RPC Providers and Nodes

RPC nodes are how apps talk to blockchains — read state, send transactions, and fetch event logs. Every frontend and indexer depends on reliable RPC access; choosing the wrong provider shows up as timeouts and rate-limit errors during traffic spikes.

Shared public endpoints throttle during network congestion. For read-only public data, dedicated free-tier keys in environment variables work with domain restrictions. Sensitive operations — admin scripts, high-volume indexing — belong on backend infrastructure with key rotation.

Running your own node offers maximum reliability and privacy with no third party logging your queries. The hardware and maintenance cost is justified for protocols, block explorers, and MEV searchers — but overkill for most frontend-only dApps.