DeServe.network Global Kusama Archive RPC Deployment - Proposal #1
ℹ️ Please view the counterpart proposals:
Summary
This proposal is for the global deployment of a progressively decentralized archive RPC network for Kusama and its system parachains. Please view the detailed forum post for the complete background of the initial Polkadot deployment.
DeServe is:
- Global RPC infrastructure - 8 locations across 5 continents, optimized for Kusama coverage
- Geo-steered load balancing
- Lowest latency among all major Polkadot RPC providers
- By a Polkadot-native infrastructure & software builder, ex-IBP Rank-6 member
- Path to on-chain, general-purpose infrastructure (DePIN)
- Launched on March 31st, 2026 as a single-chain deployment, >53M req/24h by day 10
- Testnet live on Paseo, para id 5150 (telemetry), proof of on-chain commitment, currently running a shell runtime with business logic upgrade planned
- 87% cheaper than IBP
- Webpage live at deserve.network
- Developer documentation: docs.deserve.network
This proposal requests 3,003.00 KSM ($12,614.00 at 7-day EMA) as the first payment, first month upfront to bootstrap the global rollout of all Kusama services. Subsequent payments will be requested via 3-monthly retroactive proposals, alongside full transparency reports covering expenses, performance, and request analytics.
Initial Traction & Updates
The following X posts document DeServe's first days of deployment:
- Launch announcement for Polkadot Asset Hub (post)
- >1.7M requests on day 1, Ethereum-compatible RPC deployment (post)
- >45M requests/24h, deserve.network launch (post)
- >50M requests/24h, docs.deserve.network launch (post)
- >53M requests/24h, Polkadot Coretime rollout and public dashboard launch (post)
Over the first two weeks of deployment, DeServe has served over 500 million requests, and is currently serving >36M requests/day.
Live request analytics are available at the public dashboard.
Deployment & Coverage
Current deployment
- Polkadot Asset Hub Archive RPC & Ethereum-compatible RPC (endpoints)
- Polkadot Coretime Archive RPC (endpoints)
Complete Kusama rollout under this proposal
Kusama RPC services will be rolled out at 8 locations across 5 continents, optimized for coverage and budget efficiency for Kusama.
- Kusama Relay Chain
- Asset Hub
- Bridge Hub
- Coretime
- Encointer
- People
| Chain | Archive RPC | ETH RPC | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kusama Relay Chain | ✅ | - | To be deployed |
| Asset Hub | ✅ | ✅ | To be deployed |
| Coretime | ✅ | - | To be deployed |
| Bridge Hub | ✅ | - | To be deployed |
| Encointer | ✅ | - | To be deployed |
| People | ✅ | - | To be deployed |
Infrastructure
- 8 locations across 5 continents, 5 providers including Helikon
- İstanbul, TR
- Johannesburg, ZA
- Limburg, DE
- London, UK
- Mumbai, IN
- Seattle, WA, US
- Sao Paulo, BR
- Singapore, SG
- 1G–10G uplink bandwidth
- Unmetered traffic on most nodes
- 950GB–14.72TB NVMe storage per node
- ECC RAM
Monitoring and High Availability
- Geo-steered load balancing: requests routed to the nearest node
- 15-second health checks: unreachable nodes removed from the pool
- Quick recovery from low-cost backup storage preferred over 2N redundancy for cost-efficiency
- Prometheus & Grafana monitoring and alerting across all nodes 24/7
- Monitoring network (in development): latency checks across the globe
- 99.9%+ effective availability through rapid failover
- Open-source DNS transition planned (see Roadmap)
RPC configuration
- 100 req/s without API key
- 2MB max request size / 7MB max response size
- 256 RPC subscriptions per connection
Performance
DeServe delivers the lowest latency among all major Polkadot RPC providers for Polkadot Asset Hub, verified via Compare Nodes, a global RPC performance inspector.
| Comparison | Continents | Regions |
|---|---|---|
| DeServe vs IBP | 5/6 | 18-20/26 |
| DeServe vs OnFinality | 6/6 | 25/26 |
| DeServe vs Dwellir | 6/6 | 24/26 |
| DeServe vs LuckyFriday | 6/6 | 24/26 |
Full benchmark runs:
- DeServe vs IBP: Run 1, Run 2, Run 3
- DeServe vs OnFinality: Run 1
- DeServe vs LuckyFriday: Run 1
- DeServe vs Dwellir: Run 1
Cost Comparison
IBP is currently the only other provider offering a global geo-steered RPC service, making it the most appropriate reference for cost comparison.
