Infura (founded July 5, 2016) is a scalable backend infrastructure for developing decentralized applications (dapp) on the Ethereum blockchain. ^[1][2] It is built for Web 3.0.^[25] The service supports JSON-RPC over HTTPS & WebSocket interfaces, InterPlanetary File System interfaces, and various other features.^[6] There are also various pricing options, including a free version that allows for 3 projects, 100,000 requests a day, Ethereum Mainnet and Testnets, and a community support forum.^[3]

Infura allows users to connect to the Ethereum network without having to run a full node.

This allows Dapp developers to focus wholly on building without worrying about onde maintenance.

Infura offers tools, documentation, and API key as well as distributed IPFS storage.

^[2]

Infura was founded on July 5th, 2016 by E.G.

Galano and Michael Wuehler. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York City.^[7] A few short months following its founding, in October 2016, Infura received its first massive influx of users during the EIP150 HardFork, and later on when CryptoKitties usage was bringing heavy traffic on the Ethereum network.^[5] In October of 2019, Infura was wholly acquired by ConSensys. ^[4]

Infura was created as a solution to infrastructure and tools for developers to build applications on Web 3.0.

As part of their promise, the company states,

Many major companies within the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) space use Infura's services, including,

On November 11, 2020, Infura suffered a service outage that caused a delay in Ether and ERC-20 price feeds, which were displayed on various services.

The outage prompted a mass pause on ERC-20 token withdrawals from major exchanges including Binance and Bithumb. Additionally, MetaMask, a popular Ethereum wallet, was having issues on its platform.^[8]

Later that day, Infura found that a consensus bug was the cause of the outage.

It was particularly affecting versions v.1.9.9 and v1.9.13 of Geth, which is used for internal systems.

The bug caused a blockage in syncing, creating a stall across several systems within the platform.

When asked why the company was not using the latest versions of Geth (v1.9.23), they explained that while they used to upgrade nodes as soon as upgrades were released, they found that the change in version would sometimes cause issues with stability and 'critical breaking issues', which would negatively impact users.^[9]

The outage began at 07:13 UTC but the company was able to fix the issue and fully restore service to customers by 14:28 UTC.

^[29]

Infura is built for Web 3.0 infrastructure.^[25] It is a scalable backend infrastructure tool that supports dapps on the Ethereum blockchain.

^[1][2] The service supports JSON-RPC over HTTPS & WebSocket interfaces and InterPlanetary File System interfaces. Additionally, the service makes it easy for users to connect their applications to the platform with simply one line of code. The service offered has a 99.9% uptime guaranteed, a developer dashboard, 24/7 global support, and the ability to archive node data (this feature is available to premium subscribers). More features are set to be revealed.^[6] The company is also open to supporting blockchains other than Ethereum on the platform, which can potentially be done by request.^[28]

Infura also offers a dashboard for evaluating network metrics and a way to whitelist smart contracts.

Infura is used a lot by developers, showing more than 10 billion code requests per day and it's been adopted by well-known dapps such as MetaMask, Truffle, and 0X.

^[1]

Infura has a free plan for developers.

It enables: ^[3]

Their other plans are priced at $50, $225, and $1,000 a month, with the final package enabling:

Infura also offers an add-on that allows you to archive data for $250 a month.

This add-on grants clients API access to the Ethereum network's historical data.