## Today Metacartel Ventures are announcing our investment into Pocket (https://pokt.network), the first decentralized API provider for Ehtereum among various other networks, with the goal of supporting all major networks going forward.
In general, I find it completely unacceptable how much of our supposedly decentralized Web 3.0 tech is actually dependent upon centralized infrastructure. Namely, most dApps and exchanges today depend on a centralized gateway to interact with Ethereum. The road to full-stack decentralization is long; addressing this critical peice of infrastructure is a great place to start decentralizing now.
Today’s blockchain API providers are vulnerable to censorship, and are prone to operator-error and attacks which can cause outages. The reason why the likes of Infura exist is because running the necessary infrastructure at scale requires a specific devops skill set, and is therefore difficult for most developers, thus is outsourced to API providers.
To operate a successful business, API providers must leverage economies of scale which allow them to retain talented devops engineers to maintain the infrastructure, and ensure its availability. One could think of this process like we think of legacy banking institutions today; both solve problems using a large workforce, where decentralized networks can employ the latest coordination incentivization technology to accomplish the same goals more efficiently. Pocket decentralizes blockchain requests like Bitcoin decentralizes payments: When code and game theory replace bloated organizations as the enforcers of good conduct, we can accomplish more with the same resources.
Centralized API providers like Infura will necessarily have higher costs of operation than a decentralized network. In the Pocket Network, you pay once to purchase POKT tokens, and upon staking them you get a daily allocation of requests. Currently staking $800 worth of POKT gets you 400k requests per day. Node operators can join and exit the network freely and at any scale they wish. When a node joins the network, it increases the overall capacity for serving requests. This decentralized model is inherently more resilient, cheaper, and faster than the centralized alternatives.
There are already a good number of projects using Pocket for API requests in their testnet. The Pocket mainnet will go live in late July. If you currently use a centralized blockchain API, check out [pokt.network](https://pokt.network) to get onboarded and add a layer of resiliance and decentralization to your project.
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_The information above shall not be construed as investment advice or as requests to engage in investment operations. Neither should it be construed as recommendations or advice on legal or regulatory aspects._