The optimistic virtual machine, or OVM, is the execution environment Optimism built to run Ethereum smart contracts on OP Mainnet, its Layer 2 (L2) network, while still supporting fraud proofs back on Ethereum’s Layer 1. The OVM meaning boils down…
An Ethereum block reward — what people also call an Ethereum mining reward, from the years when miners were the ones earning it — is the ETH paid to whoever adds a valid block to the chain: newly issued coins…
An AI coding agent that’s supposed to check a wallet’s balance, read a contract’s state, or broadcast a transaction can’t do any of that on its own — a language model has no live connection to a blockchain by default.…
dRPC is a blockchain infrastructure provider that routes API requests across a network of independent node operators instead of running its own centralized server farm. Applications send a standard JSON-RPC call to dRPC’s endpoint, and its routing layer picks whichever…
Ankr is a blockchain infrastructure company that runs RPC nodes across dozens of networks and sells access to them through a credit-based API, so developers can read chain data and send transactions without hosting their own servers. It’s one of…
QuickNode is a blockchain infrastructure company that gives developers hosted access to RPC nodes across roughly 79 blockchains and 135+ networks, so applications can read and write blockchain data without running that infrastructure themselves. Instead of syncing a Solana validator…
Chainstack is a blockchain infrastructure company that gives developers and enterprises managed access to node infrastructure across 70+ networks, positioning itself as what its own team calls “the control panel for blockchains.” Instead of running Geth, Erigon, or Solana’s Agave…
GetBlock is a Web3 infrastructure provider that gives developers hosted access to blockchain nodes through RPC, REST, and WebSocket connections. Instead of running Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana clients yourself, you send API requests to GetBlock’s servers and get blockchain data…
Alchemy is a blockchain infrastructure company that gives developers programmatic access to more than 100 blockchain networks through hosted RPC nodes and a layer of application APIs built on top of them. Instead of running Ethereum or Solana nodes yourself,…
A Polygon RPC provider is a service that gives your application access to the Polygon network through hosted nodes, so you can read on-chain data and broadcast transactions without running Bor and Heimdall yourself. NOWNodes, Alchemy, Infura, QuickNode, and Chainstack…