Over the past few months, we’ve seen quite a bit of downtime on ICON’s official citizen node endpoint (ctz.solidwallet.io). At this time, the majority of dApps and blockchain services on the ICON network rely on ICON’s endpoint to interface with the blockchain. Thus, the endpoint’s downtime has caused interruptions across a variety of services, including RHIZOME’s MetrICX mobile app.
A healthy ecosystem requires additional endpoints for dApps and services to query the blockchain. To contribute to the growing needs of the ICON network, RHIZOME recently deployed a load-balanced citizen node cluster to reduce network load on ICON’s endpoint.
RHIZOME’s new endpoint is available at the URL below.
https://ctz-mainnet.rhizome.dev
If you would like to use this citizen node endpoint in your dApp or service, we recommend specifying it as a backup connection for the time being. Due to budget constraints brought about by the recent campaign to lower P-Rep rewards by moving I-Rep to 14,000, we are unable to deploy high-end hardware at the scale that we would like at this time.
To make up some ground, we are currently experimenting with various node and network configurations to optimize our limited spending. With that said, our endpoint is geographically distributed across three regions (this is why it’s expensive), and we will consider adding more if it makes sense to do so.
- North America - Iowa, USA
- Europe - Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Asia - Singapore, Singapore
Furthermore, our endpoint is secured by Cloudflare – a proxy layer that provides useful goodies like a web application firewall, rate limiting, and geo-based routing. Geo-based routing is very useful for a citizen node endpoint because it ensures low latency no matter where you are in the world. If you use our endpoint from Asia, you’ll be routed to Singapore. Similarly, you’ll be routed to Iowa if you use our endpoint in the USA.
Over the next few weeks, we will continue load testing the endpoint. We will also be closely monitoring the endpoint for any downtime or unexpected behavior. Following the testing period, we will migrate MetrICX to our new endpoint, and publish a more thorough post on the technical configuration of the endpoint.
If you would like to help us test the new citizen node endpoint, feel free to get in touch here. Any testing help/support would be greatly appreciated!