In the final days of October 2025, Bware Labs confirmed the shutdown of Blast API, one of the most widely used RPC providers in Web3, just before its planned acquisition by Alchemy. This move has sent ripples through the developer community, highlighting the fragility of Web3's backbone despite decentralized ideals.
The RPC (Remote Procedure Call) layer, essential for decentralized apps to interact with blockchains, handles billions of daily requests for wallet balances, token transfers, and contract interactions. However, it has become dominated by a few major players like Alchemy, Infura, and formerly Blast, leading to concerns about centralization and dependency.
Developers are now forced to migrate, with some opting for Alchemy as suggested, while others diversify their setups with multi-chain providers like NOWNodes, which has seen a surge in interest. NOWNodes supports over 115 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Monero, and eCash, offering stable pricing, no request limits on paid plans, and 99.95% uptime. In contrast, Alchemy, co-founded by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau, focuses on the Ethereum ecosystem and Layer 2 networks like Polygon and Arbitrum, with tier-based pricing and 99.9% uptime.
This shift underscores a broader trend toward resilience through diversified architecture, as developers prioritize stability over speed, considering factors like scalability, budget, and support quality. The event serves as a reminder that true decentralization requires redundancy and flexibility in infrastructure choices.
