Old school is a term that evokes nostalgia. An era where things were simpler and life, when viewed through rose-tinted spectacles, appeared happier and more carefree. From retro gaming consoles to classic sneakers and a resurgence of Discmans and Walkmans, modern society is filled with products that evoke or hail from the old school – a period in time whose passage depends largely on your age and how fondly you recall your childhood.
But what’s all this got to do with RPC providers, a group of blockchain infrastructure companies that can’t date back to the SNES and Pacman because Bitcoin was only invented in 2009? In this context, the OGs we’re referencing are the first wave of RPC providers: companies that began springing up around 2016, as the multi-chain landscape exploded and there came a need for web3 data on demand to avoid having to spin up over 9,000 nodes.
2016, just to be clear, was a mere nine years ago, but an aeon in crypto that has encompassed the BTC/BCH hard fork debacle, the first great altcoin bull market, the wilderness of the bear years, the birth of DeFi, the rise of L0 and L2, memecoin mania, institutional adoption and much more. In short, if you’ve been in the RPC game for more than five years, you’re old school.
First mover advantage
One of the reasons why first movers tend to dominate the market for years afterwards is due to the strength of network effects fostered by products that become widely adopted and deeply embedded. This is why Visa and Mastercard have proven impossible to displace: it’s not that there aren’t better financial providers out there, necessarily, but the odds of 40M merchants unplugging their fiat pipeline overnight in favor of a new upstart are zero. It’s the same reason why Google still dominates search and Coca-Cola caffeinated beverages.
One of the reasons why the traditional RPC providers still dominate the market is because they got there first and once web3 companies have plugged into their infra, it’s easier to keep things as they are. It’s a lot simpler than causing upheaval by disconnecting and venturing into the unknown to court a more competitively priced upstart.
But to say that companies such as Infura, Alchemy, QuickNode, Blockdaemon, and Ankr are only doing business because they got there first is to do them a disservice. While first mover advantage counts for a lot, there’s another, less obvious reason why many of these companies are still dominating the market, despite being slower to support new chains or adopt more flexible pricing in many cases. Here’s a clue: it starts with “U” and ends with “I.”
Old school providers acing the interface
They don’t often receive credit for it, but many of the established RPC providers owe their popularity not just to their time served but due to the quality of their UI. They’ve had years to refine their User Interface design, allowing them to craft a product that is highly intuitive. For web3 builders, this is invaluable since it allows them to quickly get up and running without needing to get bogged down in complex integrations and reams of code to customize.
Sign up, select your product and pricing plan, choose your desired blockchain networks and in a few clicks you’re live. There’s a certain irony in web3 builders constantly reminding the industry of its need to improve UI/UX for end users, when those same builders can access seamless UI for their own purposes courtesy of the best old-time RPC providers.
So does this mean that the second-wave of blockchain infra companies are all sporting substandard UI and clunky dashboards? Far from it. Rather, it’s a case that there’s a great deal of variability between providers. Or to put it differently, excellent UI among second-wave RPC providers is not evenly distributed.
The quest for best UI
Later arrivals on the RPC market have typically sought to differentiate themselves by breadth of coverage – i.e. more chains – and more flexible pricing that frees web3 startups from being locked into rigid contracts. They also try to outcompete the traditional players by boasting better benchmarks for uptime and stability. But that’s not to say they’ve optimized for these benchmarks at the expense of UI. dRPC is one case in point.
Despite only launching in 2022, it’s rapidly gained traction, not least on account of its single UI for multichain data that enables seamless API integration and an interface that rivals the best RPC providers on the market. This makes it easy for projects utilizing onchain data to connect and start receiving data streams in a matter of minutes with no messing around. dRPC, together with a handful of other second-wave infra providers, are showing that anything the Infuras and Alchemys of the world can offer, they can match.
That said, there’s still scope for significant improvement in UI design throughout the RPC market to raise standards across the board. This is particularly vital in attracting traditional businesses that lack web3 experience but that wish to access blockchain data without getting their hands dirty. To such enterprises, user-friendliness and intuitive design can be a real deal-breaker.
One of the reasons why UI tends to be better among the old school RPC providers, as a general rule, is because good design takes time and resources to implement. It doesn’t happen overnight, but is rather an iterative process. It often takes years to arrive at a product that is truly seamless to use, particularly in systems with a lot of moving parts, as is true of RPCs.
Pick your RPC provider carefully
For businesses shopping around for an RPC provider, the key takeaway is this: do your research now rather than rush in and pick the first company that comes to mind. Changing RPCs further down the line, once your dapp is live, is a lot harder than making the right choice on day one. You need an RPC provider that will support your business as it scales, which includes supplying both the bandwidth and the additional networks you may need to connect to as your dapp expands.
You also need a flexible pricing model that will prevent your budget being blown on data requests. But important as these qualities are, don’t overlook the value of good UI. It’s the difference between a service that works fluently straight out the box and one that will cost untold hours of time spent untangling erratic APIs and grappling with unintuitive interfaces. DYOR is a maxim that’s widely used in crypto. But it doesn’t just apply to the tokens you buy – it’s also true of the companies you partner with for data and other infrastructure services. Do your own research and only then push the button.
Featured image credit: Shubham Dhage/Unsplash
