed by the core Astar dev team to manage this service, so that they can focus on bigger things
- Reliable and scalable infrastructure to help scale existing production applications in the Astar/ Shiden ecosystems
- Assistance with the testing of the Astar/ Shiden network with valuable data on how nodes are running and scaling as the network traffic increases, and types of requests commonly made
The Results
In summary, we reduce the pain of getting started on Astar and Shiden, and minimise the costs of accessing secure nodes for new dApps with low and unpredictable traffic. If you are building your dApp on Astar/ Shiden, you can continue to use our shared API service as you grow, or access our one click node deployment solution to deploy dedicated Astar nodes to a cloud provider of your choice.
“Sota, and the team at Astar, were one of the earliest believers in the Polkadot ecosystem and are an inspiration for all of us that followed. We are delighted to work with such a high-performing team to help support the many future dApps using the Astar Network with RPC API endpoint services. We are looking forward to building a closer relationship together into the future”
— Sam Zou, CEO of OnFinality
Key Resources
You can access our public API service by connecting to it using Polkadot.js or via the endpoints listed below.
Astar Network
- https://astar.api.onfinality.io/public
- wss://astar.api.onfinality.io/public-ws
Shiden Network
- https://shiden.api.onfinality.io/public
- wss://shiden.api.onfinality.io/public-ws
For teams looking to take your applications to the next level, sign up here and receive your free API key in minutes! Alternatively, get in touch at sales@onfinality.io to discuss your requirements!
Build Smarter with OnFinality.
About Astar
Astar Network is the #1 TVL Smart Contract Hub for WASM + EVM on Polkadot. Since winning its Parachain auction in January 2022, Astar Network has become the top Parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem in Total Value Locked and most Ethereum assets transferred over. Astar Network is the leading smart contract hub that connects the Polkadot ecosystem to Ethereum, Cosmos, and all major layer 1 blockchains. Astar Network supports dApps using multiple virtual machines — namely WASM and EVM — and offers the best technology solutions and financial incentives via its Build2Earn and Astar Incubation Program for Web3 developers to build on top of a secure, scalable, and interoperable blockchain.
About OnFinality
OnFinality is a blockchain infrastructure platform that saves Web3 builders time and makes their lives easier. OnFinality delivers scalable API endpoints for the biggest blockchain networks and empowers developers to automatically test , deploy, scale and monitor their own blockchain nodes within minutes.