Goodbye Ethercluster…
We will be retiring Ethercluster, pointing it at servers hosted by RIVET. However we will still directly operate both ETC testnets, Kotti and Mordor.
The ETC Cooperative has provided publicly accessible RPC endpoints free of charge to various networks since mid-2019. This essential public infrastructure allowed wallets, apps, and other services to connect directly to any of the publicly accessible testnet or mainnet nodes. Then they would carry out their query or broadcast a transaction directly to the blockchain. Most wallets within the ETC ecosystem use our hosted endpoints rather than using their own nodes nodes and have done so for several years. Therefore, costs did not play any part in our decision. Ironically enough, Ethercluster was intended to make it setting up and running node infrastructure easier and truly decentralized, opposed to the centralized service most dapps on Ethereum use, Infura.io. Below we share a short history, reasoning behind the change, details of the handover, and what that means for our users.
What is Ethercluster?
Ethercluster was created by Yaz Khoury and later contributed to Hyperledger Labs. Yaz left the ETC Cooperative in 2020, and development on Ethercluster ceased. During 2021 we have suffered from reliability and uptime issues for the endpoints. Any downtime significantly impacts the ETC ecosystem, given how many wallets and dApps use these endpoints. As a small non-profit, the ETC Cooperative cannot provide 24/7 operational support. We concluded that Ethercluster would better serve everyone if another team operated the endpoint service behind the scenes.
We are pleased to announce that Rivet will be operating this service very soon.
— Bob Summerwill E.D. ETC Cooperative
Who is RIVET?
Rivet first appeared on our radar at ETHDenver in February 2020. Ethercluster has been invaluable to the ETC ecosystem over the past few years. For example, the Co-op used Ethercluster to design and test ECIP-1100 MESS protocol change. This change helped secure ETC following the 51% attacks of August 2020.
We are delighted that Rivet has embraced Ethercluster. As a result, they can provide users with higher quality, more reliable service. If you require dedicated ETC or ETH nodes of your own, we would strongly recommend that you check out Rivet.
When will the switchover happen?
We will reconfigure the ETC mainnet endpoint:
☞ https://www.ethercluster.com/etc
It will now point at Rivet-hosted servers starting next week, retiring our mainnet node. In the meantime, early adopters can try out a new temporary URL for their first taste of Rivet below:
☞ https://www.ethercluster.com/rivet
What about the Testnets?
The ETC Cooperative will continue to operate endpoints for the Kotti and Mordor testnets directly. Rivet does not provide services for those test networks, and they are not mission-critical in the same way as ETC mainnet.
We’re glad we found such an experienced and secure group that specializes in node infrastructure. Potentially grow its user base, thanks to the team at RIVET.cloud. We appreciate their willingness to provide a much better quality service to the ETC community and encourage everyone to run a node! Keep the network decentralized.
Written by Bob Summerwill
Executive Director ETC Cooperative
Posted initially via ETC Weekly newsletter. Subscribe below. ethclassic.co/etcweekly
P.S.
In a decentralized, proof of work blockchain network it is important to have as many independent nodes running live on the network, ideally geographically spread across the world. Running a node is not complex at all.
Below are a several articles to show you how to getting started running your own node using Hyperledger Besu.
