Plain English
Infura is the longest-running Ethereum infrastructure provider, founded in 2016 by Michael Wuehler and E.G. Galano. Acquired by ConsenSys in 2019. Provides RPC endpoints for Ethereum and most major L2s. Powers MetaMask’s default RPC and a large portion of the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
How it actually works
Managed Ethereum, IPFS, and L2 nodes with global redundancy. The 2020 Infura outage (briefly took down MetaMask globally) highlighted single-point-of-failure concerns and spurred broader RPC decentralization. Free tier plus paid tiers for production use.
What it means for you
For HNW users, Infura’s significance is mostly indirect — most Ethereum dApp activity routes through it. Privacy-conscious users sometimes run their own nodes or use decentralized alternatives (Pocket Network, Helius) to avoid Infura/Alchemy concentration. For most users, the operational dependency is fine.
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Educational content only. Not investment, tax, or legal advice.