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What is the Infura, the "secret weapon" of ethereum infrastructure?

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Developers say the Ethereum network should not rely too heavily on Infura

11 月 11 日，因以太坊和 IPFS 的 API 服务供应商 Infura 宕机，导致 MetaMask 数据显示延迟，交易平台 ETH 与 ERC20 代币充提服务受到影响。这一消息立刻引起了社区热议，截止发稿时，受影响的交易平台已逐步恢复，Infura 主节点也已修复。

Although developers and industry veterans are familiar with Infura, many users are new to Infura, so Rhythm will briefly introduce Infura to readers in this article.

What is an Infura?

More specifically, Infura is an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) product designed to lower barriers to accessing Ethereum data. In layman's terms, Infura is a platform that allows your DApp to connect to Ethereum quickly, without having to run an Ethereum node locally.

从程序员的角度讲，Infura 就是一个 Web3 供应商，背后是负载均衡的 API 节点集群。除此之外，Infura 还可以很方便地接入 IPFS，这是另外一个话题，这里就不讨论了。

在整个以太坊网络中，需要一种能够降低进入门槛并简化对以太坊数据访问的实用程序。其中最重要的是基础架构即服务（IaaS）产品，而在这方面较为领先的则是Infura，它为跨行业的开发人员， DApp 团队和企业提供了一套工具，可将其应用程序连接到以太坊网络和其他去中心化平台。

Infura 是由开发者 Michael Wuehler 开发的以太坊基础设施，最开始时处于独立运营状态。在 2019 年被 ConsenSys 全资收购，变为其全资业务部门。在推出之初， Infura 是免费使用的。随着开发的推进，现在推出了订阅服务，价格在50美元至1000美元每月不等。不过对于需求较小的开发者或者项目而言，Infura 还是十分友好的。开发者可以免费在 Infura 中创建 3 个项目，每日使用 Infura 的 API 服务提交 10 万次请求。

What's Infura for?

Infura facilitates access to Web3.

Many of the most prominent Web3 projects (MetaMask, Aragon, Gnosis, OpenZeppelin, etc.) leverage Infura's API to connect their applications to the Eethernet Network. Infura provides the infrastructure services needed to handle the short-term spikes that often occur during token startup, as well as the necessary, long-term scaling solutions.

"Our mission is to facilitate access to Ethereum and the opportunities it offers," said Nicola Cocchiaro, Infura's lead systems engineer.

「Infura 本质上为任何应用程序提供了必要的工具，使其可以立即在以太坊上开始开发，而无需自己运行复杂的基础架构，」产品负责人 Mike Godsey 说。「 Infura 为所有使用以太坊区块链的开发人员提供了连接。」

Infura API Suite: A microservice-driven architecture & NBSP;

Infura 基础设施最著名的部分是托管的以太坊客户端网络，通过客户端兼容的 JSON-RPC，在 HTTPS 和 WSS 之上支持主网和测试网。以太坊节点只是 Infura 栈的一部分:「我们还建立了第一个公共 IPFS API 和网关，与我们的以太坊 API 一起构建我们的 Web3 开发套件的基础。」 Cocchiaro介绍到。

为 DApp 生态系统提供动力

Infura's modular extension solution frees up the network capacity necessary for any project that is or is expected to drive high traffic through the Ethereum network. "As the blockchain continues to evolve, keeping local nodes in sync and up to date often presents challenges for the project side, often related to the combination of storage, bandwidth and memory usage," said Cocchiaro. "In addition, high-traffic DApp involves extensibility, which is sometimes temporary and sometimes more permanent, which is difficult to solve in a local infrastructure."

Projects and companies that adopt Infura

On the Infura website, Rhythm has found that many of the companies and projects we are familiar with have taken advantage of the Infura service. For example, the Ethereum lightweight wallet MetaMask USES Infura's zero-client approach to connect Infura's remote infrastructure to serve over millions of users.

For projects like Infura, which focuses more on scalability, Infura works with developers across the ecosystem to keep the network running smoothly.

当然，还有很多交易平台也采用了 Infura 的服务，例如币安、Upbit、Bithumb等。其中也不乏一些去中心化协议，如 0x 和 MyCrypto 等都依赖 Infura 向以太坊主网广播交易数据和智能合约。

Some of the customer cases listed on Infura's website & NBSP;

对于以太坊过于依赖 Infura 的担忧

早在 2018 年，就已有开发者对于 Infura 表示出了担忧。Parity Technologies 的一位以太坊开发者 Afri Schoedon 表示，以太坊网络不能依赖 Infura 来处理每天 100 亿次请求。Schoedon 认为，过度依赖 Infura 将增加协议的中心化。

Although there have been Infura outages such as today's, the cases that have affected some platforms and wallets are rare events. However, once it appears, it will have a great impact on the project and users, especially if it is in a period of great fluctuations in the market, or it will cause asset losses. As a result, many developers have suggested that projects or exchanges run their own separate nodes.

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