I am putting this nomination forward for the Badgeholders for reasons further explained in the description. However, I must also clarify I am not very familiar with the project as I have not had much time to use it. With the deadline for RPGF2 being today, I decided to nominate the project for your consideration even if I am not that acquainted with it myself.
The project’s name: 1RPC.io ( https://www.1rpc.io/ )
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack:
Even though in theory everyone can interact directly with the OP Ecosystem like every other EVM environment, it’s undeniable that the vast majority of users not only use an RPC solution, but are not even aware of it.
For these users, these RPCs serve as an essential middle-man between the user and the environment, and any error on the RPC side can be a significant blocker. One particular example for this we’re all familiar with is the release date of the first OP Airdrop, where despite the actual Optimism network working just fine, the RPC was overloaded blocking access to the ecosystem. This, along with potential privacy concerns from some RPC solutions, means that it’s always healthy for an ecosystem to have a large variety of RPC providers to choose from.
As seen in Chainlist.org, currently there are only about half a dozen providers of RPCs, with only two being shown as being privacy-friendly. I am nominating https://www.1rpc.io/ because not only is it one of the two privacy respecting RPCs , but they seem to want to be a pubic good and do not have a monetisation plan. From their page:
Privacy should be protected because it is one of the foundations and basic right for users of the public ledger blockchain ecosystems.
We want 1RPC to be freely available and have developed it as a public good, providing users from targeted data collection when interacting with blockchains. We strive to keep it free for general Web3 users.
To help us keeping it free, donations from grants and partners are accepted to make 1RPC sustainable.
Hopefully, this grant along with other future grants will encourage the onboarding of more private RPCs into the ecosystem.
A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter: https://twitter.com/AutomataNetwork / Automata Network · GitHub
(optional) contact info for the project or project lead: N/A