Note that IBP operates on a 2N redundancy model, while DeServe operates on a single-instance model with rapid failover through backups, as detailed in the Monitoring & High Availability section.
Given the current cost constraints of the Polkadot ecosystem, we find that single instance per location with backup mechanisms in place should be sufficient under a highly responsive load-balancing system. DeServe’s current setup monitors endpoints every 15 seconds, immediately removing any unreachable endpoint from the pool.
The compared numbers below are taken from IBP dashboard billing view.
| IBP | DeServe | |
|---|---|---|
| Kusama Relay Chain | $66,226.50 | $8,345.00 |
| Asset Hub | $9,644.74 | $1,214.00 |
| Ethereum RPC | $538.30 | $69.00 |
| Bridge Hub | $6,926.66 | $873.00 |
| Coretime | $5,595.14 | $706.00 |
| Encointer | $5,595.14 | $706.00 |
| People | $5,567.62 | $701.00 |
| TOTAL | $100,094.10 | $12,614.00 |
| vs. IBP | - | 87% cheaper |
Our cost model is illustrated in detail in the initial forum post. DeServe also provides GeoDNS services for free as part of the package, whereas IBP charges $1,200.00/month for this service. DeServe also comes without curator payments, which add further overhead to bounty-based programs. IBP curator payments add approximately $3,400.00/month in additional overhead (reference).
Operation & Payment Details
Payment model
- First payment: 3,003.00 KSM ($12,614.00 at 7-day EMA): first month upfront to bootstrap the Kusama rollout
- Second payment $25,228.00 in KSM at 7-day EMA: months 2-3, requested at end of month 3 alongside the first transparency report
- Subsequent payments $37,842.00/quarter in KSM at 7-day EMA: 3-monthly retroactive proposals alongside full transparency reports
Payment terms
- KSM: due to stable coins not being held by the Kusama treasury
- No lock-in: the treasury can cancel anytime
- Via regular spends: no long-term bounty top-ups or commitment
- Monthly transparency reports: expenses, performance, and request analytics
- Public monitors: service health and performance, live at public dashboard
- 99.9%+ uptime SLA: basis for payment validation
Labour costs
Labour costs for the current alpha phase are excluded from this proposal and covered by Helikon. As DeServe matures, operator labour costs will be standardized through protocol governance.
Roadmap
First 3 Months
- All Kusama services live within week 2 of proposal approval: Kusama Relay Chain, Asset Hub, Ethereum-compatible RPC, Bridge Hub, Coretime, Encointer, People
- Monitoring network: real-time latency and health checks across all regions
- DeServe website: live node map, performance data, endpoints, and developer documentation (live at deserve.network)
- Open-source DNS: replacing Cloudflare for geo-steered load balancing, integrated with the monitoring network
- Polkadot-native provider onboarding: begin replacing cloud providers with native Polkadot infrastructure providers, onboarding criteria to be published
- Governance alpha phase: managed and governed by Helikon
- DeServe Unpaper: protocol design and vision document
First 6 Months
- Complete Polkadot-native operator onboarding
- Governance beta phase: network committee of >3 native operators
- On-chain service provision: on-chain payments, proofs, and governance, built on Polkadot
Submerge Commitment
Submerge is a data and compliance platform for Polkadot SDK chains, currently in development by Helikon. Submerge has received treasury funding and is behind schedule. Its two main components, Crystal (a chain indexer), Mycelium (a cross-chain indexer), along with their APIs for all supported chains will be delivered before any further on-chain submission for DeServe.
About Helikon
Helikon is a Polkadot-native infrastructure and software development collective based in İstanbul. A regular contributor to the Polkadot ecosystem at both the development and governance levels since late 2020:
- 5 active Kusama & Polkadot validators, former 1KV & Decentralized Nodes member
- Rank-6 ex-IBP member: infrastructure services for 26 blockchains
- Two-time Decentralized Voices delegate, once as founder of Permanence DAO
- Recently saved and revived Multix (post 1, post 2, post 3), a >$500K investment funded through Polkadot treasury proposal #236 and referendum #120, and child bounties 36_10 and 36_3054.
- Maintaining SubVT (iOS & Telegram Kusama/Polkadot), Chain Console, Chainviz/alpha, followthedot
- Built dv.report - analysis dashboard for the Decentralized Voices program cohorts 4 and 5
- Developing Submerge - data & compliance platform for Polkadot SDK chains
Contact
Comments (1)
Hi,
Questions:
What will 12,614.00 go to? this is for one month?
How much of the hardware do you actually own? Looking at the table from the forum post it seems like you have just rented a few VPS
Can you share the uptime of each server?
You are not hosting your own GeoDNS, your using cloudflare right now right? What happens next time cloudflare goes down?
"r geo-steered load balancing, at $120.00/month for 20 load balancers, 20 endpoint pools, and 17 endpoints,"
Same here, is cloudflare running your loadbalancer?
How do you handle downtime? are you on call or have some notification system?
Seems like 8/14nodes are hosted on OVH, what happens if ovh shutdown ur account? or change tos to block blockchain nodes?
What relationship to do you have with the ix and isp? How do you prevent the isp's from censoring? Do the nodes have blocklists ? is there any ip ranges or countries you do not serve?
How often do you update your servers?
What about chinese and russian users, do you have plans to expand to cover russia and past the chinese firewall?
Hi @Rust Syndicate,
Thanks for the questions.
Right, it's one month upfront payment for the bootstrapping of the network across 8 locations. The second payment is planned for months 2-3 at the end of month 3, and the rest would be 3-monthly retroactive.
Helikon runs all services on its own hardware in İstanbul. We are a RIPE member and are in the process of becoming an AS. The rest of the servers are bare metal machines, not VPS, rented from various providers. Our roadmap includes gradually replacing them with Polkadot-native infrastructure providers as DeServe matures into a DePIN protocol, with cost-effectiveness as a priority in the initial phase given the market conditions.
All servers have been live since the launch on March 31st, with only short planned service restarts which are gracefully handled by the load balancer. All servers are monitored both at hardware and software level 7/24 through a Prometheus/Grafana/PagerDuty stack.
Yes, we are currently using Cloudflare's geo-steered load balancer as noted in the launch announcement, a choice made for the fast rollout of our PoC. Our immediate roadmap includes transitioning to a decentralized monitoring network (currently in development) coupled with open-source DNS for custom geo-steered load balancing.
In the event of a Cloudflare outage in the meantime, regional endpoints (e.g. Asset Hub, ETH RPC, Coretime) remain fully accessible directly, so developers can fall back to those without interruption.
Current geo-steered load balancer does 15-second liveness checks on all services, and down services are removed from the pool, and requests are routed to the second-nearest location. This behavior will be replicated in our custom GeoDNS solution. The automatic updating of regional DNS records is also in development within the decentralized monitoring solution, which will eventually be delegated to native operators through incentives.
As noted previously, Helikon has been running infrastructure (validators for Polkadot and Kusama; indexers for Polkadot, Kusama and Paseo; RPC services for 26 chains; application servers for our own applications; payout services; etc.) in the Polkadot ecosystem since late 2020, and we have a mature monitoring and alerting system.
Provider diversification is a known risk in the initial PoC phase. In the case of an OVH-related disruption, affected nodes would immediately be removed from the pool by the load balancer, and requests would be routed to the other nearest nodes, and regional DNS records updated.
Starting immediately with the community's green light, we will gradually replace all cloud providers with Polkadot-native infrastructure providers, and DeServe will eventually become a permissionless DePIN protocol. The paper is being prepared and will be shared in the week of April 20th. Until the replacement is complete, we will be in contact with increasingly more regional providers, and would immediately scale-out in the case of a provider-related disruption.
We receive IP transit service from two independent providers (details available upon request), and we handle our own traffic engineering. IP transit is the standard connectivity model for infrastructure providers at this stage, therefore we are subject to our agreements with them. We are not yet directly peered at an IX in İstanbul, however a connection with DE-CIX is on the roadmap.
We do not apply blocklists other than the ones enforced by the rules in our firewall setup both at the router and software level, and are not aware of any ecosystem-wide policy requiring them. There are no countries or IP ranges that we do not serve by default. We follow standard node software and setup practices as published by Parity, and are open to collaborating with both Polkadot-native security teams and the broader Web3 ecosystem on any related practices.
Linux security vulnerabilities are patched immediately, and server software is updated bi-weekly. Polkadot node updates are applied within 24 hours of release.
Currently no such exclusive coverage is on our roadmap. However, as noted, we remain open to collaboration with native security and network teams, who would ideally become actors/stakeholders in the protocol as it matures.
Best regards.